What's wrong with "overproduced"?

That's a word that I don't get. I'm not one to ignore a stripped-down acoustic song, but I have preference for more lavish songs.

I have no problem with heavy production as such, but it's something like cooking a hugely complicated dish with a ton of ingredients: the more of them you have, the greater the chance of something going wrong, ingredients getting overpowered, or flavors clashing. I happen to enjoy plenty of lavishly produced songs, but it's like the cooking simile—if that kind of production isn't done perfectly, the result can be uniquely icky.

On the other hand, "overproduced" can also be a lazy catch-all epithet from the sort of listeners who are committed to the Three Chords and the Truth school of music, at the expense of all others. But as with anyone else of parochial tastes, their thoughts can be safely & profitably ignored.

I feel like "overproduced" is a very situational term. If you're putting a lot of stuff in the pot but trying to make sure it all coalesces well, that's fine. If you're just piling stuff on without regard for whether or not the song actually justifies it or you're just thinking more stuff automatically makes the track better, that's where the issues come into play.

and Exactly this. Like everything else (especially regarding music), "overproduced" is a very subjective term. I mean, what does it even mean, exactly?

And that was a rhetorical question, FYI. But you guys knew that. The point is that the term means different things depending on the listener and the genre of the music in question, and what might be overproduced for, say, a Punk Rock song would be perfectly produced for a Progressive Rock song, for example...

As Jhimmibhob said, it's mostly a concern for those with narrowly limited tastes, and such people can be safely ignored (usually!).

One of the best metal albums I have heard is "Absolute Design" by Engel... and that is hyperproduced. Absoloutely crisp and crystal clear, and sounds utterly clinical and precise... it's all the better for it.

Some songs not only throw everything on, but they also compress it so much that the instruments become indiscernible. The re-recording that Kelly Clarkson did of "Because of You" with Reba McEntire is a good example. The guitars are turned up to 11 and the string section blares, and it's just a big mushy mess. I can't even make out Reba on the verses because the production drowns her out so much.

Similarly, a lot of Rascal Flatts ballads got so over-the top that Gary LeVox had to oversing like crazy just to be heard. And given that he's already an ultra-nasal tenor (best comparison I can think of — imagine Adam Levine if he sucked down a ton of helium and were constantly getting kicked in the 'nads) who warbles all over every damn song. His voice got to be completely nails on a chalkboard on some songs.

Frank Liddell, who produces Miranda Lambert, is also fond of taking a screaming guitar solo and compressing the hell out of it so it just sounds like an atonal mess. "Over You" is a good example.

If you don't like overproduced, it's wrong. Besides, overproducing does not make the sound more natural. It actually destroys the natural feel.

What's considered "Overproduced" differs depending on who you ask, though. Some people consider anything that makes use of any degree of stereo separation or that has an overall clear sound to be overproduced. For some, anything that sounds like it was recorded on something more complex than a two-track (or a cassette recorder) is too "polished"...

On the other hand, the loudness war and excessive compression are definitely bad things. No matter which genre you're talking about. Music should be loud, but not to the point of audibly clipping, and there should be clear differences between the loud and quiet parts, if they exist. All in my opinion as a guy who took a sound engineering course.

Compression has its uses (trust me, it really does), but it's used way too heavily on many records- often, it seems like they basically take the whole track and run it through massive, nasty compression at the mastering stage until the whole thing's left flat, squashed, tinny and clipped. Which is pretty much what a lot of the people who pass for mastering engineers do these days...

I would say that something becomes overproduced when the post-production, mixing and tweaking overwhelm the actual musical content in a way that sabotages the emotion or effect that the musician and producer were seemingly going for. This varies from band to band, artist to artist; some bands sound better bombastically produced, while others are at their best stripped to the bone.

I think that it is easier to overproduce music that already does not have a lot of personality, however: A fairly bland song corrected to the point of roboticisation is far less tolerable on average than a rather rangy, strange piece of music polished and smoothed at the edges.

I guess a text book example of an overproduced song would be the Bruce Dickinson studio version of Iron Maiden's Prowler. I know Steve Harris hated the production on the debut album but the rough production suited perfectly its songs. The Bruce Dickinson version probably had more takes and supervision than the original version but in this case it sounds too even and clean.

To me when I think of overproduced I think of songs that have so much stuff going on that it is hard to tell each individual piece apart. Also I think of the loudness wars where they are trying to make their songs as loud as possible that it actually is a detriment to the song.

Totally agreed that the answer to "How much production is too much" is always, always dependent on context. To illustrate, a very specific example:

In 2008, Starflyer 59 released two things: a box set named Ghosts of the Future and an album named Dial M. The box set had twenty demo-quality songs. The album had ten of those same songs, just re-recorded with slicker production, and in some cases, very different arrangements. Compare the differences between two particular songs:

• "Minor Keys": Demo. Final version.
• "Who Said It's Easy": Demo. Final version.

For both songs, the same changes were made when re-recording for Dial M. The distorted electric guitars were toned down or dropped entirely; acoustic guitars and keyboards were added; the tempo was sped up (at least in the first half). Yet the effect was completely different. For "Minor Keys", the demo version was darn near perfect, so the super-polished album version sounded weak by comparison. On the other hand, "Who Said It's Easy" had a melody that just wasn't heavy enough to fit the rougher production on the demo version, so the slicker album version worked a lot better.

edited 11th Apr '14 5:27:30 PM by MetaFour

Agreed, and this point is very well proven to boot. Incidentally, Starflyer are a great band...