Production values — the basic sound of a song that happens after writing it and while recording it — change from year to year. It’s how we know the age of a song when we hear it. It’s not usually the melody or lyrics that tell us how old a song is. It’s production — the instrumental sound — that tells us.
Because I did most of my musical growing up in the 70s, the thing I sometimes find hardest to connect to in today’s music is the basic sound of it. Sound synthesis has been around for a long time in the world of pop music, but what it all sounds like in the end product differs from decade to decade. Today’s sounds work on me, in a way, as if the language of music has changed to the point where I feel as though I’m listening to a new language.
Do you ever notice that if you check out any “Best Songs Ever” or “Best Songwriters Ever” lists, that the ones that usually sit near the top of that list are almost always from a couple of generations ago? Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Joni Mitchell, Woody Guthrie… these are the ones you’ll typically find near the top.
Why is that?
Well, one reason might be that the list was compiled by someone old! But I think the main reason that we still place these songwriters at or near the top of best-of lists is that once you strip away any production from most of their songs, their music doesn’t just survive — it thrives.
Sometimes when you hear a newly released tune, you find yourself wondering, “What survives of this song once the production is stripped away?” Sure, with the exception of hip-hop, you can take any song and reduce it to melody and chords, but are you left with something that can grab attention for itself?
It’s an important part of what I might call artistic songwriting, and certainly one that I write a lot about, that with every production element you strip away from your song, it should still work. And not only work but do quite nicely.
And it winds up being an important experiment for any song you write, no matter what genre you call your own, to sing bare-bones editions of your song, and see how much of it you can strip away while still having a song worth listening to.
Written by Gary Ewer. Follow Gary on Twitter
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