With the dawn of digital recording has come the attachment of overproduction. Digital recording opens the doors to multiple takes, affordable recording, new creative licenses, and thoughtful interplay between digital and analog sounds. However, it has also enabled both artists and producers to edit away imperfections that make music more human.
Here at Hilltop, we work very hard to accurately capture the essence of each artist. One of the ways we do this is by making minimal edits, while another is to be prudent in the amount of alterations in the mix. This is especially important when working with singer songwriters, jazz musicians, folk bands, and instrumentalists.
Editing can often be used to fix mistakes and polish material that isn’t up to snuff. But overproduction has the quality of deadening music that could be full of soul and destroying the integrity of the original recording. This can be seen most evidently and perhaps most egregiously with the advent of autotune, in which the mistakes that the singer or vocalist made are edited by an algorithmic program. However, it should be noted that autotune can also be used creatively and artistically.
Not all production is bad, and overproduction should be differentiated from thoughtful and necessary production. For instance, drum rhythms need to be accurate. A beat needs to land in its intended space and the rhythm of the song needs to be consistent. But aligning all drum beats to match the exact location in a song can suck the life out of the song; a middle ground must be established. The same can be seen with auto tune in the vein of its usefulness in correcting certain lines or being used in an artistic manner.
Opinions with overproduction vary, but our personal philosophy is that when production begins to subtract from the identity of the client, we’re most likely getting diminishing returns. This process ensures that our mixes do not sound overly robotic and helps us preserve the sonic fingerprint of each client.
By Westin Gillis
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