Great production? I beg to differ!

[alan nagsworth]

A thread for bad production values that ruin your listening experience of an otherwise decent song.

I was listening to 'Good Vibrations' on the radio today and it occurred to me that the Beach Boys were quite well-renowned for their crisp sound which was ahead of its time. Am I right? If not, disregard the following paragraph only:

The transitions between the different parts of that song are crap. Fair enough for the most part, it does sound lovely, but the loveliness of the most part is what makes the shoddy transitions so damn annoying. It's probably intentional and I'm probably being an arse but really, it just jerks from one bit to the next without any tempo slowing or quickening and it's annoying!

A record which was not highly regarded for good production but that could have sounded so much better is 'What's The Story (Morning Glory?)' by Oasis. I love this album, it's their best work and I find their other stuff quite dull. Nostalgic reasons mainly. Coming back into a heavy rotation of this record, I'm compelled to say that as a child I enjoyed it so much more because I wasn't focusing on the frankly flat sound of the whole thing. The tunes themselves have the potential to sling a lot of weight but the drums aren't punchy enough and the guitars are just DULL!



Another thing that pisses me off is albums that are meant to sound quite loud and yet they're not mastered to their full potential. Allow me to explain:

There are certain albums that are meant to have loud and quiet moments for artistic effect. The first example that comes to mind is Mr. Bungle. Their first two albums are littered with this avant garde use of very very quiet samples and instrumentation. The first album has hidden mic recordings of day-to-day life that are often very hard to hear unless you crank it up loud, and also the first 30 seconds of the first track are the sound of someone snoring but it's not obviously audible at all. This is obviously, in its simplest form, a device to force first-time listeners to turn it up in case they think they accidentally had their CD player muted or something, because when the song kicks in suddenly, it's loud as hell and it scared the life out of me the first time around. It works on repeated listens because of either that first time listen nostalgia or just an appreciation for the method used. Job well done.

HOWEVER!

There are certain records which are just balls-to-the-wall rock which are under-produced in the way of mastering and basically the main cause of my gripe is that I can still hear the god-damned bus rumbling when I'm trying to drown out all noise with some hearty rock beef on the journey home.

It is annoying.

This post is long.

Read it all and post comments detailing your thoughts on this issue, like you would on a message board of "forum".

Thanks for your patience.

[trotsky assortment]

Christ, I never new that quiet bit at the beginning of 'Quote Unquote' had noises in it!

One that really bothers me is the remastered version of Marillion's 'Brave'.  It's been mastered so the more subtle bits are properly audible now, but the bass has been boosted so much, the loud bits are far too bassy and distorted.

[The Boston Crab]

I agree that the stop-start nature of 'Good Vibrations' has meant that the song has never really hit the spot for me. The separate elements are brilliant but for a song that took so long to reach studio fruition, it's bizarre how it turned out.

Maybe I'm thick.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

The last two Queens of the Stone Age records have suffered from this a bit, with Homme's vocals sounding like he's singing into a can a lot of the time. Songs For the Deaf by contrast sounded really full, which is vaguely ironic as it was deliberately 'badly' produced, to make it sound like it's playing through a car radio.

[purlieu]

A record which was not highly regarded for good production but that could have sounded so much better is 'What's The Story (Morning Glory?)' by Oasis. I love this album, it's their best work and I find their other stuff quite dull. Nostalgic reasons mainly. Coming back into a heavy rotation of this record, I'm compelled to say that as a child I enjoyed it so much more because I wasn't focusing on the frankly flat sound of the whole thing. The tunes themselves have the potential to sling a lot of weight but the drums aren't punchy enough and the guitars are just DULL!

See also: every other album after Definitely Maybe and before Don't Believe The Truth.


I'll nominate almost everything Nigel Godrich has ever produced.  I'm not fond of the somewhat lifeless over-close-miked guitars (one panned hard left, one hard right!) and drums sound he uses a lot, but it's the fucking excessive effects that really do my head in.  Radiohead records aren't too bad, although HTTT has a couple of moments, but it's Travis' The Invisible Band and The Divine Comedy's Regeneration that really do my head in.  Dumb It Down from the latter is the best example: the second verse features Neil Hannon's voice manipulated and fucked around with behind the main vocal which makes the whole thing unlistenable and really fucking naff. 
His worst crime, however, is the overuse of fucking whooshy endings.  Almost every song on Regeneration and The Invisible Band has a bleepy noise, or a whooshy bit, or something slowly raising in pitch at the end.  The worst one of the lot is Round The Bend from Beck's Sea Change which, River Man ripoff aside, is a lovely, moody, string based ballad that slowly goes all digital and detuned at the end.  WHY?!  Because you're a fucking talentless gimmicky moron who got famous from a reasonably successful creative relationship with Radiohead, that's why.  Urgh.

[unky herb]

The high end percussion in 'For the Love of Money' by The O'Jays has always made me think I'm listening to a low bitrate mp3. Nasty.

[El Unicornio, mang]

See also: every other album after Definitely Maybe and before Don't Believe The Truth.

But not Definitely Maybe? I love the album but the production is atrocious. No bass, tinpot drumming, no separation between the instruments. A shame too as there's some good guitar and vocal musicianship on there. I'd love to hear a decent remaster of it.

[Spiteface]

But not Definitely Maybe? I love the album but the production is atrocious. No bass, tinpot drumming, no separation between the instruments. A shame too as there's some good guitar and vocal musicianship on there. I'd love to hear a decent remaster of it.

The leakage on the album was deliberate, it's actually mentioned on the Definitely Maybe DVD, and of course, Owen Morris is proud of the uber-loud brickwalling he did on the album with all the compression.

I like it for what it is, Be Here Now is the real tinny one.  No low end on that at all.

[Marty McFly]

I'm sure I read somewhere that the vinyl pressings of the Oasis albums were much less brickwalled.. anybody have them?

[jakethunder]

A thread for bad production values that ruin your listening experience of an otherwise decent song.

I was listening to 'Good Vibrations' on the radio today and it occurred to me that the Beach Boys were quite well-renowned for their crisp sound which was ahead of its time. Am I right? If not, disregard the following paragraph only:

The transitions between the different parts of that song are crap. Fair enough for the most part, it does sound lovely, but the loveliness of the most part is what makes the shoddy transitions so damn annoying. It's probably intentional and I'm probably being an arse but really, it just jerks from one bit to the next without any tempo slowing or quickening and it's annoying!

It's not really intentional. GV was recorded at multiple studios over a number of months. The final structure of the song wasn't decided on until Wilson edited his chosen sections together. Many different versions of each section were tracked, along with lots of other unused bits.
Short, smooth crossfades weren't really an option in 1966. Neither was timestretching (actually, that's a lie - listen to She's Goin Bald off the Smiley Smile album for an example of analog timestretching).
The song is edited together pretty sweetly I think, plus the rest of the production is really quite fantastic.

[ajsmith]

Always thought "Autumn Almanac" by the Kinks was a much better and truer realisation of a pocket pop symphony than "Good Vibrations". In fact Id say if there's one thing Ray Davies is underrated for, it's production. "Sunny Afternoon", "Dead End Street" and "Waterloo Sunset" and the aforementioned "Autumn Almanac" are all magical records, but the songs all lose a lot taken awasy from the R.D 60s production.

[23 Daves]

I'm sure I read somewhere that the vinyl pressings of the Oasis albums were much less brickwalled.. anybody have them?

I own the vinyl copy of "Definitely Maybe", but that's the only version I've heard in full... so I'm not sure how much help I'm going to be to you.  There's still a shitload of compression going on, but I don't remember it being as harsh as has been suggested.  One thing I've always felt is amiss about the album is the lack of "bottom end", however, so I doubt there's really much difference there. 

Nope, just listened to a brief bit of it and it's definitely a much muddier sounding, treble-heavy record than most, although I think that method works well for certain tracks on there.

[Pepotamo1985]

Nirvana's Nevermind springs to mind immediately. Wayne Coyne summed it up better than I ever could, but allow me to rant transiently...every so often, the music press (or, indeed, online music communities), feel it incumbent to exhume Kurt Cobain's corpse for a few weeks (it happens around the anniversary of his death every year on a small scale amongst cretinous grunger kids, but thankfully they rarely leave their bedrooms, so it's all good really), and whenever they do, they find it equally incumbent to wank on seemingly perpetually about how monumental the production job on Nevermind is. As Mr. Coyne rightly asserted, "there were - still are, in fact - so many mediocre bands that sound like it". It's a totally pedestrian, overly slick, soulless, loud 90s rock record - perfect for the childishly simplistic music contained therein, perhaps, but absolutely nothing notable or indeed special on any notable level whatsoever. It probably helps that I think Nirvana are overrated toss for the most part, and Kurt Cobain probably the musician most undeserving of an idolotary in history, but I just think it's ridiculous that this album, which has absolutely nothing special going for it whatsoever (apart from a couple of pretty songs at most) is placed on ludicrous pedastals in every conceivable regard. Now, Mr. Coyne, play me out? Thanks...

"If you think you're going to hear an utterly original, powerful and freaky record when you put on Nevermind, as a young kid might, Christ you're going to be disappointed. You're going to think, "Who is this band that sounds just like Nickelback? What are these drug addicts going on about?""

[purlieu]

Really?  I don't think I've ever spoken to anyone who rates the production on Nevermind!  Maybe it's because I've only spoken to people who love In Utero about Nirvana, but I thought it was always seen as an overrated, polished, commercial throwaway between two better albums.

Bleach is the only Nirvana record I like and certainly the best sounding.

[chand]

Really?  I don't think I've ever spoken to anyone who rates the production on Nevermind!  Maybe it's because I've only spoken to people who love In Utero about Nirvana, but I thought it was always seen as an overrated, polished, commercial throwaway between two better albums.

Didn't even Kurt Cobain complain about the sound of Nevermind?

Though Kurt had worked well with Nevermind producer Butch Vig, he felt that the album's radio-friendly signature - further sweetened by engineer Andy Wallace's punchy remix — had made the band sound "candy-ass," and he went out of his way to avoid repeating it.

[Johnny Townmouse]

The production on the Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds album Live Seeds album causes me frequent pain, especially as it was tinkered with in post-production more than is morally allowable.

[_Hypnotoad_]

Didn't even Kurt Cobain complain about the sound of Nevermind?

I believe so. The initial attempts at In Utero were thrown out for sounding far too raw, so the final sound of that album was a compromise despite it still ending up sounding far more like a polished demo, in a good way of course.

Nevermind sounds horribly over-produced to me, but can't agree with that guys other general criticisms of it. Though in fairness, he seems to just dislike Nirvana in general which is his perogative. Cobain freely admitted he wrote, for the most part, fairly formulaic tunes that sounded like nursery rhymes. That doesn't take anything out of the enjoyment for me, Nirvana were one of the most energetic and talented rock bands of all time partly because of the simplicity of their music. Nevermind has some ace songs on it.

Sounds like "Nickelback"? do me a fucking favour.

[Pepotamo1985]

Hmm, as far as I can work out, all that guff about In Utero being 'too raw' is just another nonsense strand of Cobain/Nirvana mythology that gives adulatory biographer tossers something to cack on about for 50 or so pages. Geffen didn't like it because it wasn't another Nevermind (and the idea of Nirvana working with Steve Albini scared them), but equally Cobain wasn't happy with the sound of it. I mean, come on, he produced Surfer Rosa, which, whilst raw, is pretty far from unlistenable - and come on, Nirvana made pretty pop songs, they're not Anal Cunt, I sincerely doubt what they made with Albini was something so haggard it was unlistenable and indeed unreleasable.

[Paaaaul]

Hmm, as far as I can work out, all that guff about In Utero being 'too raw' is just another nonsense strand of Cobain/Nirvana mythology that gives adulatory biographer tossers something to cack on about for 50 or so pages. Geffen didn't like it because it wasn't another Nevermind (and the idea of Nirvana working with Steve Albini scared them), but equally Cobain wasn't happy with the sound of it. I mean, come on, he produced Surfer Rosa, which, whilst raw, is pretty far from unlistenable - and come on, Nirvana made pretty pop songs, they're not Anal Cunt, I sincerely doubt what they made with Albini was something so haggard it was unlistenable and indeed unreleasable.

Ummm. It was released.

All Apologies and Heart Shaped Box were remixed, but apart from that the album released is the album as Albini produced it.

[Pepotamo1985]

If that was the case it illustrates my point exactly. Unfortunately, Albini contradicts what you've just said in a quote recanted here; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Utero#Production_controversy_and_remixing.

Either way, all that stuff about the initial mix being thrown out for being too raw is nonsense, but I'm so bored of dicussing a band I hate I can't be bothered any more.

[ThickAndCreamy]

Just listening to Neutral Milk Hotel - On Avery Island made me realise just how much the truly awful production makes the record. The trumpets sound like deformed screams at points and the entire thing apart from the vocals are atrocious.

The glorious pop still shines through brightly but if only it wasn't recorded so cheaply and in such a lo-fi manner (probably out of necessity rather than knowingly) it could be an absolutely magnificent record. The cleanness of In An Aeroplane really makes their first album seem that much worse, and it stops the songs from being so beautiful and enchanting, because all the instruments sound so low quality.

[always sober]

naaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh. Not beautiful and enchanting? Come on. With regards to the production, I'd be confident they knew what sounds they were recording in 1996. It's a very different album from Aeroplane, and I do go back to Aeroplane more often, but it's still very good on its own merits. One of my best memories of the summer was putting Avery Island on over lunch as I sat at my factory bench in a horrible temp job, having been up at 5am every morning for a week. I drifted asleep and had the most amazing half-awake dream involving carousels and fading women. Very special record.

[ThickAndCreamy]

It's a great album, I just believe it could have been something incredible if it wasn't so lo-fi, maybe even on par with In An Aeroplane (excluding the last song of OAI of course, that isn't good enough). I can imagine hearing songs from the album live must have been outstanding, just on record it's ruined by the low quality.

[purlieu]

Y'see, I've never heard it, but that's made it sound really interesting to me, and I can't stand In An Aeroplane.

Then again, I enjoy the GBV Suitcase albums.

[Marvin]

The production on On Avery Island is entirely deliberate and suits Jeff's songs and style perfectly. There's no way you can accuse Robert Schneider of being a bad producer and by then he'd already done Dusk at Cubist Castle and some good Apples albums with very different production styles so it was very much knowing rather than neccesity - Schneider's skill has always been achieving great results on a low budget and there would have been no more resources on hand when making In The Aeroplane anyway.

[the super moop]

Always thought "Autumn Almanac" by the Kinks was a much better and truer realisation of a pocket pop symphony than "Good Vibrations". In fact Id say if there's one thing Ray Davies is underrated for, it's production. "Sunny Afternoon", "Dead End Street" and "Waterloo Sunset" and the aforementioned "Autumn Almanac" are all magical records, but the songs all lose a lot taken awasy from the R.D 60s production.

Autumn Almanac is one of the best songs ever written.

That said, sixties Kinks records sound notoriously skinny compared with those of their contemporaries.

It's only from Arthur on that they started to sound a little more well-rounded, a little less undernourished.

[the super moop]

I'm not fond of the somewhat lifeless over-close-miked guitars (one panned hard left, one hard right!) and drums sound [Nigel Godrich] uses a lot

It's the curse of the modern rock album, and the result of the growing trend of studios not having proper rooms with the right acoustics and dynamics, choosing to replace them instead with close micing instruments (thus leaving out all ambient sound) and then digitally post-processing them to death.

It comes cheaper, so you can see why it's caught on.

It's a huge turn-off. I do not listen to bands with one ear on one guitar and the other on the kick drum, and I don't see why records should sound like that, unless it's a specific intended effect for a particular song.

A good source and a good room are irreplaceable.

It's a shame most people don't care enough.