Prog Production Values Over The Years

rogerthat wrote: Nice track! I remember this band from a few years back when I was really into metal.  Lately, have been sampling the 2011 album of Unexpect and hope to acquire it sometime soon.   But I'd already call what I heard of the Unexpect album as metal music for the 21st century - all the madness and pulverising force of 90s extreme metal but without its repetition and limited basket of influences.  Yeah, RJD is definitely one of my all time favourite singers!  But not all melodic metal works as well not least because very few melodic metal singers can sing like Dio.  I love Rainbow and the Dio Sabbath.

zumacraig wrote: cstack3 wrote: zumacraig wrote: irrelevant wrote: I just hate those cheesy keyboards on modern prog albums.  it's gotten a bit better over the years. Somewhat better!   As a dyed-in-the-wool Mellotron freak, I really enjoyed the rich palette of sounds this instrument brought to so many of our favorite works.   Much of this is from the fact that each note on the Mellotron was recorded by a living musician....so, if you played the violin tapes, you heard the bow inflection of numerous artists playing numerous instruments!  Same for other strings and woodwinds.  It is impossible to re-create this sonic richness with modern digital technology, no matter how good.  Modern synth string patches drive me nuts (I have digital samples from a pristine studio Mellotron that I use, so I trigger ancient analog samples with digital means, quite different).   Not that modern instrumentation isn't impressive, but the sound of keys on stuff like Dream Theater leave me a bit cold.   i def prefer vintage over digital any day.  the straight synth leads, mellotron, rhodes and organ have definitely improved when it comes to the digital format.   as for dream theater, the thing that keeps me coming back to them is the great songs and melodies that i just sing out loud with :)  the icing on the cake is when there is a memorable guitar solo or jordan uses some vintage sounding patch.

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The scope of  production techniques and production values are a lot broader than the OP's thesis. Yes, in general terms amongst the artists with the most resources, the productions seem to be fairly generic. That is part of why I have so much appreciation for Pain of Salvation's Road Salt albums. They went out of their way to really flatten and dry out the sound. It really allowed the musical equation to be of more importance than the sound.

^^^  Given how scattered and fragmented the music scene of today is, that probably only reflects what YOU have personally heard and maybe you have also not heard all that many contemporary/modern albums, I don't know and can't comment on that. I like the way Radiohead and Dave Matthews Band produce their albums, though the latter can raise the level of drums in the mix a tad too much for my liking.  I loved the way Josh Brion produced When the Pawn...for Fiona Apple.  The Remember Shakti live album is just terrific.  Electric Wizard is pretty raw and 'intentionally imperfect' too.  These are all, as I am sure you've noticed, from different genres. I don't think your typical DT or SX release reflect contemporary production anymore than Yes or Genesis reflect the sound of 70s prog, which, in truth, is not a whole lot at all.

I also think some of us may be getting nostalgic for the sake of scratches and just flat out poor audio reproduction in the old recordings, which was probably unintentional.  I am sure given a choice, most bands would want a clear and full sound.  In my country, we got to hear clear recordings only in the 90s and we didn't necessarily miss the flaws of the old. I don't think those bands, other than EW, lack in dynamics and especially DMB even has a good deal of looseness and improvisation, so the clinical feeling you talk about is possibly also a compositional and performing choice.  There are listeners and musicians today who do want very clinical-sounding albums. But not everybody is not on that bandwagon.  

zumacraig wrote: Tapfret wrote: The scope of  production techniques and production values are a lot broader than the OP's thesis. Yes, in general terms amongst the artists with the most resources, the productions seem to be fairly generic. That is part of why I have so much appreciation for Pain of Salvation's Road Salt albums. They went out of their way to really flatten and dry out the sound. It really allowed the musical equation to be of more importance than the sound. so which is it?  you say my thesis is flawed then you agree with it in the next sentence.  i would say that PoS' output is an example of that samey, 'clinical ' production discussed in this thread.  put a PoS release up against 5 other main releases this year and they all sound the same.  glad you can hear the differences.

You do not understand the difference between "general terms" and a specific example? I'll give you a hint: the concepts are not "samey".  Nonetheless, if you can't hear the production differences between the Road Salt albums and any of the previous PoS albums, then little value will come of further discussion.

rogerthat wrote: I loved the way Josh Brion produced When the Pawn...for Fiona Apple.

That is such a brilliant sounding album. Jon Brian is a great producer (his Eternal Sunshine OST is also fantastic).

richardh wrote: cstack3 wrote: thehallway wrote: ^ It would be interesting to use it on instruments. i.e. you play a rhythm with just one note, then use autotune to alter the pitch of different parts of that rhythm, then suddenly, you have a melody. The timbre would be different though, with higher notes artificially squashed and lower notes stretched out. Would be similar to some of the things the Beatles did with tape speeds on Sgt Pepper. You'd have to execute this in such a way that it doesn't just sound like you've recorded something normally but badly! Well, I THOUGHT Auto-Tune had a place in prog!  Hell, we INVENTED it!  2:10 in this classic (old age has its advantages, I saw this tour twice, amazing!!)     This one needs explaing (well to me anyway)   Around the 2.10 mark you get the 'robot voice'

Eh? What!!! "software" in 1974??? No - any hardware that used software would have filled a small room back in 1974.

cstack3 wrote: Don't need Autotune for pitch correction, engineers have corrected off-pitch vocals for years in the studio by modulating the speed of the tape.  Madonna was notorious for her off-key studio work, and she required a LOT of tuning help long before Auto-Tune!