Do We Obsess Too Much Over Trying To Get "The Perfect" Sound?

[noiseboyuk]

Anyways, of the things that makes a record great, the sound quality is probably the least important. How many times has a band's first album been their best, but also their worst produced? More times than I can count. The production value doesn't diminish the songwriting or the performance. Remember that thing, "performance"? It used to really matter.

A really good case study is Twisted Sister's seminal 1984 album Stay Hungry vs. their 2004 remake, Still Hungry. Stay Hungry had pretty bad production. They rerecorded the album note for note 20 years later with much higher production values, but it's just not as good. The performances lack the energy and rawness of the original. Listen to these two albums back to back and it becomes obvious what really matters in music.

This. (Happens in movies too - Robert Rodrigquez' Desperado is a pale but glossy imitation of his ultra-low budget El Mariachi).

Something else I've belatedly noticed and accepted in my very long years - vocals are everything. Voice, performance, lyrics, arrangement. These things are around 10,000x more important than a clash between the bass and kick drum at 200hz that didn't quite get resolved.

If you have a cracking song, sung by a brilliant singer, and have a decent musical arrangement and a competent mix, that's 99.9% of the job. Most of all the things we discuss on forums are about the last 0.1%.

[BONES]

... that pretty much nobody will ever noticce.

A really good case study is Twisted Sister's seminal 1984 album Stay Hungry vs. their 2004 remake, Still Hungry. Stay Hungry had pretty bad production. They rerecorded the album note for note 20 years later with much higher production values, but it's just not as good.

You'd say that but I reckon I'd probably think the opposite. I definitely think that my 80s covers pretty much all sound better than the originals, although that will change if I ever get around to adding vox.

Everyone here likes to think of themselves as "producers" but what we do at home, in our bedrooms, is only a part of what the best producers do. A good producer will elicit the best performances from the artist they are producing. When I've worked with a producer, they have certainly done that for me and my bandmate does the same for me now. I can tell by the look on his face whether a take was any good or not.

[rj0]

It's been said that overall music is getting more and more polished (better tools, less tolerance for shite maybe).

It is just the producers, or the listeners as well?