>>60371796
production is what the producer does.

Just like with music, production is an art with no solid rules.

You say "That piece of music is great" but its just your opinion. The same with production. If you say "wow this sounds amazing, more than just the chords / melody / rhythm / timbre / dynamics, this sound great for a reason beyond the musical elements." Thats good production.

When a lot of peoples opinions start to align on a single album being very well produced, you can start to give it a reputation for being well produced, depending on the taste of the people who make the claims.

some /mu/ core examples:
Well produced: Arcade Fire's Neon Bible.
Poorly Produced: NMH's ITAOTS

>>60371796
I think people mean to say it sounds like it was recorded and mixed well when they say it has 'great production'.

>>60371796
Same thing people say when a game has good graphics/sound or a movie with good-looking scenes and special effects.
You are trying to make an argument out of nothing.

>>60371955
Always thought Arcade Fire's production isn't very good, way too unclear and sometimes unnatural.

>>60371955
How can you say ITAOTS was poorly produced?
it's lo-fi yeah, but it's still so warm, clear and crisp but also allows for dirty distorted bits that all fits within the aesthetic of the music perfectly

>>60371955
>ITAOTS is poorly produced
Only an idiot that never made music would say that.

>>60371977
Not true, Production enhances the product. Without it seems amateur while poor production makes it look cheap or inauthentic

>>60372009
The opposite is also true, as evidenced by some posts above.

The Mountain Goats and NMH's ITAOTS don't have conventionally great production, BUT that lends them authenticity and fits in perfectly with their A E S T H E T I C. If you were to produce them perfectly with super nice guitar sounds and DX7 electric piano flourishes it wouldn't have the same appeal

I guess you could say different genres/subgenres have a certain type of production that they gravitate towards. There's still effort and taste required in producing lo-fi things, just aimed in a different direction

>>60372009
And a movie with poor cinematography is also amateurish so I don't see your point.
The rule of any kind of art is that people don't notice when you are doing things just right, pretty much any commercially available album has "good" production nowadays, but when the producer does a very expressive and unique job it's considered great.
Same with movies using unique camera angles and colors, it's easy to fuck it up but when done right it catches your attention in a good way.

>>60372046
ITAOTS has objectively great production, it has nothing to do with aesthetics. It was carefully made to sound expressive and it's clearly layered.
A badly produced album is muddy and inexpressive, just go to amateur soundcloud profiles or bandcamp to hear what actual bad production sounds like.

I usually just think of it as the recording quality + mixing. If something has good production that would mean (to me) it's sound quality compliments the style of music (in the case of something like lo-fi) and the various instruments and sounds are all at appropriate levels. Nothing too high or low. Nothing too clean or distorted.

>>60371995
>>60372004
nice butthurt. poorly produced =/= lofi
And I've probably been making music longer than you've been out of high school

>>60372067
>objectively
no such thing in production or any art.

Why would I think it has awful production if it was "Objectively great"? "Objectively Great" is your opinion, and you're just another /mu/ pleb who thinks distorted guitars are the logical conclusion of timbre.

My opinion is that ITAOTS is poorly produced. You can discard my opinion and assume I have poor taste without knowing anything about me and my knowledge of production, or you can just accept that's one opinion out there.

Some plebs think ITAOTS is the pinnacle of songwriting, produced in an "authentic" "lo fi" aesthetic. More educated people see it as an average alt rock album with mediocre to poor production and a tone deaf singer.

>>60372119
>poorly produced =/= lofi
That doesn't say anything, you can have badly produced lo-fi and well produced lo-fi.

>>60372137
Objectively as in the things I already mentioned which is expressiveness and clarity.
Vocals are not buried, highs are not hissy, bass doesn't drown the rest, if you can't identify these simple things any decent album should have then you are just not a good producer, it's not a matter of opinion and I'm not even an ITAOTSfag.

>>60372152
I guess it was 1998. Most popular music was pretty poorly produced in 1998

>>60372152
>Vocals are not buried, highs are not hissy, bass doesn't drown the rest

so it has adequate production, rather than great production. if that was your metric for great production then we have millions of albums with great production.

what actually makes it great is how the production serves the authenticity and aesthetic of the music

>>60371994
Not a huge fan of them, but the production suits their style perfectly.

What's not perfect is the mixing/mastering on their records. Sometimes the recording is a bit dodgy, with the vocals peaking like mad on certain tracks, but that's kind of their aesthetic.

All that said, I liked their debut, their second a bit more, their third was forgettable and their newest one is awful. James Murphy is a nice guy, but I just hate his music and production style.

>>60372190
>how the production serves the authenticity and aesthetic of the music
what authenticity?

Was Jeff in WW2? no.
Did Jeff know Anne Frank? no.

Its just some mediocre record from the 90s. not really sure why anyone makes a big deal out of it. The dude can't sing. Even singers in WW2 could sing.

>>60372190
I just mentioned the basic shit that shows it's not bad.
While "bad" and "good" can be easily distinguished, "great" is harder to pin down and requires a combination of several subtle techniques or something entirely unique that makes it stand out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REJ9bh7vuDE
Here's a famous scene from a movie, it sounds exactly like you would expect a conversation in a loud club to sound like and yet the dialogue is clearly understandable.
It adds a lot to the scene, it's expressive and makes it stand out.

>>60371994
Not a huge fan of them, but the production suits their style perfectly.

What's not perfect is the mixing/mastering on their records. Sometimes the recording is a bit dodgy, with the vocals peaking like mad on certain tracks, but that's kind of their aesthetic.

All that said, I liked their debut, their second a bit more, their third was forgettable and their newest one is awful. James Murphy is a nice guy, but I just hate his music and production style.

>>60372223
>talking about production
>brings up lyrical themes
/thread

I never know what people mean when they say Vampire Weekend's debut album has bad production
sounds alright to me

>>60372470
How does it feel knowing you just wasted your time and money for nothing?

>>60372046
this. Anything indie or authentic is 9 time out of ten code for low fidelity


>>60372067
>It was carefully made to sound expressive and it's clearly layered.
completely wrong. You are talking about the arrangement, not the production.

Just realized I have no idea :/

holy shit /mu/

production == how the sound is mastered/mixed

this include, but is not limited to:
eq-ing every single channel
filtering unwanted sounds
compressing the mix

It isnt that hard to understand: a well produced album sounds good because you there's no unwanted distortion, the recordings are high quality etc.

example of well produced album:
DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

example of badly produced album:
Aqualung

Producing also affects how something want to sound, for example Teo Macero with in a silent way, or Albini with many post-punk records

ITAOTS has a good production, maybe it won't be as good as DSOTM, but it achieves what it wants to achieve, and we cant really know for sure if that's the case because the producer was unskilled, or because they wanted their record to sound like this. One can UNDERSTAND that a lofi album has, to achieve the wanted sound, to be lo-fi

>>60374507
this tbqh

it's bizarre that this many people are so confused as to what production is