What is good production?

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I just wanted to throw a few random thoughts into the ring. I was just listening to a Canadian post-electroclash synth duo, big female vocals, out of control full on lyrics, but delivered musically and vocally in a very fat, fast, controlled, compressed way, with certain commercial touches. It was very impressive and even somewhat glamorously revolutionary.However, it was also glossy and extremely smooth. That somehow undercut the experience on a deep level.

I then put on a CD I had been looking foward to hearing, from a Torres Strait islander famous around Australia for his songs, which basically celebrate life on the Oceanic coast. From two bars in, I was recoiling from a sythetic/smooth overproduced world music sound, which was somehow so naively at odds with the songs themselves that it bordered, unintentionally, on the insensitive. If only they had pointed a good mic in a good studio at this man's acoustic guitar, given him a top line vocal mic, and simply pressed 'play' and 'record'.

If some nineteen year old walked into your house with a portable workstation, a tape echo with one of the notches marked out with a felt tip pen and a Tandy mic and said 'I have a killer track', would you rewrite the parts on your hard drive recorder and replace all the presets with virtual synths and plug-ins, or would you plug this nutter's gear into your desk, crank up the Tandy mic and just hit 'play and record'? Which would yield the better track?

If there is such a thing as 'good' production, it must be in not screwing with the system with which the piece was written, but in capturing the performance on tape as the last stage of a continuous songwriting process that is never interrupted by any kind of unexamined commitment to a sleek result.

― moley, Tuesday, 20 December 2005 11:34 (nineteen years ago)

capturing the performance on tape as the last stage of a continuous songwriting process that is never interrupted by any kind of unexamined commitment to a sleek result.

Oh, if only. If only.

― Tantrum The Cat (Tantrum The Cat), Tuesday, 20 December 2005 23:22 (nineteen years ago)

I often have the same reaction you do to slickly produced "ethnic" perfomers. But then I remind myself that I'm just imposing my own ideas of authenticity=scratchy field recordings or warm 70s tape, and that the performer probably wants to sound contemporary and "professional" and I shouldn't begrudge him that. And then I forget what I just thought cause it still sounds like crap.

― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Wednesday, 21 December 2005 04:16 (nineteen years ago)

yeah i'm with you on authenticity to a point. 'original spirit' is probably a better term. there are lots of ways of augmenting a sound w/out taking away from it. that augmentation might not even be neccesary! eg. 19 year old wants to run with a scratchy guitar loop but it's a bit thin. fine, program a sine wave underneath doing the same part, then level it back so you can't quite hear it but it'feels' fuller. on lo-fi stuff you can make great ambiences out of outtakes from original recordings rather than rely on a cheesy keyboard preset.

sounds like your electroclash lot went a bit extra on the mastering software. oh dear.

― smile when, Wednesday, 21 December 2005 10:12 (nineteen years ago)

"Good" production is production that fits the context of the produced piece. So while lo-fi production may be good production for one record, the same production applied to a different record would sound terrible. As it happens, the lines seem to be traditionally drawn such that 'pop' music lends itself to shiny, smooth, (over?) production and more esoteric genres take a different approach.

Sticking with the idea of more 'esoteric' records, it could be that traditionally anti-pop production is another way of sounding different and strange to the casual listener, who would most likely be more familiar with a poppy style of production--i.e. the production forms part of the song itself.

― tissp! (the impossible shortest specia), Wednesday, 21 December 2005 12:18 (nineteen years ago)

I can't answer this question but would love to point people to "Transmaniacon" by RTX, my favorite album of 2004, because it has "bad" production (i.e., everything done totally wrong from a traditional production standpoint) but is one of the best-produced albums I have ever heard (i.e., it sounds FUCKING AMAZING).

― n/a (Nick A.), Thursday, 22 December 2005 21:36 (nineteen years ago)

Can you elaborate, Nick?

(I can think of an album that I feel similarly about, and I'm wondering if any of the specifics are the same)

― Jordan (Jordan), Thursday, 22 December 2005 21:55 (nineteen years ago)

I mean, there's this one brass band record that gives the impression of a sloppy, raw recording, but it slams, and if it were easy to get that sound then everyone would be doing it.

People are moving up on or off the mics all the time, the tuba mic is stuck way down in the bell, the drums are quieter than you think they should be, and there's nothing in the production that calls attention to itself (no obvious compression or reverb added, etc.). Yet it sounds totally unique. Allan Touissant produced it, so you know there's some serious shit that goes into a production that transparent yet perfect.

― Jordan (Jordan), Thursday, 22 December 2005 22:17 (nineteen years ago)

Good answers all. It would be good to curtail any inclination to think of my plea for authentic spirit in production (sensitivity to the way the song actually sounds when it comes to the studio) necessarily implies that the result should be lo-fi. 'Hi-fi' means high fidelity. What I am pleading for is a little more fidelity to the original sound, so I'm really in favour of hi-fi as a general rule. Like many sound engineers, I'd want to resist the implication that glossiness is covariant with hi-fi, just as nutritionists would resist the commercially derived notion than neatly sealed and packaged food made under sterile conditions is necessarily more nutritious.

― ratty, Thursday, 22 December 2005 22:17 (nineteen years ago)

I have another recent tale to tell. A friend's band has been gradually losing it, making more and more staid, commercial songs that the band has been playing live. These new songs don't move the crowd very much compared to their rabidly rocking earlier material. I assumed they'd 'lost it'. Anyway my friend rocks up with two CDs of 'demos' (he called them).

― ratty, Thursday, 22 December 2005 22:18 (nineteen years ago)

Of the many many finished and half-finished songs on the CDs he plays, only two are really stiff and uninspiring - and these are the two the band is playing! What happened? Their producer stepped in and said 'these are the two we should work on'. He took them away from the band and worked them up into a pair of glossy, average tracks. What he left out was at least three corkers (one, a mad, neurotic, catchy rocker with hilarious lyrics, a surefire single and no mistake), which the band and producer had talked him out of. Not only were these tracks as good as the band's tried and tested early material, they were better, more original, and funnier. Plus, they weren't really 'demos' - they were pretty much perfect, and well mixed, in my books. Maybe, just maybe, they could've benefitted from a slightly more refined mix.

― ratty, Thursday, 22 December 2005 22:18 (nineteen years ago)

multiple posts because unregistered users can't post large amounts of text, apparently.

― ratty, Thursday, 22 December 2005 22:20 (nineteen years ago)

Frustrating to observe from a distance. What's really lacking here is respect for the songwriter and his role in generating the source material. The producer regards the band's songwriter as the generator of huge, indiscriminate swathes of material from which he, the producer, can skim off the 'most commercial' tracks and weave them into radio freindly material. However, whatever he believes, the producer doesn't have the talent to engage in such micro-A&R. The songwriter should be the producer, and the producer should be no more than an engineer. Then the right tracks would be selected and produced with a less-is-more aesthetic, and the results would speak for themselves.

― ratty, Thursday, 22 December 2005 22:26 (nineteen years ago)

RTX album = basically a lot of completely abused digital effects and compression. Usually compression is supposed to be "transparent" but it's basically another instrument the way they (she) use it. Plus lots of "bad" drum sounds and guitar tones that end up sounding amazing in their hands.

― n/a (Nick A.), Thursday, 22 December 2005 22:54 (nineteen years ago)

I always think that for the basic bass/guitar/drums format with a band playing generally with a good sense of space (not just mental noise distortion) you can't beat the sound of the first few June Of 44 albums, I think done by Bob Weston, they have such a lovely open sound. For the same format but noisier I like the production on Shudder To Think's 'Pony Express Record' it's loud and hard but really seperate and spatial too, quite a feat.

IMHO Lo-Fi production is fine, but I prefer Lo-Fi sounding albums like Tom Waits does (sculpted using good mic's/pre's but using junky or unusual instruments/locations) as opposed to say, Ariel Pink (done on a cassette porta or maybe a 1/4 inch multi then mastered onto cassette really loudly)

― mzui (mzui), Friday, 23 December 2005 12:48 (nineteen years ago)

I think good music is more readily ruined by over-production than under-production. If the band is really good to being with, I'd rather hear them recorded live on a cassette recorder than have everything over-separated and super clean.

― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Friday, 23 December 2005 15:46 (nineteen years ago)

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