technology and "production"

It seems that even the small fish are swimming in technology these days. Those of us that make audio media have all kinds of computer gadgets and tools to "produce" our audio. Notice how i put "produce" in quotes. I'm not very impressed (and less so by the minute) with all of the noise made about the great importance of "production" and even "post-production" in this area. One could spend all of their time doing these things, rather than doing the thing that the person intended to do, which in my case is music.



We are told we have to make our music sound professional. By this, it is meant we are to spend hours trying to EQ, and compress, and of course make all our songs as loud as the current loudness war fad demands.



But do we really? Did Robert Johnson need "post production" or even "production" for that matter. (I suppose, in a sense, one could argue he was produced - but not by today's standards for certain.) He didn't even need overdubs, because he just made it sound like two guitars in real time. (I'm still waiting for somebody to claim a second guitarist was really present during those recording sessions, if somebody hasn't claimed that already.)



In other words, what was wrong with how they did it 60 years ago? Why do we need to conform to the latest sound fad? I still believe that when people claim to like the music of the 60s and 70s better (tjhose that do claim this), they are really talking about the production of that time period, and that means analog. Either way, the sound fad changes as the decades roll on, but there is no good reason to conform to the standard of the day. Be a non-conformist instead.