Why Do All Songs Of Today Sound Saturated and Heavy?

[blankstare77]

It seems like all pieces of studio work are disgusting and saturated. What ever happened to sounding remotely live?

What would you say if my band could do a live album as opposed to a saturated studio piece?

[lemur821]

I'd say cool, but there's nothing stopping you from making a live-sounding studio album.

[blankstare77]

Originally Posted by lemur821

I'd say cool, but there's nothing stopping you from making a live-sounding studio album.

I think that's more what I was thinking of.

[superbassman2000]

it doesn't matter what environment you are in--if it sounds good, that its good.

and to answer your first question, I think its because today a lot of musicians do a lot of layering in their recordings--a lot of guitar players I know like to record 6-7 parts for each song, but then they never realize that after a while it just sounds too overproduced!

[Asomodai]

Because music is so much louder then it used to be, It's too over compressed and instead of having quiet and loud passages. It's just loud in general. (yes even with quiet acoustic places in songs, its still pretty loud)

Also Scooped guitars does not help, It's like people dont know how to use mids at all nowadays.

[afinalfantasy]

Originally Posted by Asomodai

Because music is so much louder then it used to be, It's too over compressed and instead of having quiet and loud passages. It's just loud in general. (yes even with quiet acoustic places in songs, its still pretty loud)

Also Scooped guitars does not help, It's like people dont know how to use mids at all nowadays.

Basically this

Plus people overproduce tracks. What happened to just having one or two tracks of guitar, bass, etc?

[Rob Lewis]

The fact that you can sit at home with almost limitless multitracks available for what is now, effectively, peanuts, doesn't help. People lose the ear for dynamics.

[burk48237]

I think it's because guitar players don't know how to play bare chords anymore. So they crank the Marshall and play a bunch of open chords with half their strings ringing. Listen to the great rhythm guitar players like Steve Cropper or Ty Tabor. They play lots of three note chords, lots of muted picking in two very different styles of music. They know theirs more to rhythm guitar then just sophomoric strumming of open chords. Rhythm guitar is a lost art.

[Llama's Rage]

st. anger


nuff said ;P

[chaosMK]

I dig it when an album comes out that isnt ridiculously studio sounding. Gojira's new album has a nice slightly more raw sound to it.

You can get into local bands if you want to hear stuff that sounds crappier sonically.

Basically people want a sound that will help them sell. They dont want their song to sound less loud than the next on the radio, so they use compression etc to saturate it.

[nysbob]

Originally Posted by burk48237

Rhythm guitar is a lost art.

Not lost, but certainly overshadowed. I'm not a big fan of modern radio production..."let's compress the living crap out of it, then when it's broadcast they'll compress it just a little more.."

[Baryonyx]

Originally Posted by blankstare77

It seems like all pieces of studio work are disgusting and saturated. What ever happened to sounding remotely live?

What would you say if my band could do a live album as opposed to a saturated studio piece?

I dunno about all records...though I do think that Level 42's "Retroglide" was a tad over-compressed in places.

[blankstare77]

What is "compressed"?

[Benjamin Strange]

Oh man....

I have friends who are VERY high level engineers for BIG famous people, like NIN, Puffy, Mariah Carey, etc. They lament the days when they were actually allowed to do their jobs - now their jobs are dictated to them by the record companies. Record companies want to keep repeating past successes, so they try to make every band sound exactly the same. The best way to do this is the over-produce the hell out of them.

All these songs sound the same because they are using stock sounds (Reason), stock compression settings, and pumping the faders as high as they will go in order to get "everything sounding louder than everything else". It's terrible production, and it ruins alot of what could have been decent songs (John Mayer, anyone?). Record companies have put so much pressure on producers and engineers to make a hit that alot of them are quitting the biz completely. I know one that quit and went to work in tech support at TC Electronic, and another that felt delivering pizzas was a better line of work!

Big record labels = death to art.

[elpelotero]

and there you have it folks

[phxlbrmpf]

Am I the only one who thinks they do this so it's easier to listen to a random collection of mp3s on your PC without having to adjust the volume levels for specific songs?

I actually like the in-your-face production of today for some heavy rock songs but it's true that at some point it all starts sounding very same-ish, i.e. the heavy, bassy distorted guitar sound everyone likes to use at the moment.

[meev991]

time to revive the old dinosaur mixers, and make more organic sounding recordings.

[blankstare77]

Hmm...maybe I might want to be a recording engineer and try to become a producer. I would love to try to change the industry at least a little and provide the performers with the resources to truly express themselves.

Or maybe I'll try to be the performer that defies the industry. Either way, music is going down the tubes with all of these MANUFACTURED sounds.

[blankstare77]

Originally Posted by meev991

time to revive the old dinosaur mixers, and make more organic sounding recordings.

THAT'S IT! I'll call it "Organic Records". Yeahhhhh .

[meev991]

Originally Posted by blankstare77

THAT'S IT! I'll call it "Organic Records". Yeahhhhh .

lol, no no no, u need to call it "Organically Grown Carrot Records"!!!