Big 80's Production = Less Intelligence??

[stepcousin]

in the 80's I was into metal; the faster, stripped down jeans and t-shirts thrash and heavy metal and not the slick production make-up and hair spray rock (what people call hair metal these days). The 80's ruined alot of my favorite heavy rock bands from the late 70's so I went a different route into harder metal.

As the years have gone by however, I have grown to like the 80's and all it's grandeur. It was a simpler time for me and the music from the 80's, even the stuff I didn't like, was a soundtrack of my life at the time and I have a fondness for it now. Most of my fond memories of girlfriends and partying with girls were sprinkled with the music of a more popular variety. Sometimes when I hear a certain pop song from that era, it reminds me of a wonderful time in my life.

 

[Khor1255]

I can't argue with that. There are absolutely abysmal tracks I relate to fond memories so cannot really dislike. Such is the way of nostalgia but I know what is good and the 80s killed a lot of that.

 

[METALPRIEST]

So what about the songwriting end of it...like power ballads??

Does anyone here at the forum think they take skill to write, or just as much skill as it does to write an art tune or what not???

...or do many people think they can just be farted out

 

[Lynch]

So what about the songwriting end of it...like power ballads??

Does anyone here at the forum think they take skill to write, or just as much skill as it does to write an art tune or what not???

...or do many people think they can just be farted out

Haters will tell you they can be farted out. If that's true, then I would say that just about anything any of us has ever heard and/or purchased could be farted out because there is someone else that is better, smarter, faster, more meaningful, etc with their music.




End of the day, like many of us are aware of, it's a matter of taste. Gimme the simplest form of 'power ballad' any day over what I consider to be gibberish that the likes of countless folk singers yoddled about, or the 3 chordes of 70's punk, or the plageruistic ways of some really big/famous classic rock acts.

But, that's just me. The feeling of many power ballads is top notch and can move my heart and soul a LOT more than almost anything else. But, that's my opinion. Others would just as soon piss on an 80's power ballad rather than listen to it. To those people, I will simply say "their loss".

Not sure if that answers your question(s) or not. I do think that compared to classical music (Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Brahms, Handel, etc), pretty much everything has been farted out in the last 100 years.

 

[METALPRIEST]

I think most music bands make are a combination of skill and natural feeling. I think any kind of music can just come to you as well.

Perfecting it is another thing. I don't think a good power ballad lacks 100% in skill that a band like ELP has in their work.

I think huge effort goes into it all

 

[Riff Raff]

Haters will tell you they can be farted out. If that's true, then I would say that just about anything any of us has ever heard and/or purchased could be farted out because there is someone else that is better, smarter, faster, more meaningful, etc with their music.




End of the day, like many of us are aware of, it's a matter of taste. Gimme the simplest form of 'power ballad' any day over what I consider to be gibberish that the likes of countless folk singers yoddled about, or the 3 chordes of 70's punk, or the plageruistic ways of some really big/famous classic rock acts.

But, that's just me. The feeling of many power ballads is top notch and can move my heart and soul a LOT more than almost anything else. But, that's my opinion. Others would just as soon piss on an 80's power ballad rather than listen to it. To those people, I will simply say "their loss".

Not sure if that answers your question(s) or not. I do think that compared to classical music (Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Brahms, Handel, etc), pretty much everything has been farted out in the last 100 years.

Funny thing is the bands could fart out better ballads than most of these idiot critics could with real instruments.

 

[Khor1255]

I believe a simple yet very catchy song is every bit as difficult/ significant as a lavish production in terms of raw creativity. I just don't like big production for it's own sake and never have.

 

[Big Ears]

I see big productions, the eighties and intelligence as separate entities. Sixties musicians like The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Barry Ryan, had big productions with overdubs, dramatic arrangements, sound effects, and the like. The eighties was characterised by 'too much going on', which seemed to start in the late seventies. Bands that hitherto could do not wrong, like Yes and Utopia, had too many layers, fast jerky arrangements, banal lyrics, lots of instruments, too much compression, bright production, loads of reverb, synthesizers (in a bad way), harmonised bass, syn-drums and the list goes on.

No band can operate outside their time; intelligent people thought the world was flat in the fifteenth century. In some ways, there was an over-intelligence from the late seventies, through the eighties to grunge. Martin Rushent started as engineer for blues rock band The Groundhogs and quickly moved on to produce synth-pop pioneers The Human League. Trevor Horn was a talented rock musician/ producer with Yes and Foreigner, before he worked with a myriad of synth-pop artists during the eighties.

Where the eighties went wrong was with over-production, rather than big production or lack of intelligence. One of the reasons was that synthesizers (previously exciting and experimental) and drum machines became affordable for young people to play in their front rooms. DIY music with technology was not necessarily a good thing. Professional musicians had a cornucopia at their fingertips and exercised no restraint! The grunge and hippy-hate bands, for good or bad, at least wanted to hear guitars again.

David Gilmour said he would like to take the eighties out of Momentary Lapse of Reason. Instead of talking about it, he should have gone ahead. What a great album it would have been with remixing. And why stop there? Yes could take the impending eighties out of Yes Tor-mato and Rush could eradicate the eighties from all their eighties albums.

Not all the eighties music was terrible: Saga, Billy Squier, Ozric Tentacles, Mike Oldfield, Rainbow, Deep Purple, Sky, Scorpions, Frank Marino and others had their moments without over production.

 

[Khor1255]

Couldn't have said it better myself. Overproduction. That is when a song gets chewed up and spit out by the very people who are supposedly there to make it better.

When I saw The Screaming Trees in the early 90s I already liked Uncle Anesthesia well enough to buy a ticket but I didn't really expect too much. With all the studio gimmicks removed this band actually kicked ass rock and roll style. I couldn't believe how much better they sounded live and this was with a lead singer that was so drunk he kept falling around the stage (at one point right into the drums) and had to be carried off by the Conner brothers who did their best to sing the rest of the set.

Point being: a barebones recording is sometimes the very best way to hear a rock and roll band (or even a more 'sophisticated' sub genre). If they can play well live, chances are that is the sound that is going to work best in the studio.

Now, as I said before, experimentation is great. Some things you simply cannot do live and a few of these things make really great additions to a recording. But if a band is really good I believe a producers main job should be in trying to capture as much of their live sound as possible. You can always get fancy with the master recording but you just cannot fake a truly great live sound.

 

[Aero]

I feel kinda stupid reading this thread because I don't really know what you people are talking about.

Terms like "big production", lush production, overproduction, bright production, overdubbing, dramatic arrangements, compression, etc. Am I the only one here without a degree in music? ***:

What would be great is if someone could post 2 songs back to back to explain the difference between some of these styles. That is, if someone has time to do this.