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what are some songs/tracks/albums with really good production quality?


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That's really a broad question. You might get 95% answers on genres that you're not remotely interested in. I might quote Joni Mitchell's Hejira but you might not even have been born when this was made, let alone have a taste for her music. And what is good production. Yeah, what actually *is* good production ? One saying Trevor Horn has done phenomenal stuff in the 80-90s will make someone else reach for the puke bowl, so that's highly subjective too. What if that production has stood the test of time ? While this seems to have a point, it rules out everything that is not designed to stand the test of time. What if the result is excellent but souls have been crushed in the process ? Also, is production considered good if it truthfully transports the initial idea or is it good if it takes that idea and transforms it into something much better ? And what is 'better' ?

 

I think you need to sharpen your question a fair bit.

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indeed, personally i enjoy many different genres so I welcome all kinds of recommendations, but surfing though the net, I found many of the works that people consider to have good production quality, are recorded decades ago, and that confuses me, I mean, technology has advanced so so much, paving the road for new ways to create music, and new genres of music, so why would people think a song with a few acoustic instrumental tracks and vocal from the 70s, better, production wise, than a 21st century song, say, justin timberlake's mirrors
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To me, "production quality" is not a measure of the technology that was used to assemble the recording, but the sound of the assembled recording itself. The instruments are recorded cleanly and sound proper; they "sit well" in the mix against each other; the producer was "riding the faders" well as different portions of the song came and went. The full available sonic spectrum was used – necessarily as dictated by the recording and mastering and product-generation technologies of the day. And, purely subjectively, it "sounds nice to you."

 

Songs from a hundred years ago were recorded live to wax discs (or cylinders!) and listened-to through trumpets. Lots of stuff was recorded on magnetic tape (sometimes only 4 or so tracks), destructively mixed-down to a final tape (because they had no choice) "mistakes and all," and distributed on vinyl discs, cassettes, or (ick ...) 8-tracks. The 16-bit "CD" was the first to bring true-digital playback to the consumer. Today's music is engineered for MP3, satellite radio, and the Internet. Quite a bit of it is never released in "physical form." So, the technicalities of "production quality" have changed completely. But it still has to "sound nice to you."

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  • 1 month later...

Astronauts went to the moon in a craft designed in the 60’s. Haven’t been back since even with all the great modern technology we have developed since.

 

It’s not the technology used but rather, what you do with it. In the case of music, the technology just makes it somewhat easier to perform functions but the functions are pretty much the same.

 

That being said, you probably would never hear a modern track with guitars hard panned to one side and vocals hard panned to the right, something that when stereo was brand new, seemed like a great idea.

 

Perhaps rather than looking for examples of the best productions, you would benefit from exploring some of the history of the art of mixing. Start with George Martin and work forward. Also interesting is the various methods of production used for different styles/genres of music.

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Jimmy Page has done something interesting you can check out. He’s remastered several of the original zeppelin albums. This is interesting because you can compare and contrast between the two. Personally I would also recommend checking out some (real) country albums. It takes quite a bit of magic to make 27 guitars not sound like a muddy mess.

 

But what you personally mix has a lot to do with what will be useful to you. None of the above will do much good if your mixing trip hop.

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the peter white song or radiohead album?

 

Ha, sorry I dint even know there was a song called In Rainbows. Yes, I referring to the Radiohead album.

It’s about as perfect a production as I can imagine.

 

I guess my definition of production is: relating to technology in the creation of musical work. Arranging through technology, maybe. Covering all the ground from mic placement, to mixing, to drum machine sounds, and reverb on the voice. The more technology, yes, the more the project entails production. While Kind of Blue is one of the greatest albums/pieces of music of all time, it dosn’t have, in my opinion, as much production effort, as say, even a mundane, pop album that is a hit right now.

 

Although there are albums with more production than in rainbows, it just seems like RAdiohead and there team, in addition to the perfect song, seemed to fuss and labour over every technical aspect of that album.

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the peter white song or radiohead album?

 

Ha, sorry I dint even know there was a song called In Rainbows. Yes, I referring to the Radiohead album.

It’s about as perfect a production as I can imagine.

 

I guess my definition of production is: relating to technology in the creation of musical work. Arranging through technology, maybe. Covering all the ground from mic placement, to mixing, to drum machine sounds, and reverb on the voice. The more technology, yes, the more the project entails production. While Kind of Blue is one of the greatest albums/pieces of music of all time, it dosn’t have in my opinion as much production effort as say, even a mundane pop album that is a hit right now.

 

Although there are albums with more production than in rainbows, it just seems like RAdiohead and there team, in addition to the perfect song, seemed to fuss and labour over every technical aspect of that album.

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