is overproduction the mark of our time?

mmm yes, I can see where you're going (last sentence very important). In that sense, of being gratuitous I sympathise. Although in the examples you give St.Etienne and Outkast are per definition studio- bands, so good production-tricks belong on those records. And it seems the argument has been around for years, not as our era's drumsolo, more as our era's Trevor Horn productions (or name your favourite 80s super-producer).

I think it *can* be gratuitious, but ultimately it's no different than going for a minimalist, "authentic", "soulful", "funky" etc. etc. approach. Why is the electronic style (especially in pop/hip hop etc.) so often valorised by some of us? I think maybe because those styles opposed to it have or at some point in the recent past had been played out to the point of exhaustion; ultimately minimalism can seem just as excessive as maximalism, and Jay Dee appear just as shallow as The Neptunes. What distinguishes the second approach is that it is still for many a relative novelty; as it goes beyond saturation point heads will probably turn back to non-electronic lo-fi sounds, but that too would be only a temporary thing.

In my world Destiny's Child's Bugaboo gets *remixed* by Bob Pollard.

If there is one thing which screws over the production sound of many rock & pop rekkids, as well as pop radio (ever notice just how *shit* radio one sounds at the moment? Not the music, the *sound*. Compare it w/radios 2 & 3) it overuse/abuse of _programme_compression._ Don't know what that means? Well, there's this recording tool, pretty much an essential actually, called the compressor. Put simply, what it does is it *selectively turns down the loud bits* and then increases the volume of the overall signal to compensate. The result is a subjectively "louder" signal. The original application for this was recording to analogue tape, or cutting direct to record, where the noise level was quite high, and you needed a hotter signal to hide it, but you didn't want to drive it so hard that it distorted.

Now, at some point during (I believe) the 1970's, some EVOL radio producer type discovered that if they ran their broadcast signal thru high compression settings, their station got more listeners - people scanning thru the airwaves in their cars would latch onto the loudest (IE "better sounding" signal) more listeners=higher ad revenue. As you can imagine, pretty soon they were all doing it. I believe the original device used was something called an opti-mod, which was originally designed for PA speaker protection, but various specialist devices, EG aphex "dominator" were made & sold, to squeeze the last bit of dynamic range out. This is, for example, why the adverts on channel 4 are so much louder than the programmes - they are ultra-compressed in order to GET YOUR ATTENTION!!!! RIGHT!!!! ARE YOU LISTENING!!!! HOW ABOUT THIS???!!! ARE YOU LISTENING NOW?!?!?!

Now, think about mastering records. Again, because of the high noise level of vinyl or cassette tape, a certain amount of compression is desirable, so quiet bits won't be drowned out by hiss. However, an over-compressed record will sound louder on the radio, so a lot of records tend to have waay too much compression applied....

Now we find ourselves in the age of digital music media, right? (and I'd just like to say here that I actually prefer the sound of a well- mastered recording on CD, so this isn't a "golden age of vinyl" rant, OK robin?) The inherent noise level on a digital recording medium is basically ZERO, so we needn't worry about our recordings being screwed over by noise, but still compression persists - partly because a little bit of it does sound very nice, but mainly because of marketing. It sounds loud/"good" on the car radio/in thee HMV shop, so perhaps you'll be more likely to go out and BUY it. Also, I suppose if your record release is already compressed to fux0r, extreme radio compression can't make it sound any worse.

The other thing that the digital age has brought are a bunch of fancy processors and software programmes (eg TC finaliser/waves ultra- maximiser) which use clever psychoacoustic techniques to compress the signal (IE your record!) so that it is at *full-scale* ALL of the time. For example, on "smells like teen spirit", or as a better example, "being a girl", did you know that the quiet bits are actually JUST AS LOUD AS the loud bits if you view them on a meter? Clever, eh? Unfortunately this treatment only works on certain music styles - loud guitar rock & trance being the only ones that come to mind. Nevertheless, in recent years it's been applied to everything (including a lot of reissues) and only in abt the last 12 months have I noticed some stuff coming out where proper dynamics are apparent.

Anyway, that's why nearly all records sound "dense" and "overproduced" - it's a marketing gimmick, abusing digital compression, and designed to make records sound louder for "drivetime" radio listeners. Great, eh?

You can, of course, look forward to a fresh round of reissues/remasters in the future, with the effect removed (sigh)

x0x0

I don't think its a mark of our time. It has always existed, as has more straight up recording techniques have. Steve Albini is just as popular as ever. Digital technology has allowed for more tracks, more effects, more possibilities, but that doesn't mean that great, simple songs aren't written and recorded every day.

simple songs aren't written and recorded every day.

They are! In Guided by Voices' basement.

It depends on what sense you mean simple...

I think GBV are very simple, depending on the context.

dear. i certainly didn't intend this as a defence of guided by voices or steve albini. i *like* hip-hop and electronic music. for that matter, i make electronic music. i like studio effects, etc *when they're used artistically*. kevin shields and martin hannett are probably my two favourite producers. i just think that recently it's been trendy to use an excessive level of electronic effects *beyond what makes musical sense*. i'm not sure that the panned bleeps on _sound of water_ or jim o'rourke's whooshes on _nyc ghosts and flowers_ even really represent any sort of challenge to sonic frontiers or opening up of "new possibilities."

I think those are just the new acoustic guitar, Sundar. Or something like that.

Stevie Nixed, please don't misquote me like that!

I don't think that "our time" or any band can be so easily musically pigenholed by overproduction/underproduction. There are some GBV songs that are overproduced! Hello ISOLATION DRILLS.

Only one minor pedantic point to make, Norman: Radio 1 by definition sounded worse (most of the time) until the late 80s when it was only on MW (most of the time).

Digital technology doesn't mean there's more room for detail. Not necassarily, big band, classical. (Whata horrible phrase. Just calling something classical it like writing it off. Sounds so dry and predictable, not nuanced, surprising, fresh and beautiful music.)

But again it's a question of the discipline of the artist in question. Bjork's new albvum is downloadable, and the odd electronic sounds in there are used as sparsely as the strings to create luscious but quite spare, big songs. The gratuity comes in idealess songs compensating with quantity over quality of inspiration.

Experiment: name five — three? — records you like less than you might otherwise because they're UNDER-produced?

'Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld' is definitely underproduced. For ambient artists, they sure lack attention to detail.
Run- DMCs 'Raising Hell' goes miles wide of classic status, it sounds unfinished not in a 'raw' way but in a "20 minutes left to fill the contract" way.
In fact, anything by Rick Rubin except Slayer and 'Licensed to Ill'

...with 'BloodSugarSexMagic' and 'Wandering Soul' two main offenders. (Geddit? K.Richards solo album called 'Main Offender'? Don't tell me you forgot?)

i actually quite like the sparseness of rubin's production of ll cool j's radio, which may be the only rubin-produced album i own. i remember finding straight outta compton disappointing after track 3 partly because of the production. i'm not sure if that's a case of under-production as much as bad production, though.

What I've heard from "Straight Outta Compton" sounds dated. In fact, FWIW, I have a feeling that the straightahead chunkiness of some of the beats may have already sounded very old-skool *then*.

I have a ProTools question. I need evidence or counterevidence to my belief that the use of ProTools and PCs has led to drum and bass. Any input is appreciated. I have googled for this and found noting except:

1984: Apple Macintosh computer introduced, and soon Digidesign followed with a software called ProTools which would eventually displace dedicated sampling devices.

Statement 1:
Disco and House are essentially the same except for the technology [and drugs, but that is another discussion] used. It are the same people who go to clubs, the same "tribes" who gather to dance - the same producers, singers, musicians. But the technolgy has changed. Midi and dedicated sampling machines: once they became cheap enough it spawned a new musical genre: house.

Here is a peace of text by John McCready that kinda backs me up:
Much has been written about Kraftwerk being the originators of house. While this is a nice idea, the truth is far more complex. Due to the relatively cheap availability of drum machines and synthesisers from Japanese companies like Roland (the feted 808 and 909 drum machines both originated in Japan) something was bound to happen anyway. -- John McCready

In this sense I have come also to believe that house celebrates the machine aesthetic in dance music.

Statement 2:
The rise of ProTools and Personal Computers has given birth to Drum and Bass. [and maybe clickhouse?, microhouse]

While house had been a celebration of the machine, drum and bass used samples of "real" instruments (bass and beats and breaks), sampled them, and recreated a new kind of music which sounds organic but which cannot be played by humans.

So is there any truth to my statement?

Jan Geerinck
http://www.jahsonic.com/Technology.html

Not quite. Early Drum & Bass was, for the most part, done with the Akai hardware sampler, sequenced on an Atari ST running Cubase or Notator. Things like Pro Tools were completely irrelevant. At that time people doing House and Drum & Bass were using very similar equipment. I agree that more recent genres have been driven by the adoption of a software-only approach.

Having said that it would have been a darn sight easier to invent Drum & Bass using the computer-based audio cut and paste techniques that are common today. The Akai was acting as a kind of virtual hard drive. Any slicing of audio had to be done by creating more samples on the sampler, adjusting the start and end points as necessary. The cutting and pasting was going on onscreen but playback was in the form of midi instructions rather than streaming from hard disk. So it was conceptually ahead of the cheaply available technology of the day.

If I'm right that Eric Valentine (Good Charlotte, Smashmouth, QOTSA) is one of the best producers of the modern era, than I guess it is the mark of our time.

yeah, they NEVER overproduced things in the 70s