Producer Spotlight: Kurt Ballou
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Producer Spotlight: Kurt Ballou An analysis of the chosen producer or production style. This will include a discussion of the historical/musical/cultural/technological context of the production style, as evidenced in existing literature; at least three case studies that identify the musical/sonic/aesthetic concerns of specific recorded works through a combination of original analysis/scholarship and reference to existing literature; and a discussion of your findings. Table of Contents Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 3 Literature Review.......................................................................................................................... 3 Methodology ................................................................................................................................ 5 Case Studies .................................................................................................................................. 6 Interview – Kurt Ballou ................................................................................................................. 9 Conclusions ................................................................................................................................... 9 Appendix A – Timelines............................................................................................................... 12 Appendix B.................................................................................................................................. 16 Kurt Ballou Interview ............................................................................................................... 16 Appendix C – Frequency Analysis ................................................................................................ 18 References .................................................................................................................................. 19 Introduction When looking at the progression of the music industry from in current practice and the journeys of the individual parts that make its sum, it is evident that there is no singular archetype that describes or typifies the process of creating, producing, marketing, selling or playing music. This line of thinking is also applicable to the individual roles within the music industry and the beings that occupy them. This paper will focus on one particular role: that of the record producer, and using renowned underground musician, engineer and producer Kurt Ballou as a primary centre, will explore and discuss the way in which his production style achieves a particular sonic result. This will comprise a retrospective analysis of existing literature as well as an invasive study to identify his operational philosophy as a record producer, a case-study of previous production work across different records and genresand an accompanying discussion of musical and aesthetic concerns with regard to this philosophy.In particular, a focus will be placed on his role of producer as either sonic architect, musical documentarian or spiritual conduit, and questions posed as to how his production style has developed and whether or not that has imparted a sonic signature on his body of work. Literature Review What’s Been Said As guitarist for hardcore punk pioneers Converge, owner/operator of Godcity Studios in Salem, Massachusetts and professional studio engineer and record producer in his own right, Kurt has in recent years attracted much interest from the greater media collective regarding his creative output in each discipline. The majority of that interesthas been realised and disseminated through the internet, manifest primarily as one on one print interviewsthrough online publicationsoras video interviews, howeverby analysing the body of information as a whole a clear picture of his production style and musical philosophy as a record producer can be gained. As a music industry identity, Kurt was, and arguably still is, publically recognisable first and foremost for his musical output as a musician, confined to the recorded works of hardcore band Converge. Now more than twenty years deep, it is no surprise that the thirty-eight year old is subject to more interest regarding his time in the band thanhis tenure as a record producer and studio engineer. Online publications punknews.org, Slug Magazine, gearnerd.info, musicradar.com and pitchfork.com have all published interviews with Kurt within the last 5 years that centre around his time in the band, posing questions such as “How many different tunings do you use?” (Freyer, 2009.), “what made you want to learn the guitar?” (Gardner, 2010, p.1) and “how long have you been playing?” (Six questions with Kurt Ballou (Converge),2011). Understandably, given the target audience that each of these publications is written for, these are fairly expected questions that would provide the kinds of answers that the target audience would come to read. While not always giving express reference to Kurt’s work as a record producer, there are instances throughout such interviews however in which details of his musical upbringing and previous experiences with different genres of music are revealed, which allows a perception of his approach to musicality and how and why it formed to be developed. During an interview with SLUG magazine published in 2009, and during the same year in an interview with Punknews.org, Kurt responded to a question regarding his training as a musician by explaining his musical upbringing as involving time spent learning and playing “saxophone in school band... I played baritone sax (sic), I played a little bassoon, I played bass clarinet, I had a little bit of piano as a kid.” (Freyer, 2009.) He also continued to explain that he had theory classes and was accepted into the Hartt School of Music (Freyer, 2009.) but ended up going into Aerospace Engineering. In a separate interview published on deafsparrow.com he was quoted as saying “Being a producer helps me be a better musician. Playing drums and piano make me a better guitarist. Playing country helps me play punk better. Being an engineer makes me a better drummer,” (Kurt Ballou: The producer behind some of the most forward sounding hardcore releases, n.d.) which indicates that not only does he feel that his work as a producer assists his musicianship but that, although not expressly stated, the inverse is also true. It stands to reason that as a better musician who can make use of a larger “musical vocabulary” (Kurt Ballou: The producer behind some of the most forward sounding hardcore releases, n.d.), as a record producer, depending upon the style and philosophy that person follows, a person’s ear for commercially successful music and understanding for how to produce it would improve.This assumption was a gap identified in the existing literature that was used to form part of the question to be posed and explored later in this paper. Of the existing literature that didn’t focus on Kurt’s career as a musician, there were two sources that specifically dealt with his career as a producer and one source that focussed on his technical career as a recording engineer. Because it did not contribute any information that was worth considering as useful for the purposes of the research, the video interview that dealt with Kurt’s engineering career was ignored. The aforementioned interview hosted at deafsparrow.com and a more recent video interview conducted by Scion AV wereboth quite comprehensive and informative regarding Kurt’s production history and the way in which he approaches the role of studio producer. It was interesting to note that during both interviews, Kurt mentioned that his approach is scaled on how much time he has available in the studio with the band, how complete the songs are when the band enters the studio and how receptive they are to new ideas (Kurt Ballou: The producer behind some of the most forward sounding hardcore releases, n.d.).This approach suggests that with any particular studio session, his production style can shift from documentarian to architect depending on the project; an example ofthe former can be seen in studio footage posted by Meek is Murder (Meek is murder god city algorithms studio report 1, 2011) and the latter can be seen in studio footage posted by Kvelertak (Kvelertak I USA del 1, 2010). This particular aspect of his production style was used as a topic for further research which will be discussed later in the paper. What’s not been said Fortunately, there have already been two identifiable in-depth sources that explore Kurt Ballou’s recording and production technique. What neither explicitly touches on, which will form part of the research question, is Kurt’s history in musical training and how that specifically contributes to his production style. The other part of the research question, as will be explored through the three case studies that follow and as Kurt himself mentioned in the video interview with Scion AV, is the notion that he doesn’t have (or tries not to have) a specific sound that resonates through his production catalogue. Methodology In order to explore these topics further, two different approaches have been utilised in the research: the first is three case studies. Because of the range and diversity of bands that fall under his production credits, and in order to identify the existence or absence of a particular ‘sound’ pertaining to Kurt’s catalogue