Here is another little “lecture” thing from my suddenly-online music tech class.
Production and Mixing “Schools”
What, exactly does a Producer do?
When I was young and dumb, I had a bad attitude about most popular music.1 Now, I appreciate some of that stuff I hated because I understand musical/record production better. Record production really is an art form of its own, sometimes completely disconnected from the music itself.
When I was young and dumb, I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the names listed in the liner notes of my favorite albums. I certainly saw those names, but I didn’t really know what their contributions meant. In fact, I distinctly remember seeing that Elvis Costello produced The Specials’ first album (The Specials), but I had no idea what this meant. I only remember this because I knew that Elvis Costello was kind of a big deal, so seeing his name as the producer of this quirky album caught my eye.
I do remember seeing one name several times. His name kept showing up in the “Produced by” slot on some of my favorite albums. This Brian Eno guy kept showing up on my favorite Devo, Talking Heads, David Bowie, and U2 albums. Still, I didn’t think that much about it until several years later when I saw one of his albums in a record store. I saw this album, Music for Airports by Brian Eno. “Huh. I didn’t know that guy made his own music.” methought to meself. I bought it and was pretty much obsessed with the album for a few years. Nowadays, I kind of halfway worship Brian Eno.
Brian Eno has a very recognizable production style. His productions tend to sound either extra-reverberant, almost drowning in echoes (think The Unforgettable Fire by U2), or really tight, almost jarringly choppy (think Remain in Light by Talking Heads).
Mixing/Production “Style”
All of this is my long way of saying that different people approach the task of musical “production” very differently, some of them in very individualized ways. And, in many cases, knowing exactly what a particular producer may have contributed to a project can be hard to figure out. I have found, though, the more I immerse myself inside a given producer’s work, I am able to trace threads of similarity across their projects; this is likely the producer I am hearing (rather than the songwriter, singer, etc.).
Mixing/Producing “Schools”
All of that being said, some folks like to divide “post-production” into a couple of loose “schools of thought.”2 Again, using Bobby Owsinski’s definitions as a starting point, we can divide production/mixing styles into roughly four categories. Not-at-all coincidentally, these “production schools” are named after the four capitols of mainstream popular music:
Los Angeles
New York
London
Nashville
First, these “schools” aren’t really schools at all, but are more like approaches to music production/mixing. The reason they are named after these places stems from the folks who were working in these towns in the earlier days of music production and the way they worked. These folks then taught others around them, thus kind of perpetuating a specific approach in the region. In some ways, the connections to these places are gone, now, but the ideas around the “school” give us a good place to start a discussion.
Los Angeles
Of these four schools, the Los Angeles school is perhaps the most straightforward. In order to get an idea of what this style is like, try to imagine what music coming out of L.A. in the late–60s through mid–70s sounded like. Think of bands like CSN(Y), Eagles, The Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan, and (mid–70s) Fleetwood Mac.
While these bands are pretty diverse, stylistically, they all share a similar “sound world.”3 Essentially, while CSNY is a country-ish rock band and Steely Dan is a rock-ish jazz band, both groups sound very clean. When I listen to CSNY, I don’t hear very many effects or other shenanigans; I hear crystal clear guitars and immaculately un-touched (or, un-touched sounding) voices along with kind of wimpy-sounding drums and bass. The CSNY song “Carry On” (from Déjà Vu, 1970) is a perfect example of this. Ditto for “Listen to the Music” by The Doobie Brothers (from Toulouse Street, 1972).
New York
I like the way Bobby Owsinski describes the New York style. He says it is “very punchy and aggressive, just like New Yorkers.” The New York style of mixing and production tends to use a lot of compression, resulting in a heavy, “in your face” feeling (again, kind of like New Yorkers). The New York producers almost all follow a template something like this:
send the drums (sometimes: bass) through a bus as a group
compress the grouped drums
feed the compressed drums back into the mix
sometimes: compress the “remixed” drums, bass again on the returning channel
This New York compression trick can then be accentuated by boosting (sometimes by a lot) both the low and high frequencies on the compressed drums/bass.
The best example of this is on the Living Colour song “Cult Of Personality” (from Vivid, 1988). The drums are enormous, punching you in the face every few seconds. Another example is “A Girl Like You” by The Smithereens (from 11, 1989).
London
London’s stereotypical sound is one with lots of effects. The New York school relies a lot on compression, while London uses all of the effects. London School productions typically have lots of layers, most of them with a little extra reverb or echo to make everything “swim” a little bit. Arrangement and orchestration are always “part of the mix,” but with the London School, this is extra relevant. In a way, the L.A. studios focused on getting the band that showed up to sound as “real” as possible; New York, takes the band that showed up and makes it sound “big;” London takes the band that showed up and says, “What colors can we add to this?”
The “textbook” example of a London School production is “Owner Of A Lonely Heart” by Yes (from 90125, 1983). Another good one is The Police’s “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” (from Ghost In The Machine, 1981).
Nashville
The Nashville style is a bit trickier to pin down. In many ways, it is very similar to the L.A. style, with most of the instruments sounding very “open” and “natural.” Typically, Nashville recordings feature a lot of acoustic instruments, so throwing tons of effects or compression at them doesn’t make a ton of sense. The one thing that makes Nashville sound a little different from Los Angeles is how over-the-top the vocals tend to be. There are some Nashville records where the voice is very, very present, with the accompanying instruments falling pretty far “backward.”
A good example of this is Emmylou Harris’s song “Boulder to Birmingham” (from Pieces of the Sky, 1975). Notice how loud Emmylou’s voice is compared to the band “behind” her.
So … ?
All of this is just a way to encourage you to think about the music you like and what its priorities are from a production and/or mixing standpoint.
Some ideas:
Think of your favorite albums. Do they have anything in common from a production standpoint? What are the music’s priorities and how does “the mix” support and/or diminish these?
Do you have a favorite producer? How would you describe their style?
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Ok. I still do have a pretty bad attitude about most popular music, but for demonstration purposes, let’s pretend I don’t. ↩︎
”Post-production” is a phrase that is often used to describe the stuff that happens after the music has been recorded. I think it used to imply it was postthe creative stage … but, that is very far from the truth anymore. ↩︎
I both hate and love this phrase. It doesn’t really mean anything, yet it is also super helpful. Basically, what I mean is these bands all sound kind of similar from a purely timbral standpoint. ↩︎