Aside from the loudness war and musical taste...

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Myriad_Rocker

Myriad_Rocker

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What's wrong with mainstream rock productions?

I know the number one answer will probably be too much compression...but if that helps them get the sound they want, what's wrong with it?

I'm not trying to start an argument...just curious.
 
OK, but what's your actual question?

You seemed to have answered your own first question. So is it "What's wrong with today's mainstream rock productions"....Or, have you already decided that the answer is "Too much compression" and are now asking "What's wrong with that?"
 
metalhead28 said:
the music sucks....

:D
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This is a good point. The other day on the radio I heard a song by a band called Shinedown. It was a piece of poo.

I flipped to another station, which was coincidentally playing Collective Soul's "Shine"--I'll lay odds the new band got their name from that tune.

Boy, what a difference ten years makes :(
 
as a rocker myself, the one thing that I have noticed in the last ten years or so of rock recordings is this:

1) the production level is often too high.
2) yes, there is often too much compression
3) the rawness of many bands is being thrown away in place of "perfect" recordings.
4) although many of these records do sound great, it takes what rock n' roll is all about out of the equation.

so here's my suggestion: GO LISTEN TO OLDIES!!
 
whats wrong with it is that you can easily find 10,000 bands that haven't sold their souls to a major label.
 
Well...this is straying in the opposite direction.

I was asking more from a recording standpoint.
 
Myriad_Rocker said:
Well...this is straying in the opposite direction.

I was asking more from a recording standpoint.
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Too much compression?
 
Personally, I don't think there is anything wrong at all with any music whether it be current, old, pop, or mainstream. Its all just music. Sure it may not be what I prefer, but who am I to say what is wrong with it. I always hear about how awful all the current pop stuff is. But didn't most of us go through this same crap with our parents? We love it, they hate it etc.... I just wish that people would stop bashing things just because it doesn't meet their taste (I am not referring to anyone in specific or even saying that is has happened in this thread). In the end, music is music. Some of it I will love, some I will not like so much. However, all of it I will respect because even with plain old pop radio overproduced over compressed music, someone somewhere cared enough to write it, record it, produce it and release it. Its not my job to say why they did it and what their motivations are or were, so therefore because of my respect for music I choose to respect it.
 
xstatic said:
Personally, I don't think there is anything wrong at all with any music whether it be current, old, pop, or mainstream. Its all just music. Sure it may not be what I prefer, but who am I to say what is wrong with it. I always hear about how awful all the current pop stuff is. But didn't most of us go through this same crap with our parents? We love it, they hate it etc.... I just wish that people would stop bashing things just because it doesn't meet their taste (I am not referring to anyone in specific or even saying that is has happened in this thread). In the end, music is music. Some of it I will love, some I will not like so much. However, all of it I will respect because even with plain old pop radio overproduced over compressed music, someone somewhere cared enough to write it, record it, produce it and release it. Its not my job to say why they did it and what their motivations are or were, so therefore because of my respect for music I choose to respect it.
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The problem with the music is that record companies seem more risk averse than ever. Such that when we get a new band breakthrough, there are years worth of bands that copy them. That used to be more of a pop phenomenon than rock.

Overproduction also extends to more than compression and limiting--there's Autotune, drum triggers/samples, etc. It used to be if a band member sucked, the label would bring in a studio player. Now they bring in a machine to fix the sucky player, but it all ends up sounding the same.
 
mshilarious said:
The problem with the music is that record companies seem more risk averse than ever. Such that when we get a new band breakthrough, there are years worth of bands that copy them. That used to be more of a pop phenomenon than rock.
.
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yeah i agree, nothing new...
like geeez give it a break...they just shuv the sht down your throat even after your full of it.

the Big Companys won't stop Xeroxing this stuff of course,
until people quiet buying it i guess. :rolleyes:
it just gets to be so expected or redundant.

but thats where the internet has been kinda a revolution as guys like me can download new artists at will, and i do....of course there's not much money in it really. but its a good time, thats worth something.

I just bought a new artists CD online for $10 this week from a site. hell if they sell 1,000 worldwide thats $10,000 bucks. not bad...


as far as the sound quality...i think todays stuff, in side by side, is much better than the old sht. i mean Chuck Berrys songs have the groove but the recordings just muffle out when i play it loud.
i guess the over-limiting sht, is all relevant to what your comparing.
 
On a kind of related note, I found this little passage interesting:

Sadly, even with this approach, on the occasions when my tracks are mixed by so-called famous mixers, they try to change the sound of the record. It is truly heart-breaking to put as much effort as I do into recording a song, EXACTLY the way it is intended to sound, only to have it homogenized by a mixer more interested in quantity than quality. But that is what the record companies want.

It’s really an odd process, if you think about it. The record company hires Willy Show, for example, to record the songs the way he is capable of doing. Willy spends time and money getting everything to have a certain sound that is unique and consistent with the playing of the song and the performances. The record company then takes it from the producer’s hands (VERY common), and has one of five mixers make it sound exactly like everything else on the radio. Then, as if that weren’t enough, they have a mastering engineer come in and stomp the last remaining bit of life out of the production and make it sound as two-dimensional and loud as possible. But I suppose that’s a discussion for another time. I digress.
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from http://www.prosoundweb.com/recording/mm/week3/mm.php
 
I still think that 20 years ago people said the same thing, and 40 years ago, 60 years ago etc....:D
 
xstatic said:
I still think that 20 years ago people said the same thing, and 40 years ago, 60 years ago etc....:D
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You're absolutely right in that 20 years ago I was saying the same thing. Although I distinctly remember hating much '80s pop, and I can't even care enough about modern music to hate it.

It is cyclical, but it sucks sitting here in the trough waiting for the next wave :(
 
I don't see anything wrong with today's recordings. I think it had become too easy for producers for crap something out and call it a good recording because most people don't listen for the difference, but even in today's music there are tons of truly awesome recordings out there. I don't believe a recording can sound too perfect. And no, compressing the hell out of things doesn't qualify as perfection.
 
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