Been doing a lot of listening, and reading album covers today, and have kind of noticed something...

Depending on who the artist is, and who the producer is, (older 60's and 70's stuff) no matter who is said to have written or composed the songs, it seems to have a very similar sound of other bands the producer or the engineer worked with...

Just a few examples, a lot of English stuff, with Alan Parsons, George Martin, The Beatles, America, John Miles...

Were there circles all these bands went through trying to make a buck, or did they play what they wanted, or did the producers really do the composing, and gave the artist credit?

I've noticed this with other bands and producers too.. but this is just a circle I seemed to have stumbled on today...

Thoughts? I know back then, it was more about the music than the money, but what do you think drove the similar sounds? I still can't get over how much America's mid 70's stuff sounded like the Beatles.. and John Miles like Alan Parson's....

Whos REALLY wrote and composed a lot of this music?

Can't believe this has gone thoughtless.. asking for opinions.. like belly buttons...

When you're listening really hard through an overly revealing set-up, you might be focusing more on the sound than the music. When I was running Cornwalls off of superfluous solid state watts I noticed some of what I think you're talking about. The music of a particular era often had a characteristic sonic signature that was probably due to the recording equipment, engineers and recording philosophy of the day. I found that my awareness of this detracted somewhat from my enjoyment of the music itself.

With some of the recent additions to your set-up and the size of your listening space; you may be experiencing something like the 'audio magnifying glass' that I was listening through. Since I've hooked up the 400, the 'soft focus' at the frequency extremes has helped considerably, tending to highlight the mids.

Of the bands you mentioned, I think there were huge difference as far as songwriting but much smaller differences in engineering. Certainly George Martin and his engineers had a huge influence on subsequent recordings.

No longer thoughtless - inny here.

I can under stand what you mean about the sonics because of the engineer and studio and all, but what I am talking about is the arrangements. They sound like the same person wrote the music, although the writing credit was given to a person other than why they sound like.. Best example in the was John Miles sounded like Alan parsons.. who produced the album, but credit for writing the music was given to John... but it was classic Alan Parsons orchestra sound..

It could be that when a sound gets hot with the public, the industry tries emulate that sound.

Here's my thoughts: The producer's role is helping the artist achieve their "vision" of what a particular performance should sound like. The engineer's role is to make sure that the combined "vision" of the artist and the producer is recorded in a way that insures a record that accurately reflects that combination. In the case of George Martin, I'm sure he had many long sessions with John & Paul describing what they wanted a particular song to sound like, and relied on him to assist them in achieving the desired end result. A good example is Ringo's drum sound on post-British Invasion recordings. To get the sound desired, towels were stuffed in Ringo's kit to get that "thupa-thup-thup" sound we all know so well. Meanwhile, Alan Parsons is seated at the knobs...soaking this all in. His experience recording was a key part of his eventual production sound. Steely Dan records would probably sound a hell of a lot different if Gary Katz hadn't been the producer and Roger Nichols at the board. Both had the ability to translate Don & Walt's vision to a recorded product...and, meanwhile, Don & Walt are soaking it all in...thus shaping the sound on their future self-produced releases. Linda Ronstadt's recordings with Nelson Riddle would've been a lot different without George Massenburg's involvement.

Then...there are those producers with an instantly recognizable "sound". Todd Rundgren and Jeff Lynne quickly come to mind. Listen to 70's Badfinger and Todd's vision for the band is quite evident...and the similarities between Todd's work with them and his production for Grand Funk show well. Todd also has the bonus of being a real talent at the board. Jeff's production work all shows a similar "signature sound". An example of a very adaptable producer might be Mutt Lange...not a lot of similarity between Def Leppard and Shania Twain, wouldn't you agree? All-in-all, the producer/engineer combo is always fascinating and a key component to great music.

Great post John.. so you would think then, the person with the credit of writing the song actually did write it, but they took a lot of ques and help from the producer/engineer of how to write the songs then...

It is pretty amazing how these people behind the scenes have helped how a band has made their music and style sound..

In the case of writer/performers, I would imagine that in most cases they arrived with essentially complete material, and the producer's role was to help "flesh out" the material. I'm sure there are instances where the producer's role may have gone beyond that, but they were satisfied to recieve production credit. Instances abound, though, of unscrupulous producers taking advantage of artists to get co-writing credit when all they did was show up at the studio...pretty common in the early days of rock n roll. Sometimes the producers input was great enought to deserve this, or credit was given by the writer as a thank you or similar. As I mentioned in my previous post...lots of bands/performances would've sounded quite different with someone else in the producer's role. Imagine the Stones without Jimmy Miller (or early on without Andrew Loog Oldham)...Doobies without Ted Templeman...it's a lonnnng list for sure.

Very good point.. especially the Doobies...