MTF, Week 4 (22nd March 2007) "Production vs. Release"

The underlying question in this week’s MTF was, “what is great recording vs. a great release?”[1] This got me thinking… On the way home it came to me that a release relies on image as much as sound, where as a good recording is self explanatory; a song that is well produced, mixed, engineered, despite the fact that the musical performance may not be up to scratch – but now question this – who determines whether the musical performance is up to scratch, it has to come down to the audience, right?

I asked my girlfriend over dinner the question that Steve put to the group. “Would you prefer to have a good song, recorded badly, or a bad song recorded well?”[1] As she is a general music listener, the response was not really surprising that the music is what gets her going, the beat, the melody, etc. So even if she heard Green Day’s “Holiday” or Tool’s “Schism” recorded badly she’d still enjoy it. I thought now, where am I in this regard…? The answer shifted the more I thought about it, it was terribly confusing for me!

The right producer with the right artist was a tough query for me to answer too, and I still have difficulty in describing how I understand this exactly to be. If I back-track to Butch Vig with Nirvana’s “Nevermind.” – In terms of the release this album extremely successful and it appears to be because of Vig’s production – this could be said to be a good pairing of producer and artist, depending on who you ask…
Vig on the album captured the raw emotion of the band, while keeping it very crisp, and in turn it made the album huge therefore playing a role in designing the sound that Nirvana will always be remembered for; a timeless production.

I touched on the area of genre stylised production in last week’s blog, and the question still remains the same however in terms of another question put to the group of whether it is important to match up the right production techniques with genre. My response is that it must, because a genre relies on certain and specific sounds. It’s interesting to note that for a good pop release, a cliché production technique is to bring out frequencies that humans are more sensitive towards (2-5 kHz). Perhaps this is one reason why popular music is indeed “popular” to the general public because it’s eye catching, for their ears. This includes successful rock, rap, dance and hip hop recordings too.

The music and the production plus the capture of the performance will inevitably give a good release, that is both recorded well, and also presented professionally. This also raises the point that benchmark recordings are the ones who push the envelope; both the artist and the producer may have a will power to go further and the outcome can either be for the good or bad. I sometimes feel as if Metallica were trying to do this with Bob Rock on St. Anger, but look where that turned for them! People still bought the album because of the simple fact that it was Metallica, but the reception to the release was not matched by its sales…

As you as a reader might now be aware my query is that does good release rely on production or music or believe it or not, image, and as I have pointed out, it’s probably all of them. But a good production relies on the musician, the personalities, the communication, the ideas and the capturing of the emotion of the group. If you can gather all of this, and answer it all efficiently and cleanly, then the outcome I believe will usually be a good thing.

References:

1. Fieldhouse, Steve, (2007). The Role of the Producer, presented at the University of Adelaide, 15th March