Home   Forum   Wiki   Notes   Register   FAQ   Sitemap   About Us   Contact Us  

do we need good SEs for good songs

Topic started by siam (@ 202.9.161.68) on Sat Aug 4 07:07:45 EDT 2001.
All times in EST +10:30 for IST.

oflate there has been much talk about Sound Engineers (SE)role in tamil film music.a SE says (http://thirai.ambalam.com/ess-events/2001/august/ess-events03_14.html) tamil film directors lack sound sense.and good songs come out only with the help of sound enginneers.is it correct?i felt even before evolment of SEs there were very beautiful songs in tfm. what the forum says?

---

Responses:

• From: cosmician (@ 194.170.127.53) on: Sat Aug 4 11:27:04 EDT 2001
  
  Siam
  
  Listening to a lot of film music MDs and judging by the current trend - Electronica is in...Film MDs have to cater to this taste...but to have lots of Electronic effects they need the help of good sound designers and engineers to achieve unique effects and combinations....so film music is no longer a one-man show....it is a combination of many talents...the output is more richer...
  If u feel that these things are just add ons..i feel that this is a part of evolution...maybe you can spend your entire lifetime listening to the output of only one MD...but the world is composed of millions of different people with different tastes..and with time these change..so that's the way it is and will be...no point in cribbing about it....either evolve with the times or be left behind..upto you !
  
  
• From: eden (@ dialpool-210-214-5-223.maa.sify.net) on: Mon Aug 6 08:41:51 EDT 2001
  
  cosmician, was it a `one man show' at any point of time? There had been instrument players, technicians, singers, lyricists, MDs all along. It's just that the weightage of each dept. changes w.r.t the calibre of the person at any point of time.
  
  Creative artists cannot be replaced by capable technicians, IMHO.
  
  
• From: Kupps (@ atlwebproxy2.core.hp.com) on: Thu Aug 9 00:26:27 EDT 2001
  
  the term good music is relative. imo good melody with non-suppressing bg music for a song is a good song(good music). if that is the case till the arrival of ARR there were 1000s of such good music flowing and entertaining thamizh filmdom. MKT period songs; GR period songs; KVM period songs; VR(MSV) period songs and IR period songs have abundant of such good songs. IR is the first MD in TFM who gave more importance to the music part(not alone voice part) for the good songs. He is also criticized for the starting of music dominating era, though, imho, he never crossed the limit of it.
  
  So, IMHO those with melodies will long last and they will be termed as good music. However until now those music did not have a "good" sound engineering and were of no heavy need of a good sound engineer. Hence good music not necessarily need good se. if we need to listen to every sound produced and have to concentrate more on sound than the melody then SE is needed. If we term this kind of music as good music then we need good se.
  
  
• From: cosmician (@ 194.170.127.53) on: Sun Aug 12 06:13:58 EDT 2001
  
  Eden, Kupps..
  
  Variety is the spice of Life...if good music was what was only produced without SE say in the 50s or earlier....then shouldn't we still be listening to them. This doesn't mean that they are bad..it only means that times are chnging, tastes and music are evolving...but of course "refinement" seems to be not there..apart from the lot of trash we get to here these days..I believe that SE is adding a new dimension to music that will help in its refinement.
  
  
• From: kiru (@ surf0004.sybase.com) on: Sun Aug 12 18:37:38 EDT 2001
  
  Folks..there are kinds of music (even today) for which you do not need much sound engineering (like levels, reverb, echo etc). For eg. recently a well-known recording engineer recently recorded a whole orchestra (I think, Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra) with just two microphone. This recording was released without any 'editing/touchup/sound effects' and won the best recording award from a audio magazine. These kind of recordings recreate a live performance. Old (I mean very old) film songs were done exactly like this (more from a technology point of view). (this is also one of the reasons they used large number of instruments to recreate a 'big sound'). But now we have technology, we can make even a triangle sound so crysal clear and closer to the listener.This is done using multi-track technology were the instruments are recorded individually and mixed to the desired level (volume). Echo/delay effects can be added to each track. This is the reason why the job of a sound engineer is significant these days.
  
  Older MDs preferred a mix that was closer to live performance. Newer generation MDs highlight the instruments they want as much as possible. For eg. a drum sound will be really loud and sound so close to the listener. This is one way to highlight the rhythm. The vocals are slightly farther behind. MDs who want to highlight the melody put the vocals in the foreground and instruments in the background.
  Hope this helps.
  
  
• From: johnson (@ ) on: Thu Sep 4 17:18:33 EDT 2003
  
  I love you Johnson Yang
  
  

---

List all pages of this thread

---

Back to the Forum

Post comments