Music Tech Forum: Blog 2

If it’s too loud turn it down – Weezer T-shirt. The industry today is full of commercially successful tricks. There are things that a record company wants to hear, but do these actually make a good recording? Or just help force a good release?
Matching the right producer to the right artist is probably the biggest key in creating a good recording, having good songs also helps but we just need to look at Hanson’s MMM Bob to see that’s not always the case. A good release means good money, good popularity, and overall success, but in my opinion a good release of a standard recoding with nothing new to offer will only mean short term success. I think we are used to/tired of these old tricks and it seems to me that the songs that are popular for long amounts of time these days don’t necessarily chart well.

This also brings up the point of timeless vs. dated production. I’ve never heard anyone try to tell me they won’t listen to Dark Side of the Moon (1973) because it sounds dated. Poison however…. Picking the right producer for the job doesn’t seem like an exact science. You could match up people who have done similar styles of music before, or if the band liked the production sound. This however doesn’t always work. It seems to me that it’s more about matching an artist with a producer who share a common goal. Does the band just want a big album? Do they want a producer who will come in and make their songs more attractive to a mainstream audience? Do they want to just create the best album they can?

Another point we touched on in forum was overproduction. The best example I can think of of overproduction is Oasis. Not every Oasis album, they do love their reverb but it usually works. If you listen to a comparison of their early albums vs something like ‘Standing on the Shoulders of Giants’ the simple songs are weighed down by extra instruments and production effects. In my opinion they don’t work as well, and would have benefited from the simpler sounds you can hear in tracks like Wonderwall.

Links:
http://www.myspace.com/oasis (Go Let It Out from Standing on the Shoulders of Giants is a good example of the over production I mentioned.)
http://www.myspace.com/poison (Poision samples.)
http://www.australian-charts.com/ (Look up some of your favorite songs and see how well they did, you may be surprised.)