Does it matter how music's sound is produced?

production is fundamental. even discreet procedures like mixing can be decisive in defining the recorded music's style. effects addition i won't discuss.
think of led zeppelin, whose sound brought rock into a new era. still, without jimmy page's production concepts hard rock would have been born in a different way... the albums, especially the second one, had this raw, compact, hard sound, with "directness", freshness and power as attributes. still, the first two years the band's live act was very different to sound of the studio albums. the drums were sounding somehow "weak", clogged, they had no echo and little resonance; the guitar had way too much echo, very psychedelic but less affective in "hard"ness; the bass didn't come together with the other instruments; all three went quite independently. these features made them, whilst live, not to sound further then "heavy blues". it was only in mid1970 that the band acquired the sound that was already produced by page on their studio albums. it is his vision of mixing the instruments in studio that actually brought the typical zeppelin sound to life; i'm talking especially about the volume effect of the instruments (or, to put it different, the position of the players in a virtual concert room related to a virtual listener's year; this can be manipulated in production, but very little when live). so, in order to achieve the hard rock sound page wanted for the band, they all had to re-think their approach to their playing (even plant had to). what i'm describing here is very easy to spot on the BBC Sessions live album; just compare their sound from 1969 to that from 1971, it speakes for itself. a transition moment could be found on the Blueberry Hill bootleg.

TheProgtologist wrote: Don't be ashamed for liking RaTM,they were an incredible band.While a little off-topic I picked this part of your initial post to comment on.One of the main reasons for that comment that was made on all of RaTM's albums was because of Tom Morello's incredibly innovative guitar playing.Because alot of stuff he does,to the unitiated listener,sounds like it is very affects laden,while in fact it is not.

Tom uses his fair share of stompbox trickery. His 'whammy pedal' is, in fact, a synthesizer by definition, as it uses a frequency counter in conjunction with a user modulated VCO to produce the the interval(s).

Something that was pointed out to him during the production of the first RATM record.

Which was mixed in the same room I'm typing this little missive from, BTW.


Onto the original question:

Here's the irony of record production.

The BETTER the bands are, the LESS you matter.

Many of the younger or less experienced bands can, and often do, benefit enormously from a fortuitous intersection with great producer/engineer types.

On the other hand... the truly GREAT bands will steamroll anything in their path, can survive a marginal recording relatively unscathed, and will do very well indeed with any moderately competent professional behind the desk.

Much of what you hear on records as far as obvious production additions are the sonic creations of various 'production types' attempting the ENHANCE, EMBELLISH UPON and, most importantly, FOCUS the sound of the recording, as much, or hopefully, MORE than it would be to OBFUSCATE any blunders or shortcomings from a performance standpoint.

Phil didn't have a lousy voice.

He just had the in-enviable task of replacing one the the greatest 'native tone' singers in the history of rock music.

In the end, Phillip had the last laugh.

In his 50's... Phil still has much of his singing voice left today.

Peter had, for all intents and purposes, DESTROYED his instrument by the time he was 25 years old.

Case in point... By the last leg of the LLDOB tour, He'd lost the high c, had intermittent use of the b, and on some nights even the b-flat.... and much more tellingly, he had a fraction of the 'tonal center' and projection he had enjoyed/abused from NC to SEBTP tours.

I have often suspected that, consciously, or unconsciously... this was the REAL reason he split the band in 1975.

He could no longer perform the 'money edge' of the material consistently and the problem was in a downward spiral.

SM.

PS. Phil NEVER COULD hit the "high-c" in Supper's Ready. This is why they drop the ending a half step for him in concert. The 'money note' is then b natural.
    

Edited by SlipperFink - December 04 2006 at 11:36

i think albums can be over-perfected to the point where they lose a certain character. i dont think it's necessary for each instrumental and vocal sound to be entirely smooth and clear. take van der graaf for example. how many people have come to adore the imperfections in peter hammill's voice?

When ever it can be made without using thouse sort of tricks, then better so. If not, no big deal

A good example might be Eddie Offord's trickery in Yes's early albums. He used all effects available, spliced tape, overdubbed, stereo separation... but he (or they as a band) had an artistic reason to do it, and very importantly, the chops to reproduce it live on stage. Compare this to Rabin's production of Talk; he used all tecnology had to offer, digital effects, extended dynamic range, digital sampling... and 2/3 of the album are crap! (100% according to some). On a side note, Alan White should sue Rabin for the sound of the drums in Talk.

Has anybody listened cds produced by a company called mapleshade? they're not prog or prog-related, I just thougt I'd mention this tiny recording company whose manifesto is "no mixing board, overdubs, noise reduction, compression, reverb, EQ, multiple drum microphone, or drum booths" they record live, single take performances in their studio and have a very good reputation for their sound quality. If anybody is interested, pppplease stick to their cds and don't buy the snakeoil audio "enhancements" they offer.

I'll give an example from DT world...

Edited by TheLamb - December 01 2006 at 10:25

When it comes to production, I only worry if its poor production and dont bother about effects etc. For onstance I dont care about the production on Foxtrot as all the insrtruments and the overall sound is clear. But on Dream Theater's When Dream And Day Unite, the production is terrible and easily noticible as the album has a very muddy sound.

I think it's OK to get a little help from machines.

The problem is that when an album is overproduced it's hard to achieve the same quality on-stage.

^ Good post fuxi.

frippster wrote: production... I agree with you, The T, in that if the artistic vision is good, who cares what tecnology is used to achieve it. On the other hand, many pop acts rely on production tricks alone to sound "good" with little or no artistic talent. I guess it's necessary to discern between the two cases....