Prog Production Values Over The Years

Originally posted by zumacraig Originally posted by sleeper I dont know what Rogues Gallery is (I suspect that it isnt the thread for self portrait photos on the forums here).  I know what kind of sound you're on about; the big clinical, crystal clear production and I wouldnt describe that as sounding like live since the dirty, more raw sound of the live environment is something I prefer. And I garuantee that every album of 2011 doesnt sound the same production wise unless all you lsiten too is standard Prog Metal, Symphoinic and Neo Prog (in which case it probably would). Fen's Epoch, White Willows Terminal Twilight, Wobblers Rites at Dawn, Wolves in the Throne Rooms Celestial Lineage, Opeths Heratige, Amplifiers Octopus, Pain of Salvations Road Salt 2, Giant Squids Cenotes, Hakens Visions, hANDS Breathing, Leprous Bilateral, Mastodons The Hunter, No Made Sense New Season/New Blues, Sub Rosas No Help for the Mighty Ones, Tartar Lambs Plyimage of Known Exits, Ulvers War of the Roses, Unexpects Fables of the Sleepless Empire and Van der Graaf Generators A Grounding in Numbers all have very different production values to them and as a result all sound at least slightly different from each other. Its also notable that most of those listed were pretty much home recorded and controled almost entirely by the bands in question, rather than going to someone elses studio and hireing a producer to work with them. I noticed beyond DT and Opeth you havent said what you listen too. rogue's gallery is a podcast that highlights new prog.  i think you kind of made my point...most new prog sounds the same...at least to me.  def that clinical production.  great way to put it.  opeth and wobbler are def outliers.  didn't mention wobbler b/c they tend to get criticized as 'retro'.   gonna check out some of the bands you listed.  haven't heard a few of them.  as far as what i listen to, the disc in my player is  Anima Mundi's The Way.  it has that clinical production, but the melodies are quite memorable.

I guess it just depends on how you defign Prog. I f you keep to a fairly classic sound ideal for prog then this will be a big problem (second only to the lack of creativity that I feel the three aformentioned genres suffer from). As you can probebly tell, I'm not a big fan of msot mainstream prog of the Neo, Symph and DT-clone style. If you have a wider definition then you can be in for quite a surprise.

Originally posted by darkshade Originally posted by zumacraig Originally posted by thehallway I favour dry sounds, and this is getting rarer with prog these days....... limited to modern singer songwriters mainly. I just like to hear everything clearly, although at the same time avoiding a clinical, sterile feel. If reverb is to be added, I want it subtle, not "stadium".... because there really is no point in trying to fool people about where something was recorded. I really hope Prog is one of the genres that pushes forward with the binaural thing, because I think the future of keeping the sound of music exciting depends on replicating "being there" as much as possible. Instead of 2 channels, 360 would be rather interesting. It's so expensive to engineer though. They say drums are the hardest thing to get right, but I'd be happy to just get them as punchy and bright as Supertramp or the Mahavishnu Orchestra. They achieved that in the '70s, so it can't be that hard. Keyboards are difficult to record because they can often sound horribly artificial..... I mean, there's no actual sound waves involved in them any more, it's all electronic, so that's understandable. yes yes yes!  this is exactly my sentiment.  studio albums should sound like the studio.  love the drums on the aforementioned albums above.  this punchy, warm, phat snare sound returned last decade a bit within indie rock (wilco-yankee hotel foxtrot),  however, prog has stuck with the digi stadium sounds of the 80s.  why?  there are some outliners though.  i'm telling you, if a band has a nice fat snare sound up front, i'm sold.  roine stole, if you're reading this, please consider it for the new flower kings!! You dont find albums like Unfold the Future, Adam & Eve, or The Sum of No Evil have a fat snare sound up front? The drummer for those albums, Zoltan Czorsz, is quite good and very up front, In my opinion.

Originally posted by Slartibartfast Originally posted by infocat Originally posted by cstack3   I'm still waiting for auto-tune to reach the prog shores....actually, could be interesting if used as a very selective effect!  Bite your tongue, man! As a sparingly used vocal effect perhaps, but the way it's being used throughout mainstream music is just annoying.

I was listening to Pendragon Pure today and I think I heard a couple of seconds of auto-tune.  I forget which song.  It didn't kill me. 

I dont know what Rogues Gallery is (I suspect that it isnt the thread for self portrait photos on the forums here).  I know what kind of sound you're on about; the big clinical, crystal clear production and I wouldnt describe that as sounding like live since the dirty, more raw sound of the live environment is something I prefer.

And I garuantee that every album of 2011 doesnt sound the same production wise unless all you lsiten too is standard Prog Metal, Symphoinic and Neo Prog (in which case it probably would). Fen's Epoch, White Willows Terminal Twilight, Wobblers Rites at Dawn, Wolves in the Throne Rooms Celestial Lineage, Opeths Heratige, Amplifiers Octopus, Pain of Salvations Road Salt 2, Giant Squids Cenotes, Hakens Visions, hANDS Breathing, Leprous Bilateral, Mastodons The Hunter, No Made Sense New Season/New Blues, Sub Rosas No Help for the Mighty Ones, Tartar Lambs Plyimage of Known Exits, Ulvers War of the Roses, Unexpects Fables of the Sleepless Empire and Van der Graaf Generators A Grounding in Numbers all have very different production values to them and as a result all sound at least slightly different from each other. Its also notable that most of those listed were pretty much home recorded and controled almost entirely by the bands in question, rather than going to someone elses studio and hireing a producer to work with them.

I noticed beyond DT and Opeth you havent said what you listen too.
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Originally posted by harmonium.ro ^ The Mars Volta

Oh no.

Originally posted by richardh Originally posted by twosteves I think Offord did a great production job on some early Yes albums--I wish I could say the same about some early Genesis albums---   Offord also worked on ELP albums up to and inc Trilogy as the main sound production engineer (although Greg Lake took the main production credit). Trilogy is probably my favourite ELP album production. Wonderfull clarity and no messing with Greg Lake's voice which is full ,wamr and rich. Brain Salad Surgery was a noticeably different approach , much more compressed and loads of vocal distortion which I hate. It was about 1973 that the natural warm full production sound seemed to disappear. For me DSOTM , Relayer and BSS were all steps in the wrong direction even if musically the bands were becoming more creative.   The eighties was a real mixed bag production wise. Some brilliant stuff ( Kate Bush - Hounds Of Love and Al Stewarts ridiclulously undervalued Last Days Of The Century) but on the prog side i didn't care much for Marillions Fugazi or IQ's Nomzamo. Rush probably came up with my favourite 80's produced album (Power Windows) followed by IQ's Are You Sitting Comfortably?, the common denominator being Peter Collins. Someone had a clue at least.   The 90's was interesting as Par Lindh Project and Anglagard went for retro production techniques. Gothic Impressions and Hybris almost stand alone. Not sure it really caught on though.   Since then the only album that I loved from a production point of view has been Muse  - Absolution. Apparently they did some unusual things when recording that album (In Ireland I think) like using an empty swimming pool for the drums. The result is certainly unique and very impressive. I quite like the way Radiohead record their albums as well. They seem to have the modern way of doing things off to a fine art.

Originally posted by freyacat I totally agree with you.  Modern production is not right for your classic symphonic prog sound.  the Flower Kings, for example, compose such fantastic music, but the sound wears my ears out with all of the instruments right out front slamming in my face.  I love the muddy mystery of early Yes records, where sometimes it's hard to distinguish one instrument from another, and everything blends into this amazing witches' brew of sound.  (Bitches Brew - Teo Macero's mix would be another good example of this by the way). I have been drawn to those bands who are experimenting with archaic production techniques to get those kinds of sounds back.  Perhaps my greatest delight has been hearing the Causa Sui Summer Sessions.

I favour dry sounds, and this is getting rarer with prog these days....... limited to modern singer songwriters mainly. I just like to hear everything clearly, although at the same time avoiding a clinical, sterile feel. If reverb is to be added, I want it subtle, not "stadium".... because there really is no point in trying to fool people about where something was recorded.

I really hope Prog is one of the genres that pushes forward with the binaural thing, because I think the future of keeping the sound of music exciting depends on replicating "being there" as much as possible. Instead of 2 channels, 360 would be rather interesting. It's so expensive to engineer though.

They say drums are the hardest thing to get right, but I'd be happy to just get them as punchy and bright as Supertramp or the Mahavishnu Orchestra. They achieved that in the '70s, so it can't be that hard. Keyboards are difficult to record because they can often sound horribly artificial..... I mean, there's no actual sound waves involved in them any more, it's all electronic, so that's understandable.

Production techniques from all eras have their merits, in the right hands.

I don't really have a preference of analogue over digital, it all depends who's at the desk, and how they make the magic happen. The production on the first 4 Marillion albums - for example - is perfect for the music. The production on the first four Genesis albums, with Gabriel, was perfect for their music at the time.

Originally posted by TODDLER Originally posted by zumacraig I find the difference in production values over the decades fascinating.  I've recently been enjoying early neo-prog (Marillion) and the early 80s sound of space between the instruments, digital synths, some gated drum, etc.  The 'sound' of prog changed over the years.  60s was a vintage reverb psychedelic sound, early 70s was a warm, 'in the room' studio. Unfortunately many of the "in the room" recordings sounded as if they were recorded in a cardboard box. This was widely known by many musicians in the early 70's as a muffled sound that was lame and they didn't have the money power to clean it up. The 60's vintage reverb psychedelic sound was haunting and inspired sound techs for new ideas.   late 70s got a bigger, more slick sound. This was so cheap because all it had to do with was.....turning up the death knob on your amp and then within the production itself came this horrible idea to cheese it up a bit. It was one thing to bring the instruments out front in production and sound...like Alan Parson and Ken Scott did so well., but the creative side to recording which was known as unorthodox recording techniques was missing from rock by then. For example Jimi Hendrix's Electric Ladyland was released in 68' and was steps beyond the 60's reverb sound ..yet it wasn't contrived. It was a straight up rock album with a unique approach in production.     80s was totally slick with that digital delay on everything. I agree.   then came the 90s, and the sound of prog hasn't changed since.  it's always this BIG live sound with everything on a delay and reverb.  to me, it's been like this for over 20 years and it really does not make one band sound different from another.  i wish bands would get a bit more progressive with their sound.  maybe something akin to recent Wilco records which have a nice warm drum sound and compressed guitars along with vocals up front.   thoughts? You may not like the sound of reverb in general. It is only to be used to compliment the sound of the music. A nice warm drum sound with instruments more compressed and vocals up front can be found on the Steve Wilson re-mix of Lizard.

Well said. What has to be remembered is that a lot of prog bands in the 70's were very heavily constrained financially so they couldnt afford the best production techniques and setup available at the time, and quite a lot of them werent actually given that much time to record their albums.

I suggest that the OP doesnt listen to a particularly wide variety of prog styles, because on 2011 albums alone I've noticed a very wide variety of production styles.