Imperfections in Music

I was listening to a Les DeMerle album with a friend of mine (Spectrum, the song Dio Dati (God Gives) specifically) today. The song's crescendoing to this big note, and when the band hits it someone is noticeably off key. My friend turns to me and says "Why would you listen to this? They're messing up!" This quickly spiraled into a discussion on recording methods, live versus studio, digital versus analog and so forth. 

If my ears say yes, then I say yes.

They definitely add character. For example, John Bonham's squeaky bass-pedal on a few Led-Zeppelin tracks.

I sometimes laugh when I hear really minor out-of-place notes that no regular person would notice. Honestly, you can't fault people for getting one wrong note in a recording and just saying "fuck it, that's as good as it'll get; this is going on the album". Unless it's a really big error that is noticeable without actively listening, it's no big deal.

Sometimes it's okay, sometimes it's not. My bigger problems come with imperfections in songwriting. When I, the involved and slightly obsessed but not-very-talented listener can identify what note the song was actually building up towards but for some reason didn't, I get really frustrated. Or, of course, when I can hear that there's a good song in there, but some annoying bite of the song keeps coming back to haunt me.

Sometimes that can really work.  Listen to this.  Like partly through it goes off tempo, and it really works.

Imperfections in live music is fine. Hell, some songs have evolved over time due to imperfections that just worked. On an studio album however, I think they should be nailing it. After all it doesn't take much to go in and replace a single not these days.

I don't really care, as long as the production job isn't to overproduce and bleed out the highs.

Almost always unprofessional. I like my music to be very clean and crisp. That's why I hate FM transmitters and don't encode my music in anything less than 192kbps full-stereo as a bare minimum.

Some all-time classics are stuffed with imperfections. "I've got blisters on me fingers!" in Helter Skelter comes to mind, as well as the complete fuckup in The Kingsmen's version of Louie Louie. 

I VASTLY prefer a harsher more imperfect feel to music. 

Sometimes adds character, sometimes it makes my ears mentally bleed. I get it if it's a live recording, but a studio recording? Unless the monitor room decided it was fine, no matter how basic the rig, you can roll a new tape, you can click around in ProTools, or if it's like my rig - you can press a some buttons on the MPC and prepare the recording of a new take starting at beat X measure Y (JJOS installed, love that thing!)

Also, the loudness war - it's not an imperfection, it's unlawful entry of our bodily cavities. It's one of the many reasons why people love music on vinyl, dear lord is the difference between a clean mix and a loudness one magnificent. The mp3 generation's being brainwashed into believing it's good sound. Google and youtube have good demonstrations of this deal.

 in the song "Hey Jude" you can hear someone (it says Lennon in the video, but some claim its McCartney) say "fucking hell"
  

d. Or, of course, when I can hear that there's a good song in there, but some annoying bite of the song keeps coming back to haunt me.

Sometimes the imperfections make the song better and give it more of a soul and character. Those moments stand out, but in a good way. In fact, those are usually the only obvious mistakes left in final recordings. I mean, they could in truth be hurting the song, but to the person recording it it sounded great. So it isn't like there is one part of the song that is totally fucked and they just didn't care to fix it, they just thought it was a good mistake and left it in, despite the fact they were wrong and it just left that part of the song sounding totally fucked.

@Little_Socrates said:

  Or, of course, when I can hear that there's a good song in there, but some annoying bite of the song keeps coming back to haunt me.

what do you mean? The Yowh? love that song, I feel like I can sing along to new FF songs even though I haven't heard them yet.

When you piece together a song out of 150 takes you're left with something lifeless. May as well have a robot play  it.

@Evilsbane said:

@Little_Socrates said:

  Or, of course, when I can hear that there's a good song in there, but some annoying bite of the song keeps coming back to haunt me.

what do you mean? The Yowh? love that song, I feel like I can sing along to new FF songs even though I haven't heard them yet.

Nah, it's that stupid "DA NAH NAH NAAAAH NAH NAH" Rush riff that plays every twenty seconds or so like a kick in the balls to remind me that the Foo Fighters haven't put out a song I loved since There Is Nothing Left To Lose.

@Little_Socrates said:

@Evilsbane said:

@Little_Socrates said:

  Or, of course, when I can hear that there's a good song in there, but some annoying bite of the song keeps coming back to haunt me.

what do you mean? The Yowh? love that song, I feel like I can sing along to new FF songs even though I haven't heard them yet.

Nah, it's that stupid "DA NAH NAH NAAAAH NAH NAH" Rush riff that plays every twenty seconds or so like a kick in the balls to remind me that the Foo Fighters haven't put out a song I loved since There Is Nothing Left To Lose.

And now, I'll never be able to unhear the resembalence. 

A few bands/musicians I like go out of their way to use old-fashioned analog recording techniques. 

Oh it annoys me quite a bit....and I notice them easily because I have a nice pair of headphones.

Lo-fi, dude.

Lo-fi, dude.

Unless you mean parts in songs where they clearly fucked up, such as a cracking voice or offkey note. I've only heard something like that once.

Les DeMerle is pretty obscure. I don't think too many professionally produced albums have glaring performance mistakes. Worse comes to worst they'll use auto-tune for its intended purpose.