I have to say I was in the position for a small label to pre-sort music between 95′ and 05′.
Now even back then you had several software titles that could almost do what today is possible (it is just more convenient today).
And I have to say:
While many of the songs you get are “somewhat good”, you have to use criteria.
And one of the easiest to hear is the first 20 seconds of the song have to have:
– song structure
– harmonic consistence
– follow a recognisable scale
– song integrity
Because these are the basic things for you to check if a song is made by a musician who knows what he is doing or an amateur who is playing around. If you cannot hear this in the first 20sec of the song it would get into the trash.
Now I know I was not the only one doing it this way, most music industry guys I knew did it this way.
So while software is nice you need to have the following basic music knowledge:
– Basic harmony and music theory
– Basic song structuring
This is the bare minimum and I know many people that ask me: “Hey that sounds great, why was it trashed?????”
And these are just the basics, if you get to stage 2 there are even more things like harmonic flow, volume headroom,….
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