By: Connor

Are we killing rock by over-producing it? More importantly, is this a conscious decision, or are artists doing what everyone else does? What’s the harm in snapping the snare to the beat, or tightening up the bass? Personally, I don’t think it’s a huge deal – to a degree. Then again, perhaps the loudness war gained it’s initial footing the same way. Well, it’s just a few decibels flubbed notes, what’s the harm?

Lets clear one thing up, Loudness Wars and digital surgery are two different things.

Touching up a song can be a good thing. It can tighten things up, make the sound ideal rather than “I’ll deal.” Cranking up the average loudness of a song just robs the listener of a degree of control, essentially flipping them off (which is what they’ll do to the stereo after a couple ‘wall of noise’ tracks).

For the old school, there’s always attending concerts or listening to live albums. Perhaps live albums wil grow in popularity as the face of rock is increasingly obscured by cosmetic surgery? I know a surprising number of my favorite albums are the live version.

Lets take for example, “Is There Anybody Out There?”, a live version of Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Extended intros, longer solos, tracks that were cut from the initial release due to length restrictions – what’s not to like? Wait a second – it was released in 2000, 18 years after the live shows were performed. Shows was not a typo, the album is a combination of two live shows, played at Earl’s Court, London in the summers of 1981 and 82, combining the best of both performances. Maybe a little tasteful editing isn’t so bad after all?

Voices, guitars and drums are really expressive instruments for the same reason that they’re really inexact instruments: Tou can’t coax the same note or beat out of them exactly the same way twice, even if you try. They’re never perfectly in tune, and any number of factors can throw their sound a little bit off.

Add that to the fact that, if you’re working with analog tape (as almost all pop musicians did before the mid-’80s), you’re basically stuck with the performance you’ve got, and you end up with recordings that mercilessly document endless errors, small and large.

Read the whole article at NPR Music

Technorati Tags: beatles, James Brown, Mistakes, NPR Music, Pink Floyd, Producition, Rock

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 at 3:19 pm and is filed under Loudness Wars, Music Production, Wisdom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.