Post
by Pancio » Mon Nov 16, 2020 12:23 am
Something strange happened: Did Flavio ask something seriously?
Anyway, putting the jokes aside for a moment: you have the right to dislike Stratovarius' production, nowadays but you should take something in account.
1. Budget
2. Skills
3. Musical direction
4. Approach
1. The budget the band has is significantly lower, these days, waaaay lower.
Elements costed the band a lot of money to produce and yes, you can clearly hear the quality (to me Elements pt.1 is one of the best album ever, production wise)
2. Matias is more skilled than Tolkki in every possible way and you can tell it by the way he mathematically works on frequencies and stuff; his approach is scientific while Tolkki surely learned with practice.
Sometimes math is not the best path tho.
3. Stratovarius' musical direction is, nowadays, more modern. But almost every band veered towards a sort of bombastic wall of sound: Blind Guardian did that too and I agree with you that it can be too much but that leads to
4. Approach since the band is the same but not the same anymore: their music evolved a lot and their way to write music, their way to produce and their way to record changed too.
They like to experiment a lot and I like it even when the results are not that good (Eternal and some drowned parts, especially vocals, or Elysium ultrafake kicks).
But you know? I prefer someone like Matias since he can grow as a professional and has better attitude.
He's more modern too.
Some others minor details:
You claimed you don't like samples and triggers but Tolkki used kick samples and also snare samples in almost every album.
On top of that I like Rolf sound a lot even if sampled.
What I don't like, nowadays, is guitar production and keyboard all over the place: the first is plasticy due to reamp and stuff, the second is too bulky in the mix and this mostly drowns the vocals.
But everything will be better in the new album (Enigma, Burn Me Down and Oblivion are better than "Eternal").
About your karaoke: I don't like it, simply as it is.
It's not about MIDI nor about super-duper equipment but about sound.
It's a production issue and how the sound is processed: it sounds unnaturally mechanical, fake and, hence, without any dynamics.
That's the problem with MIDI: you should use velocity and humanizer.