Punk Playing and Production Styles

Punk Playing and Production Styles

With some notable exceptions, hardcore punk has always had a very simple style of playing and production. Typical hardcore punk guitar riffs consist of a heavy use of power chords and tremolo guitar picking with the bass following the guitar riff. The drumming in hardcore punk records is usually sloppy and out of time, using very basic drumbeats or drumbeats that do not follow any specific note value. Another common drumming technique in punk is to use open hi-hats to fill out the drumbeats and make them sound much stronger. The vocals on almost all punk records are harsh, shouted vocals or powerful, projected clean vocals; no singers for this time would have been trained. This is due to the fact that the punk ethos never really focused on quality, instead focusing on productivity and just making music.

The case is also very similar for production styles in hardcore punk, these were usually bare-bones recordings with very little in the way of mastering, instead opting for a much more lo-fi, stripped down style of production. There was very few record labels for hardcore punk and those that were around were small, independent labels with very little funding, and were often run by the bands themselves. A lot of bands would simply record their tracks, usually live, give them a rough balance and then release the music. The bands would also sometimes record the instrumental live and then overdub the vocals later. The balance usually simply consisted of ensuring every element of the music was audible, with a very prominent bass. The bass itself is usually has a very dirty and full sound. The guitars tend to be extremely driven with very high gain, it's also usually high in mids and treble. I think most hardcore bands achieve the sound they do by recording the amps at high volume in order to strain the amps and give a more intense sound. Punk has always had a very DIY ethos and almost everything to do with the recording process would be done by the band themselves on their own independent record labels. Recordings were recorded using analogue multitrack tape recorders and released on tapes as well as occasionally vinyl.

The guitars or vocals are usually the focal point of the track, then followed by the drums, and then the bass. There was never any specific gear used to create the hardcore punk sound, every band just used the gear that worked for them. This tended to be somewhat cheap due to most punk bands living on an extremely tight budget. Hardcore punk records tend to be short, with songs spanning around two minutes or less and albums themselves usually in the 15-30 minute range.

Some record labels in Hardcore punk at the time were Dischord Records(Owned by Ian MacKaye of Minor Threat), SST Records(Owned by Greg Ginn of Black Flag), Alternative Tentacles(Owned by Jello Biafra of Dead Kennedys), Epitaph Records(Owned by Bret Gurewitz of Bad Religion).

Below are some examples of albums with this style of playing and production:



sonicscoop.com. 2018. No page title. [ONLINE] Available at: https://sonicscoop.com/2013/06/24/punk-rock-in-the-studio-a-dynamic-subculture-the-ramones-to-green-day-senses-fail/. [Accessed 01 May 2018].

YouTube. 2018. American Hardcore | The History of American Punk Rock - Full Documentary [2006] - YouTube. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjpMD-U-q1U. [Accessed 01 May 2018].