I posted 2 days ago asking people if they release recorded live jams as proper releases and was pleasantly surprised many people do. I also noticed a few people mentioning when they try to do it in a more precise manner, whether recording track by track or send in stems in the DAW and further perfect, that it often kills the vibe and makes it lifeless or sterile and “overproduced” sounding.
The characteristic I dislike most about a lot of modern music is that it’s “overproduced”. I recently heard the Petshop Boys new version of West End Girls which has “Lockdown Version” added to the title. It’s an extreme example of overproduction ruining a track. The original is sooo good. This one is technically perfect and very HiFi sounding, but just… awful. A lot of fantastic 90s electronic musicians have fallen into this high production quality trap. It’s similar to my feelings regarding Blade Runner 2049 to the original (I deeply disliked the new one).
I had a mastering engineer do some stem mastering for me recently and he ruined the tracks so I ended up just sending him the 2-track version instead. The stems gave him too many options - rather than look at it from an artistic or creative standpoint, he was only looking at it technically… seeing frequency masking /clashing and such problems. What sometimes happens when you surgically try to fix everything so that every elements sits better is you suck all the life and positive imperfections out of the track. With high quality DAWs and plugins available to almost everyone along with people watching a lot of the same tutorials and online music courses is people thinking their music is not good enough if it doesn’t sound like something being pushed by the big players.
I find this in a lot of modern electronic music - even the supposed underground stuff. It’s way too too polished and expensive sounding. How do you keep your sound more edgy or raw or underground yet professional to release at the same time? It seems it’s a easy to carried away and end up with an overproduced track that starts to sound technical great but more generic or mainstream as a result of seeking perfection / approval.
One of the things I do is record a full track and only rerecord a certain part if it’s really needed. Then I EQ and compress certain tracks that need it, but only in a very minimal way. Max +/- 3db on eqs for instance. I almost treat it like a stem mastering session.
This way the original sound is retained but it sounds more ready for release at the same time. Minimal edits are key here
I agree with you that some mainstream music is sounding lifeless because it’s too polished. However I like to listen to well produced music like certain idm that is polished and experimental at the same time. It can be done and can sound incredible and soulfull.
I agree. My favorite productions are actually clean / polished but don’t sound overproduced such as Barker, SW. and Forest Drive West to name a few I’ve recently been obsessed with.
I enjoy your YouTube channel by the way. Do you record the full track as a live multi-track jam?
Most musicians feel the need to develop their style and sounds. But often the fans are left disappointed by these changes.
I’ve noticed with a few of my favourite techno producers from the early 90s, that their later music had lost substance as they’ve switched from mainly hardware setups to DAWs. I’ve not enjoyed the sound aspects or the production aspects. To my ears, sterile sounding and too many superfluous elements.
That said, i don’t dislike those aspect just for the sake of it. There’s plenty of incredible, complex music made by artist using DAWs that I love.
But from a purely sonic aspect I often wonder why use DAWs to create something that’s easily done with a hardware setup. And I often see videos of people using an OT or DT to make the most bog standard 4/4 tracks.
People are free to use whatever they want. Costs and space are of course a major factor. But I’m not sure people are using the best suited tools for the task. I’m guilty of this myself through lack of research.
Anyway, I’m going slightly off topic.
But I generally agree with the OP about overproduction of modern music. My head and heart still loves the late 80’s, early 90’s House/Techno sound. I can appreciate the advances of new production techniques, but from a feel/vibe aspect I don’t think advances in sound quality have made music sound better.
I totally get that, and experienced it myself very often. Sometimes it kills the vibe indeed.
On the other hand, and I’m talking about me here, often it seems like an lazy excuse to avoid giving it the extra attention of detail, the exhausting process of finding the little improvements in mix and arrangement that quite often takes your track to a higher level.
Growing older and having less time for music, I more and more tend to prefer recording and polishing a jam, instead of putting in the hard work. They may sound better sometimes, often they don’t.
But still, there is a fine line between putting in the extra effort and overproducing it I guess
Yes, love these three (FDW especially) and you make a good point about their sound being well produced but not over polished. Also not a fan of this super clean, crisp production in a lot of cases. Some producers pull it off well, Kangding Ray for example comes to mind, but there’s actually some quite rough elements combined with the tight production which makes it work.
Im pretty shure that people have always tried to make everything as “polished and hifi” as they could. But now people have better tools. It wasnt neceseraly an artistic choice back in the day. It was limited by the gear they had.
But with all the tools we have today, it is easy to overprocess stuff. Multitrack everything and spend too much time “fixing” each track with eq, compression and effects. Still, i like alot of the super produced stuff i hear on the radio. But its a fine line between what works and what doesnt.
I think I’ve also fallen into this laziness the older I’ve gotten. I used to spend sooo much time on a track 10+ years ago. Now I just want to bang it out and release it sooner. I’d rather enjoy something else like walking my cat than looking at my DAW mixing and remixing.
I just sold my AH mk1. Great piece but was simply way too expensive for me to spend for that. I’m buying a Tascam Model 12 from the $500 I sold the AH for. I can get a similar effect in my DAW using some high quality saturation plugins. It was fantastic for live but I’m not playing live anytime soon.
I just dont worry about it.
If its good enough to unleash upon the world then I let it out. If not, I delete it. Simple.
We live in a world completely over saturated with every art form you can think of. Its everywhere, so you might as well share what ever it is you made if you think its worthy. Or not, and make all the tunes and just keep them to yourself. Either way, what ever happens after that is totally irrelavent.
I stopped over producing my stuff about 5 years ago. Get the ideas out, record it. Tidy it up if it really needs it. Done
If you create tools with almost unlimited possibilities you create the perfect environment for exactly the OP’s concerns.
House and techno from 30 years ago sounded the way it did largely as a result of the limited resources available to make it on (notwithstanding the talent, invention and inspiration of the artists in question). So often it is limitations that drive creativity. Remove those limitations and you will inevitably end up with overdone, over processed music, as no amount of self-discipline will stop you from tinkering with probably unnecessary setting just because you can.
Also, there’s a whole market set up now to make you feel like you can’t possibly call yourself an electronic musician without this plugin or mastering this process or whatever. It’s mostly bollocks.
A lot of modern music that is DAW produced sounds shit to me, everyone using the same plugins, same sounds, same software, attending courses that teach “how to mix like a pro” or “how to produce techno” ugh.
The music I listen to doesn’t adhere to “industry standards” or any of that cobblers, so I don’t really care too much about overproduced music, I just care about well produced music, or actually just music that sounds good to me.
Hard to avoid “competitive” attention seeking music these days though, blasting out on ads for shit I’ll never buy, it immediately causes me to either mute it, skip, or just leave the video.
FWIW I quite enjoyed 2049, I think it captured the vibe of the original quite well. There were a few crap bits, mostly Leto’s scenes, but overall I thought it fared well.
Can’t say the same for most modern action movies though, too much reliance on over the top cgi and ever more ridiculous scenes, some of them look like parodies to me.
I think the infinite amount of tracks DAWs allow has made for worse sounding production. I have read big name artists using over 120 tracks?Why??
Coupled with pristine digital and grids and things just sound for the most part lifeless these days.
That said there is still some great sounding new stuff out there: Autechre, Albini and Sunn 0))), Low and Bj Burton, Standing on the Corner and their cohorts, Kacey Musgraves…
This is is like the opposite thread to threads like “why does 90’s house sound more alive?” on gearslutz.
There are so many issue coming to light with DAWs recently. Like Studio ones dodgy midi interpolation, like the way live bounces can produce different results each time…
I’m starting to think the computer based side is starting to collapse in on itself. You can get solid hardware now for what plugins cost a few years back. Even less for 2nd hand hardware, those Behringer clones pop up for £80…the Crave even.
This has slowly been forcing the prices of software down and down. This in turn will force future budgets down. Plus many of them are switching to subs and rentals which will remove the money in the (budget) pots for those not offering subs down even further.
I’m kind of feeling like it all peaked about 6-7 years back and not it just seems like a slow decline…
So, tl;dr I’m not sure it’s even overproduction in the classic sense, it’s maybe all the issues daws and software have, but pretend they don’t…
