SFBM songs that you can hear the "old" Live in Options

[Alex]

this is actually very incorrect. MJ has the BEST production of any of the Live albums, because it's not compressed to hell (like V and BOP) and the album breathes. Basically, all Live albums after MJ have a decent amount of clipping of the waveforms.

Rip some WAVs from MJ and then rip some tracks from other Live albums. You can see the peaks and the actual waveform from MJ...on later albums, it's a wall of sound. The WAV is a big block of sound with no highs and lows.

Just because an album is louder doesn't make it a better produced record.

Mate, we've discussed this at length before. Honestly, stop judging production visually.

Either way I wasn't referring at all to the mastering. MJ is techincally not that well produced or mixed. It has quite a 'budget' sound. You can't claim that because it isn't compressed it's the best. There is FAR more to music production than this.

Yes, all of the albums post MJ could have been mastered at a less hot volume. But that certainly doesn't make the overall production any worse. The individual sound of the recorded instruments on TC and SS (especially SS) is good. More detail, overall 'fuller' sound. There are far more interesting things happening mix wise on TC and SS, and though TDTH has a very modern sound, it has some interesting things going on.

Honestly, I thought you conceded that it's not all about mastering when we discussed this before. More than half of the dynamic range is lost nowadays through compression of the individual tracks anyway, and this can only be reproduced artificially during mastering, which isn't going to happen any time soon, with the current state of music. I'm all for dynamic range, but at this point the industry is catering for people listening on mp3 players and crappy car stereos where dynamic range is the least of their worries. Music goes through lots of phases- hopefully this is one which will die out in the next few years.

[Alex]

That's the point, it's what makes MJ great amongst other things. The problem with Live's albums now is that they are overproduced to the point where it completely destroys music. Sofia is a great example. So is Life Marches On, over produced so badly, they completely ruined the fucking music.

MJ is raw and not tampered with, part of what makes it great. Guess you can't expect children to recognize something truly great, even when it's staring them straight in the face. Gives me great faith in our future generation, jesus.

What do you mean by 'overproduced'? I just had a listen to Life Marches On, very basic run down is this:

Drums. Very compressed snare sound, and very squashed kit in general.
Bass. Low in the mix. Again, very compressed, but I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing with the bass guitar.
Guitars. Double tracked L+R in the verses, 2 more come playing different inversions in the chorus. Light distortion.
Vocals. Again, very compressed. Pretty straight forward mix in the verses. Has slight vocal chorus during the choruses, along with some unusually placed BV's.

The bridge has a lot of what I think are non-sensical effects happening- is this the kind of thing you were referring to? Major 'underwater' flanger on lead vox, minor effects on other vox.

The end has a couple of interesting reverb tails and effects, followed by that 'incorrect' bass slide which, again, gives me a distinct picture of Pat sitting on a chair in the control room, DI'ing the bass in.

The whole song has a very 'multi-tracked' sound to it. Very precise, and quite obviously not all performing at the same time in a room. Couple this with even more compression at the mastering stage, and you get the BOP production.

I'm just curious about which aspects lead you to calling it overproduced?

(I could go a lot deeper in to this, but there's probably not much point)

MJ is raw and not tampered with, part of what makes it great. Guess you can't expect children to recognize something truly great, even when it's staring them straight in the face. Gives me great faith in our future generation, jesus.

I don't know if you're referring to me here, but I'll answer as if you are. I can understand what you mean, to be honest- not that a lot of teenagers pay attention to the techincal aspects of recording. On the other side of things, there are a lot of 'indie' kids think they're the beatles, and are all about 'old fashioned' recording.

(The beautifully ironic part is that whilst some of them use vintage equipment and convince themselves that they sound like they're from the 60's, a lot of them don't use it how it was originally intended. Micing close when back then it was very frowned upon back then, etc.)

The thing is, you claim MJ has a 'raw, untampered' sound.. but it doesn't. It has very obvious (unnatural) reverbs and delays happening. It's not bad, but it has quite an 80's/ early 90's sound to it. I'm not particularly fond of this sound myself. And whilst I like music to have mistakes, and to sound human (which 99% of mainstream music doesn't anymore), I also like music that has lots of layers. Sgt Peppers, Abbey Road, Pet Sounds are early examples of this- and they still manage to sound raw.

Sorry about another long post. I just type furiously and then find that I've rambled.

[Pokey]

Not trying to speak on Liverocks' behalf, but when you mention how 99% of mainstream music is void of mistakes maybe that's what he is refering to in Life Marches On ... just like how you mentioned that it is very precise and more than likely not recorded in a sitting but in bits and pieces (although that doesn't directly relate to producing completely). Just a guess.

[Alex]

Well, yeah, that's what I would have guessed. It's not exactly over-producing though, so I was wondering if he was indeed referring to that, or to some of the effects taking place in the song.

[LiveRoCkS77]

What do you mean by 'overproduced'? I just had a listen to Life Marches On, very basic run down is this:

Drums. Very compressed snare sound, and very squashed kit in general.
Bass. Low in the mix. Again, very compressed, but I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing with the bass guitar.
Guitars. Double tracked L+R in the verses, 2 more come playing different inversions in the chorus. Light distortion.
Vocals. Again, very compressed. Pretty straight forward mix in the verses. Has slight vocal chorus during the choruses, along with some unusually placed BV's.

The bridge has a lot of what I think are non-sensical effects happening- is this the kind of thing you were referring to? Major 'underwater' flanger on lead vox, minor effects on other vox.

The end has a couple of interesting reverb tails and effects, followed by that 'incorrect' bass slide which, again, gives me a distinct picture of Pat sitting on a chair in the control room, DI'ing the bass in.

The whole song has a very 'multi-tracked' sound to it. Very precise, and quite obviously not all performing at the same time in a room. Couple this with even more compression at the mastering stage, and you get the BOP production.

I'm just curious about which aspects lead you to calling it overproduced?

(I could go a lot deeper in to this, but there's probably not much point)

I don't know if you're referring to me here, but I'll answer as if you are. I can understand what you mean, to be honest- not that a lot of teenagers pay attention to the techincal aspects of recording. On the other side of things, there are a lot of 'indie' kids think they're the beatles, and are all about 'old fashioned' recording.

(The beautifully ironic part is that whilst some of them use vintage equipment and convince themselves that they sound like they're from the 60's, a lot of them don't use it how it was originally intended. Micing close when back then it was very frowned upon back then, etc.)

The thing is, you claim MJ has a 'raw, untampered' sound.. but it doesn't. It has very obvious (unnatural) reverbs and delays happening. It's not bad, but it has quite an 80's/ early 90's sound to it. I'm not particularly fond of this sound myself. And whilst I like music to have mistakes, and to sound human (which 99% of mainstream music doesn't anymore), I also like music that has lots of layers. Sgt Peppers, Abbey Road, Pet Sounds are early examples of this- and they still manage to sound raw.

Sorry about another long post. I just type furiously and then find that I've rambled.

No, I wasn't referring to you at all Alex. It's fairly obvious that you've got a pretty godd handle on what you are talking about.

All I was trying to say is that if you look at a song like Show for instance, there is reverb throughout the song that drowns out almost everything, including Ed's vocals. Also, in Life Marches on, the song sounds way to polished, like they cleaned it up to the point of the guitar sounding almost like a violin.

The point I was trying to make about Mj was that you can hear things much more clearly without all the interference on most songs. The vocals sound pretty much as if they were done "live" if that makes any sense. You can hear the echo off the drums without them being drowned out by added noise. You can hear the separation between Pat's bass and Chad's electric.

I just don't agree that it's an eighties sound that was common. I've always found MJ unique for it's "garage" type sound and it's lack of production. Maybe that's my mistake and the intent of the actual production? Whatever it is, I love and admire it. I listen to this Mystery song now with all the strings and crap added in and it just reeks of over produced garbage.

But in no way shape or form was I questioning your musical knowledge man, for it is worlds greater than mine. That much is blatantly obvious. I'd be very interested to hear what your opinion is of what I'm hearing when I listen to that record.

This post has been edited by LiveRoCkS77: Feb 10 2008, 7:27 pm

[LiveRoCkS77]

Not trying to speak on Liverocks' behalf, but when you mention how 99% of mainstream music is void of mistakes maybe that's what he is refering to in Life Marches On ... just like how you mentioned that it is very precise and more than likely not recorded in a sitting but in bits and pieces (although that doesn't directly relate to producing completely). Just a guess.

Hehehe, sorry I didn't read your post Poke, but yeah, in this instance, you said it better than I could...

[Pokey]

That's sort of why that production annoys me ... I don't know as much of the technical jargin as Alex does, but to me it just sounds unnatural or something. When you said it sounds as if they weren't even playing it at the same time and it was all done in bits and pieces is exactly what it sounds like. Some bands can pull that off, not many, and of course more electonic music can and it sounds good because of it. But older live albums like SS and TC just have a much more "natural" feel to them.