I"m a fan of leaving the mistakes in. Polished, unless you're doing pop or classical, equals dullsville.

On our first album, there's a sound in the middle of a song that resembles a dog bark. We heard it, loved it, laughed like hell and decided to keep it in. Our guitarist still hates it, but whenever we play that song that dog bark is all I can think of.

This is great thread ! a better title would have been.........

"Crawling up the bass player from Interpol's Ass with a flashlight".
A.k.a."My book on musical theory is coming with me....up his ass in G#".



I love mistakes in music. Especially on vocals( Magnetic fields/silver jews)
Guitar (Robert Smith/Neil Young) Keys (James Brown/Krautrock)

Mistakes are beautiful. I also like that Interpol song.

I am sorry, but you guys have "Untitled" all wrong. Carlos D (I think that is his name) did NOT err, even according to the most technical definition of a musical mistake.

Listen to the song closely and tap your hand to the beat. The G# does resolve to the root A, and it does so right where one would expect it to, i.e., on the same beat that the chord changes. Let me repeat, it resolves RIGHT ON the beat and not a moment before. The G# is, in fact, a passing tone.

There are two reasons why it sounds "wrong". Firstly, the lead guitarist plays that weird honking accent noise every other time the bass goes ornery with the G#, and at the same time. Secondly, the A is plucked softly, perhaps softer than the G#. The bassist is in no hurry to get there, but he does. These two factors together make for a very strange and cool choice, embodying the "dissonance" that is allegedly missing in Interpol's music.

Not wrong, very interesting, and altogether "musical."

I think an even more obvious but awesome mistake in frances farmer...isin the second verse when hes' supposed to go back to the clean muted guitar and it stays distorted and the feedback wails beetween the guitar playing. From what I heard it was just supposed to be clean again, but they messed up. I think it sounds great.



also a different note, although I think razorblade actually sounds pretty bad despite beingrecorded with Albini, Nigel Pulsford of bush is practially a genius in my eyes. His lead guitar work is excellent. He realy makes bush a listenable band, in my opinon.

Generally I like it when people leave little mistakes in songs that are genuine accidents, like somebody cranking out a majestic cloon, then sheepishly sliding up to the right one - then leaving the shit in place for all to hear! That wins.

And it's not always a simple matter of "Why didn't they fix that." Not everybody goes into the studio with endless time and money to fix everything.

Not everybody is ABLE to play a song perfectly. Doesn't always tarnish the song or the recording in my book.

I even don't mind the occasional engineering mishap. You can hear the engineer "waking up" at the beginning of a song I worked on many years ago - the drum overheads are opened up a split second after the the first cymbal crash of the song - the cymbals actually surge right in the middle of their decay.

On a Cheer-Accident session, a batter in a guitar effect pedal died mid song. They left it in, and in fact, trotted it out again on a later release, so sick and wrong did it sound.

Wrong notes - Landing in a "wrong" place and liking the way it sounds and changing the part is a completely legitimate way to go and is by no means just a cheap trick to cover a mistake. For us chumps who can't read or write music or couldn't give a shit about music theory, we hafta go by our ears.

glynnisjohns wrote:"My book on musical theory is coming with me....up his ass in G#"

This is my favorite Whitehouse song!

How about mistakes in drumming? I mean, some of my favorite music is laden with mistakes, but with drums it's different. A mistake in drumming can mess up the momentum and completely ruin a good song, but I suppose it could also help in the right context.

...

great thread.

it´s weird that nobody mentioned guided by voices yet.
"hardcore ufo´s" and that guitar in one of the channels than suddenly just... well, stops sounding, and then suddenly start sounding again...

Saturday wrote:it´s weird that nobody mentioned guided by voices yet.
"hardcore ufo´s" and that guitar in one of the channels than suddenly just... well, stops sounding, and then suddenly start sounding again...

i live for that guitar dropout...

also, in malkmus's sloppy solos with pavement, the occasional accidental note become a catchy part of the song that i hum along to in my head every time

i like mistakes... it reminds you that humans made the music, which makes the heights to which great moments contiguous to errors rise astonishing