Ps the problem may be that hifi readers are not interested in musical structure but they actually want to read about inky blackness, silky smoothness and sounstage, along with a list of equipment porn used to review and record the gear. So the bits I find toe curling are presicesly for the market, in which case I'll just write my own reviews in my head and occasionally write then on my wall... In crayon... With my mouf.
Paying for Reviews....is that fair?
- Thread starter paskinn
- Start date
I think it would be far more interesting instead of product reviews a company/manufacture instead pays for a factory visit, interviews, biography etc, I think it would make for a far more interesting read to see pictures of the factory, how things are made, why things are made, their views on the industry and so on.
It makes no difference to me. 6moons reviews are close to useless anyway. All I can gain from them is some background knowledge on the manufacturer and some description of the gear but I can never understand what they are saying when they turn to the sound and the impact on the music. However, other than their bad reviews, some of their non-review pieces (e.g. "Road Tours", systems for music lovers, Garrard refurbishment) are not bad. But that's largely in the past.
Why any one would want to pay to have their gear reviewed in that webzine is beyond me.
Why any one would want to pay to have their gear reviewed in that webzine is beyond me.
pure sound
Trade: manufacturer/distributor
The same kind of link exists at HiFi News.
It's partly because regular advertisers don't like to see companies who don't advertise getting a lot of gratis positive coverage while they feel they are having to pay for it.
I can understand it. HiFi News and magazines of its ilk are commercial enterprises.
It's partly because regular advertisers don't like to see companies who don't advertise getting a lot of gratis positive coverage while they feel they are having to pay for it.
I can understand it. HiFi News and magazines of its ilk are commercial enterprises.
Alan Brown
Registered LUser
I thought this was excellent - I'd read it monthly! Perhaps a parody review each month under another pen name has a place?
I'd like to quote this elsewhere, so others can spit coffee at their screens as well.
Singslinger
pfm Member
daytona600
Registered User
jackbarron
Chelsea, London
i reckon you're completely right. I used to write reviews for music magazines for a living. In 15 years I was never leaned on by an editor to do a favourable review, because an advert had been placed by a record company or band.
I sometimes read gear reviews on 6moons, but rarely get all the way through them because they are so bloody long. Having learned that they might be advertorial, I'll be a lot more careful about taking on board what they say.
Jack
merlin
Avatar changed - Town names deemed offensive.
+1.
Hardly surprising and it's been the lifeblood of the industry for decades. Hell I know for a fact that the owner of a (at the time) successful UK speaker company was supplying weed to much of the UK hifi press for many years.
It's a cynical world.
Ah, the "DeLorian manoeuvre"
Why mana was made of L section instead of Tube Section would have mad it easier to used to distribute vast quantities of cannabis to idiots like me too stupid to equate sound improvement with free weed.
Frankly some of the FE audio of the day needed something stiff to counter the "rip your tits off" treble of, say, Kans, LP12, NAIT and Mana [runs away]
Why mana was made of L section instead of Tube Section would have mad it easier to used to distribute vast quantities of cannabis to idiots like me too stupid to equate sound improvement with free weed.
Frankly some of the FE audio of the day needed something stiff to counter the "rip your tits off" treble of, say, Kans, LP12, NAIT and Mana [runs away]
Speaking of yanking, I wonder what Young was doing with his right hand?
clopping?
Alan Sircom
I dü werds, me
Very nice. Now do it with an establishing sentence, cover everything in 200 words, and do it for an audience with so little understanding of music theory, you need to tell them 'interval' is about pitch rather than tempo.
Don't take this as an insult, but as an editor having to deal with tight brief commissions, here's what I'd send back to you as correct form:
Unity
Larry Young
Blue Note 4221
CD, 2x 180g 45rpm LP, 24/96 & 24/192 download
Reissued as part of Blue Note's 75th anniversary, Unity from 1965 was organist Larry Young’s second outing with the label. He was joined here by trumpeter Woody Shaw, Joe Henderson on tenor sax, and Elvin Jones on drums. Young’s harder style of hammer-ons with half-note breaks and mid-section stop changes suited the Hammond B3 and here he plays minimally with his left hand, presumably to fill in for the lack of a bassist.
Unity has a tonal uniqueness due in part to the uncommon marriage of organ, drums, tenor sax and trumpet. It is an album that mixes standards with reinterpretations of less well-known compositions. Works by Thelonious Monk and Oscar Hammerstein II sit alongside compositions by band members; three by Shaw and one by Henderson. Young's playing and carefully planned direction encouraged and captured a rare moment in jazz that hinted at a jazz that was would be explored a decade later by the likes of Ornette Coleman and Miles Davis.
In the mid 1960s, the combination of trumpet and sax would have sounded brash and brave. To ears that have already experienced the post bop era though, the effect is on the pleasant side of far-reaching and musical.
Music XX/10
Sound Quality XX/10
That still doesn't describe whether you liked the music and how the recording sounds, but that at least would fit, and would be readable by the target audience.
Alan Sircom
I dü werds, me
Be my guest.
I'll probably do a set one day. Just for fun. Maybe I'll ease up on the references to thermonuclear missile designs and nasty diseases of the gear-lever.
Not at all an insult, it rather proves my point about the futility of trying to write technically for a non technical audience. i sat in bed and blathered and didn't have a house style. On an iPad. I just don't think writing (let alone reading) music reviews to people whom have no real investment in understanding music is a useful utilisation of time. The relationship is the wrong way round. Readers should understand music before reading music reviews, that means some investment from them in learning about music, doing it the other way around dooms any writer of any calibre to dumbing down a subject to the point where it says nothing and if it says nothing there is no point saying it.
It also fosters a mindset that anyone can say anything without any real knowledge of a subject, the synthesis of knowledge which only gets you so far. In music this means "Emotional Attachment" and various fuzzy things that are different from one person to the next, in proper music critique its hard-nosed, structural and functional. Music has a form that is canon and codifed, even ad-libbing and experimental music has formal context. Without the slightest knowledge of that context, you as an editor are doomed to pages of fuzzy fuzzy nice sounding prose.
And no one learns a thing.
Joe Hutch
Mate of the bloke
I've never seen a bad review on 6Moons. They don't even seem to do 'damning with faint praise', which is as close as most UK mags get to adverse criticism; everything is wonderful, game-changing, earth-shatteringly brilliant.
Alan Sircom
I dü werds, me
That largely depends on who your audience is, what that audience wants from their music, and where that audience wants to go. That applies universally, as much to product reviews as music reviews.
A non-technical review could be considered a news item with added 'infotainment'. The purpose of a review of a 1960s Blue Note album is to inform the reader of the existence of that album, and to do so in a manner that is entertaining enough and just informative enough to engage them to take whatever next step they deem necessary. Whether that means they want to read more about the music, or buy the music, the job of the non-technical music review is done, and done successfully.
The idea that readers should understand a subject before reading reviews of that subject is a lofty goal, but one that is considered unconscionably elitist in a magazine read by a non-specialist audience.
YNWOAN
100% Analogue
With regard to 6 Moons, I rather like the bizarre juxtaposition of oddly phrased similes that some of the reviewers write when trying to describe the sound "after all, it is, and surely it still remains true, as the angels always said 'the moment may be nigh but one must first live to truly experience' and so it is thus and cannot be denied for although punctuation may be an evil we must all live with it seldom behest those who experience as I have done a stream of conscious that, so rarely it must be said, touches upon the lightness of contact that product X seeks to define and yet...."; it's like Dada meets theosophy via a thesaurus!
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Music reviews, I rarely read them. When I do flick through them I sometimes see records I've owned for months and read a snippet of info that is so brief it barely starts to describe the record I have. I don't know the music reviewers or what their tastes are - therefore, I don't really care what their opinion is. It would be more valuable to me if a music review just listed the last 20 records the reviewer had liked and then a 'I also liked this' or 'but I didn't like this' comment (a tick or cross would be sufficient) - the rest is just a bit of padding.
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Music reviews, I rarely read them. When I do flick through them I sometimes see records I've owned for months and read a snippet of info that is so brief it barely starts to describe the record I have. I don't know the music reviewers or what their tastes are - therefore, I don't really care what their opinion is. It would be more valuable to me if a music review just listed the last 20 records the reviewer had liked and then a 'I also liked this' or 'but I didn't like this' comment (a tick or cross would be sufficient) - the rest is just a bit of padding.
Yes, it is a very very uncompromising position and the older I get the more I realise the gulf between listeners and composers that gulf and that lack of education in the public has given us at the very least two decades of rather meaningless populist writing about a subject that is understood to be technical in nature -- and the consequence of people not having any investment is review like 6moons. QED.
Frankly the majority of people know nothing about what they are listening to, they vicariously make connections and assume that their connections and their emotional responses are in fact the ones the composer intended.
So back to Glass. If its a long review of meaninglessness then you are in the public consciousness for a bit longer and you may sell some more music to people who don't have any idea how the music is made.
I would love to be all polite and conciliatory it is after all how we all get on, but some things I cannot step down from, and I know its going to isolate me, but I don't feel warmed to people who just make up words and assume meaning where it is not asked for or even correct. Critical analysis is required. Show me any critical thinking and analysis and I might read a review.
Frankly the majority of people know nothing about what they are listening to, they vicariously make connections and assume that their connections and their emotional responses are in fact the ones the composer intended.
So back to Glass. If its a long review of meaninglessness then you are in the public consciousness for a bit longer and you may sell some more music to people who don't have any idea how the music is made.
I would love to be all polite and conciliatory it is after all how we all get on, but some things I cannot step down from, and I know its going to isolate me, but I don't feel warmed to people who just make up words and assume meaning where it is not asked for or even correct. Critical analysis is required. Show me any critical thinking and analysis and I might read a review.
