Music Technology Forum: Week 10 – Genre Production

This week in Music Technology Forum, we looked at some more genre’s and how they are produced. We dived into the world of grunge music, aswell as some Punk and music from all around England.

Grunge:
Grunge can be described as raw, unpolished music. Grunge surprisingly existed in Adelaide, with the most well know grunge label – Greasy Pop Records. The idea of grunge music is to add mistakes into the recording so it sounds ‘real’, or as if you are watching them live. As grunge music progressed, it became more polished from record labels; less mistakes were added into recordings.

Nirvana:
Nirvana were recorded in a weekend for $6:00. By listening to the finish product, it was under produced. In later recordings, their music could be described as stylised grunge. They purposely added ,istakes.

Mudhoney:
Used out of tune guitars for effect. Sounded weak.

Sound Garden:
Sounds like grunge meets metal. More bottom end; sounds fuller; vocals a lot cleaner; they used distorted vocals. As they progressed you heard less mistakes.

Wolfmother:
Wolfmother has 2 versions of their song ‘Mother’. The first version was more grungey. Slow drums, unclear vocals, sounded murky. The second version showed clear, bright drums, quicker tempo, louder and a lot more compressed.

Punk:
Punk is a hard genre to describe. It consists of catchy guitar chords along with catchy drums.

Sex Pistols:
Low production, catchy guitars and catchy drums. I noticed that all of songs played by Sex Pistols sounded the same.

Greenday:
Later Punk – Catchy songs, produced with high fidelity. The abrasive midrange feels like the sound is forced in your face.


England:


Bristol:
Portishead: Lots of bass. Clicks. Freaky sounding vocals.
Massive Attack: Dark sounding. Haunting vocals. Lots of bottom end. They match density and intensity between different sound samples. Loops of drums. Odd drum fills. Added layers like Prodigy

Manchester:
The Stone Roses: Lots of layers. Airy quality. Can detect English accent.

South Central England:
Radiohead: Slightly left of field sounding guitars. Fidelity changes between songs

South West England:
Muse: Almost Emo vocals. Very compressed. Over compression on cymbols.

Liverpool:
The Beatles: Reverse guitar solo. Reverb vocal effect.



References:
Steve Fieldhouse - Adelaide University (2007)