Music Production and acoustics
 

When listening to an album does the production have any significance for you? Does bad production spoil what could have been a great album or can you look beyond that and still appreciate the guts (if you will) of the album?

Does great production turn you onto an album or genre that you only had a passing interest in?

An example is a tinny snare sound on a real punchy Metal album. That really puts me off and the dynamic of the music is lost somewhat. What say you?

I prefer "crappy" production because it leaves a lot to the imagination. I really care about the composition more than the presentation. Really polished stuff isn't an automatic turn off though I'm not fond of it. However if there's a band I really like and I'm use to hearing a certain recording style and they all of a sudden clean it up that is kind of a turn off.

I have to say I do like my punk like it has been recorded in a garage. Real DIY sound.

Production is nothing, if the music is quality.
Like the old saying goes, "it's what's in the groove that counts."

I don't know if I can agree entirely with this. While the groove definitely does count, an album that sounds like it has been recorded in sand cerainly loses something in the process. Think of say Martin Hannett and what he did with Joy Division. Of course the raw sound has to be there in the first place but there is no denying that his production added another dimension to their music.

Production on albums from the sixties left a lot to be desired.
Certainly nowhere near as good as the production now, but it took nothing away from the musicianship.
Motown is a perfect example of the point I'm trying to make.
The recordings made back then (snakepit) added to the overall sound and gave it a feel and atmosphere all of it's own.
A sound that would be difficult to reproduce today.

^^
I agree about Motown. It had a sound of it's own which was encumbent on the inhouse musicians AND the production. Even though it was primitive by todays standard, it was distinctive and purposeful which says to me that production is a factor.

As you are a Northern Soul fan- was the production any different to it's counterparts or was it just a more slightly aggressive way of playing? I am not enough of an expert to compare but maybe the production was approached slightly different?

It depended on the label.
Some of them were subsidiary labels of larger ones, so the production was good for the time.
Of course some of the smaller independent labels put out their music on a shoestring.
Most of the soul adopted by the Northern Soul scene was taken mostly from the smaller labels.

Depends a lot on the album i'm listening to.

If i'm listening to something thats intricate , multi layered & detailed then obviously I want decent production to heighten those things.
A good example of this would be something like Radiohead's Kid A.

However if i'm listening to something thats more simple and is obviously based more on the songwriting rather than the music I prefer it done as raw as possible , such as something like You're Living All Over Me by Dinosaur Jr.

My opinion is basically Urban's. Something that always bugs me about the Smiths debut is how low quality the production is especially compared to the Queen is Dead but something that annoyed the crap out of about Bright Eyes's last album was how how quality and sleek it sounded, it just didn't work no matter how orchestrated they've become.

tom dowd (quite possibly the greatest producer all time) was asked before he died, "how did you produce artists like ray charles, aretha franklin, eric clapton?" and his response was

"you dont produce a great artist. you just make sure the mics are on and they have enough coffee."

i agree with that to some extent (the humility there is the real remarkable thing) but then again a good production team (engineers included) can elevate the songs to new heights that some artists could never have dreamed of.

in short i think that good production is invaluable... but it definitely begins and ends with the quality of the artist

@ urban- I agree entirely. So if a Dinosaur Jr. album was "overproduced", would that lessen the enjoyment? A great deal of bands become more polished the more albums they release (not all) and to the outsider this could seem to be a case of softening their sound but it could be a greater need to polish the production. Production seems to have a lot more impact than people think.

^ In a nutshell, that's what I've been trying to say.



Some good opinions already...I like this thread.

That's what I have tried to do with the thread. Instead of the usual "check this band out", I thought it was high time we delved deeper into music form etc.

I wouldn't say it lessens the enjoyment. I think if it was given a proper production it would still be a good album. I think what the production (or rather lack of it in this case) does as far as this album goes is make it stand out & makes it memorable. It stands out for me because it's so raw. It was that which grabbed me the first time I heard it & it's that which makes me never forget it.
So i'd say for me , it doesn't make the album good , it makes it memorable.

While on the subject of Motown I think BBC4 is essential viewing tomorrow night...

:D
Motor City's Burning looks particularly interesting.

how i wish i had bbc4

Yeah i'm looking forward to that. Radio Times promises MC5 & Funkadelic as well in that.

And I think I may have to delay my review of Whats Going On another 24 hours :D

As long as it's in by Sunday! Good call on that line up. Thank god for my PVR!

BBC iPlayer - BBC Four

And as if by magic ^

Check on it periodically, there's a good chance it'll be re-shown here.

I think I-player only works in the UK

Bollocks. :(

...but there's always youtube. :)

good try though right-track. i appreciate it. i will be checking youtube though

Right then...where were we?

...oh yeah. Good point ^
Same goes for the whole punk thing.
Imagine the effect quality production would have had on that.

Quality high end production in punk= Green Day and that's why I can't stand them. Although we could argue that certain bands are "underproduced", lessening of overdubs and effects which leads to a purer raw sound.

Another example: Nirvanas debut. The quote on the back is $600, which may or may not be accurate. However BLEACH sounds so much better than Nevermind production wise. again an example of production. The songs on Nevermind were a little more polished composition wise but even rawer tracks such as Territorial Pissings cannot match the first album.

I wouldn't say all well produced punk is crap.

Martin Hannett produced the Dead Kennedys In God We Trust Inc EP & the guitars are so sharp you could slash your wrists with them.

Martin Hannett is God.

Although Dead Kennedys were not second wave punk, I think production had a bearing on the 2nd wave and was instrumental in adding texture and tone to offer a differentiating sound. Take Killing Joke. They ceratinly had great production on a lot of their albums and it's no accident that Youth has become a prolific producer.

I'm glad someone agrees with me about this. Steve Albini made In Utero noteable too, not to mention he made great albums for Bush and Chevelle. Despite the fact you can find Razorblade Suitcase at every music store used for 4 bucks it's great from beginning to end.

I've never been able to understand why the production on Albini's own bands sound so bad compared to his other stuff.
Every Big Black & Shellac album i've heard sound like the treble switch was jammed on maximum.

I imagine it's easier to take other people's ideas and mold them than your own. I've never had a problem with Shellac or Big Black's production but his work for others is better.

I think there's a distinction that needs to be made between an album being well produced and overproduced. I'm a huge fan of quality music production. I want to hear as much detail, balance, and musical presence as possible. A well produced album compliments the music and the artists and the level of production should be the last thing one notices when listening to a well produced album. An overproduced album usually wreaks of Record co. debauchery. Mastering engineers augment recordings with obnoxious levels of compression (in anticipation of commercial radio airplay) and generally polish the sound through a stupifying number of takes which sterilizes the spontanaiety of the music, and subsequently apply gratuitous degrees of audio processing to compensate for overall lack of talent in many cases.

Matters... Some genres need to be produced, and some don't. I mean, one could say a band like 'This Heat' is reliant completely on production ingenuity, and is an ingenious band simply due to the way it's produced.

Where as a lot of bands like 'Megadeth' sound much better with live recordings because you don't even really need to produce them, but producers attempt to anyway.

I think it just matters. I mean, if production ruins your love of an album, you might as well throw out any possibility of enjoy early metal, 80s punk, or even a lot of jazz. I think that unless the production is really ****ed up, the quality of music itself should shine. Take cue the 70s where things were often recorded once, or twice, and then just had some vocal overdubs slapped onto them. Doesn't matter, though, because the music itself is so strong that the outdated production can be listened past.