What is this production ?

A lot of people here are talking about production. But I'm not sure I understand what it means. I thought I'm sure but now it seems like I don't understand what is meant, when somebody say for example

"good album, but crappy production killed it".

Welcome back Marty 

Production concerns both creative aspects (better named "musical production", in that case) and sound. Sometime each part has its own "producer", sometime one person can handle both.

For example, Jimi Hendrix is a case of separation of the two jobs. His musical producer was also a musician (the bassist from Animals), who wasn't an expert in sound gear, mixing and such stuff. He was the guy that said stuff like "go louder here", "cut this short", "more bite!", "try to get this in just one take, it must not sound forced and tired" or "let's add some strings / weird sounds here" or "I want to hear the drums more in the front" and such. In this case, the musician needs to have complete trust in his producer. The responsible with the sound was Eddie Kramer, a pure engineer, but his input was very strong. His experiments with stereo and his precision were fundamental to the way Jimi's albums sound like.

Another example is Jimmy Page, who did both for Led Zep. He had creative control and did the sound production at the same time (he had engineers to follow his instructions, I doubt he pushed the buttons himself).

Or let's look at the case of Pink Floyd: I think that it's on Live At Pompeii where some of the guys says that their producer has absolutely no idea about recording technique and gear, but they trust him because he knows how it should sound.

Usually when people are reviewing the production of an album, they talk about the sound production (the quality of the recording, the mastering, the excess or lack of overdubs, the polishing of the sound and the elimination of errors, echo and background sound, the mixing, etc.).


Edited by harmonium.ro - June 15 2010 at 08:06