MTF Week 9

In MTF this week we looked at genre based productions and talked about the trademark sounds and features which specifies a band to their particular genre. Steve began the lesson by playing us early American funk samples from artists such as The Meters, James Brown and Funkadelic then we compared it to what was going on in the UK funk scene at the time with artists Galliano, The Brand New Heavies and Corduroy. The difference in tonal quality was quite amazing I thought, the American funk sound is quite bright and wet whereas the English had a darker mellow vibe.

We then began looking at Reggae and what it is / takes to get that authentic Rastafarian sound heard all the time in records by the greats Bob Marley and Gregory Issacs. The common thing I noticed before Steve even mentioned it was the feedback mixed in with delay that was layered on the snare drum and other percussion instruments to give it that effect that the sound never ends echoing out into the sky.

Blues and roots was next up which I took particular interest in and we began once again looking at its birth with the early American artists such as Robert Johnson, Willie Dixon, Muddy waters and John Lee Hooker. Blues is a form of music that is purely driven by soul and the thing that makes a great blues artist is the ability to bleed that feeling onto their recordings. The later day blues players such as Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Healey and Stevie Ray Vaughan in my opinion managed to carry that soul and keep the blues alive. Artists these days such as the versatile Ben Harper and Australian guitarist/songwriter John Butler continue the blues tradition by adding that feeling back into their recordings.

Jazz a close relative to Blues featured Steve playing early American recordings by Bix Belderbecke, Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Charles Mingus to name a few. Steve noted the large volume and spacing in Jazz when a player has a solo making the instrumentalist the obvious feature towering in volume over the rest of the band.

And last but not least was the much loved by the class Metal and Hard Rock where “size does matter”. Steve played clips from artists such as Thin Lizzy, Metallica and Megadeath and pointed out the use of compression and how the producer has squeezed the sound down so that these monstrous solos are still audible in the overall end mix.

References:

2007, 10th of May - Adelaide Uni, Steve Fieldhouse "Genre Based Productions"