Highly produced vs. minimally produced.

Straight, or Produced??

  • Straight recording, little production. More like a good photograph.

  • Highly produced. Arguably more like a painting.

Results are only viewable after voting.
Flamencology said:
Whatever fits.
Click to expand...

+1. Some bands sound amazing when they strive for layered, rich, productions. I’d never give up highly produced albums like Disintegration, Ziggy Stardust, Dopesmoker, or (The Chronic) 20001. But I also love someone like Clayton Burgess who recorded the first Satan’s Satyrs album as an 18-year-old in his parents basement. And early Ramones albums. But I don’t like to get to the point where the recording is so cheap it sounds bad, like the Danzig-era Misfits albums.
 
i wish EC would re-record "behind the sun". phil collins over produced the living crap out of that record. way too much compression and way way way too much reverb on everything. it's a good record with good songs, but listening to it today just hurts.
 
sonik said:
Less is more, except when it's not.
Click to expand...
except when more is less....more or less so...anyway

Either or for me. There was a time where I only wanted to listen to live stuff (Soundboard patched Grateful dead , etc...I always hated crappy audience recordings)

Nowadays it just depends on the band really and either or is good depending on my mood.

either more



or less

 
I'd go with "less."

I like an album to be balanced and well-presented, but once you get to the point of 57 guitar tracks, backward vocals, 99 piece orchestra on a punk-rock song, I'm lost. I remember seeing Fleetwood Mac live and it sounded so flat because they couldn't begin to reproduce the over-produced sound live.
 
It's all about the song or music. Extensive production won't make me like a shitty song and the notion of what constitutes a stellar or shitty song/music is hugely personal and subjective thing for each of us.

Great songs seems to stand up to anything, but I find they shine their brightest with minimal production. And that's distinctly separate from instrumentation. A great orchestra or big band doesn't require any "production" they just need to be playing and recorded in a good room or space.

That said some of my favorite songs have been their best when almost everything is stripped away. It's kind of cliched choice, but a live version of Hallelujah by Jeff Buckley with him, a mic, and a Tele...pretty much perfection. And while I'm sure he could have made a myriad of other songs sound excellent within that limited format, Hallelujah shines in a particularly spectacular manner. The right song and the right artist found each other. Of course Leonard does a great job, but I prefer his recent live versions to the studio by a large margin. I'd argue that his studio version is only compelling because of the lyrics...I guess that I wouldn't really love or even like the tune without Jeff's rendition. My ears have grown (and continue to grow) substantially in the 22 years since first knowingly hearing the tune.

But to instrumentation, a great band can sound slickly produced by being tight and having a large amount of sounds available. I know they're kind of the genesis of the Americana-genre, but despite being a quintet, the Band had three stellar singers, two great keyboard players (one rather godly and sorely underrated), a killer bassist, a wonderful albeit unflashy drummer, a fine guitarist, and they worked together as great arrangers. If you listen to live stuff without added horns or special guests, they sounded massive and had the ability to layer things that "regular" bands could only pull off in the studio...if even then. They were like a mini-electric roots music orchestra. And for about three albums, they were fucking golden. That group of musicians and those songs...magic.
 
I think both are acceptable if the end product is good. Highly produced can sound like a train wreck if not done well or if the music is crappy...or it can be moving and wonderful. Same with minimally produced stuff.

If i could only pick one, i'd go with straight recording but either are perfectly acceptable.
 
I will remind the group that yes, of course, there is a place for both. But the point of the thread is to force you to pick one, and have you make a case for your choice, if you had to choose. In that way, we discuss the merits of your pick, and therefore the approach. An answer that "it depends" or "whatever fits" may be arguably ultimately correct, but does not aid the discussion. So CHOOSE!!!

Freedom of choice, . . . is what you got.

Freedom from choice, . . . is what you want.


The lyric above does not really apply (or does it?), but I just wanted to quote one of my favorite DEVO songs.
 
According to the liner notes, this album came straight of the recording truck tapes, no overdubs or anything:



So I'll go with minimalistic :embarrassed:
 
sunvalleylaw said:
I will remind the group that yes, of course, there is a place for both. But the point of the thread is to force you to pick one, and have you make a case for your choice, if you had to choose. In that way, we discuss the merits of your pick, and therefore the approach. An answer that "it depends" or "whatever fits" may be arguably ultimately correct, but does not aid the discussion. So CHOOSE!!!

Freedom of choice, . . . is what you got.

Freedom from choice, . . . is what you want.


The lyric above does not really apply (or does it?), but I just wanted to quote one of my favorite DEVO songs.
Click to expand...

Nah...it's all about the music and what makes it sound best to me. With me enjoying the result being what's important, the ends justify the means.

So there!
 
I tend to lean toward the highly produced records, like Pink Floyd, Rush, et all. I find myself listening to that kind of music most of all. Lately I've been listening to a Female Fronted Metal playlist on spotify, and many of those songs have heavy production, but I really like it, and can't stop listening to it. I think it is due to my classical music roots when I learned to play piano as a child. Plus my Dad liked to listen to movie sound tracks like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars, so I think that has a lot of influence on my taste in music.

I do like to listen to stripped down rock and punk music from time to time, but I find I lean toward the richer sound music most of the time.
 
TomcatMF said:
I tend to lean toward the highly produced records, like Pink Floyd, Rush, et all. I find myself listening to that kind of music most of all. Lately I've been listening to a Female Fronted Metal playlist on spotify, and many of those songs have heavy production, but I really like it, and can't stop listening to it. I think it is due to my classical music roots when I learned to play piano as a child. Plus my Dad liked to listen to movie sound tracks like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars, so I think that has a lot of influence on my taste in music.

I do like to listen to stripped down rock and punk music from time to time, but I find I lean toward the richer sound music most of the time.
Click to expand...
Nicely stated. Thanks for sharing. :)
 
It really depends on the band and the genre. I tend to like rawer, less produced-sounding stuff, and I think a lot of rock, alt-country, and blues music sounds better with less production.

But then, there are some great bands that sound good with heavy-handed production: Pink Floyd, Steely Dan, etc. etc.

And there are whole genres that depend heavily on over production: pop, modern country, hip-hop, etc. I'd think most jazz and classical sounds better with heavy-handed production as well.
 
See, I love Floyd and Zeppelin and their highly produced records, but they pulled it off live. Floyd did the work required to make the live performances full and lush, and Page pared down the multiple guitar tracks to arrangements that worked live with one guitar. Contrast that to Green Day needing to bring in another guitarist to back up BJA on the American Idiot Tour:facepalm:.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top