You’ve probably heard music boomers talk about how today’s music isn’t as “raw” as it used to be or how today’s music is “overproduced” or too “polished” or just “not real.” This is just another one of their complaints about how much they don’t like modern music.

(Matthew Keefe / Flickr)

This is what people use to attack pop music. They do have a point where most of it can be programmed except vocals, and even then they will bring up autotune as part of vocal production. However, the point of pop music isn’t for people to obsess over overproduction, but rather to just have a catchy tune out there. When it comes to the vocals, people do cross a line when autotune comes to play. Autotune is on all modern music, whether you want to admit it or not. But once it takes away from the performance and sounds robotic, that’s when people have problems. For instruments, people like to mention how “no one plays real instruments these days.” Pop artists were most likely to never be guitar shredders, keyboard rippers, or anything of the sort. They just want to have a voice out there or want to be famous. There’s no need to learn how to play a “real instrument” if you can make a popular song.

(Dejan Krsmanovic / Flickr)

Rock and metal are also  “victims” of “overproduction.” People like to say that rock isn’t what it used to be, they all need tracks now, they can’t play their instruments or sing, they all use the same presets and samples, everything is played to a click and other things that modern production has. There is no such thing as satisfying the boomers in this situation if this is what all of it had these days. Honestly, having these modern production aspects isn’t bad. Megadeth’s “Peace Sells…But Who’s Buying?” drum sound is notable among fans for being powerful. That sound was accomplished by augmenting the real drum sound with samples, using techniques such as white noise or enhancing the ring of a snare drum. People like to still trash talk samples without knowing that they were used on classic albums. Even stuff like virtual amps is becoming common practice in modern rock and metal production. Considering the cost of actual studio spaces these days compared to buying virtual amps and cabinets, who wouldn’t want to just have it available on your computer? Besides, the average listener is not going to notice a difference anyways. As long as it sounds good, then it’s okay. This can even apply to stuff like orchestras. Who is actually getting full orchestras these days for the majority of their music? Sure, if you have the budget go for it but if you’re not a big artist, there’s no way you’re going to be able to afford the time for an orchestra. Besides, virtual orchestras are getting convincingly good these days. I was listening to the album “At The Heart of Wintervale” by Twilight Force last month and I couldn’t tell if there was a real orchestra or not. I actually had to check the credits to see if they hired The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra like every other metal band and lo and behold, there wasn’t a single orchestra credited. Another example of an album with intense production is “Time I” by Wintersun. Each song possibly had 200 tracks which is an extreme amount of layers for any song out there. Without studio magic, Jari’s vision wouldn’t have been possible. People still like to bring up how artists should only record what they can play live. I get why they keep putting this onto live shows, but recorded music? The lack of any limitations in the studio should give the artist freedom to do whatever they want. Do they want a full orchestra? They can do that. Do they want more drum sounds than the number of limbs the percussionists have? Go ahead. The artist wants to have a lot of ambient synths and special effects? They can do that. Why limit the artists to a space where they don’t have to be confined by what is possible by themselves?

People like to talk about how much editing has made music “too perfect.” and has taken away feel. But why wouldn’t you want the version that’s made to be immortalized to be as perfect as possible? Why let imperfections that you genuinely don’t like taint the way you see the music? If someone wants to edit that out, they should be able to. Or if an instrumentalist makes a small mistake, they should be able to punch in that one detail. It can be annoying once it starts taking away from the performance rather than fixing it. Autotune is the big one here. There’s a right way to use autotune, and a wrong way to use autotune. The right way to use autotune is it’s almost unnoticeable in the mix or as an effect. If you need to use it to correct performance, at the very least make it sound natural. For it to sound natural, however, the singer still has to be good enough without autotune so it can work. You’ll need to run your autotune through multiple layers but not relying on one to carry the load will help a lot. If you’re just using it as an effect, go nuts, people will be able to see past it. Once autotune is used to mask how bad someone is at singing, that’s when it’s a problem. This becomes a lot more noticeable when that person sings live and they’re singing in the wrong key half the time.

Extreme amounts of production are here to stay whether you like it or not. You can either complain about how it is taking away from music and preventing artists from reaching their full vision, or you can embrace it and let artists go wild in the studio. The studio is a wonderful tool to let you get what you want out of your music that can’t always be replicated live (unless you use backing tracks which is another topic).