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].

The Progression of Punk Throughout the Years

The Progression of Punk Throughout the Years

The Sex Pistols During the 70's

Punk rock as a genre originated in the mid 70's in England and America. Inspired by 60's garage rock, bands around this time started to create very simplistic guitar riffs and bass lines with fast tempos, driving drumbeats and politically motivated lyrics. In England, bands such as the Sex Pistols, the Clash and the Damned were the originators for the huge punk scene in the UK at that time and became household names in punk music after being heavily influenced by American bands such as Television and the Ramones, who themselves had created their own tiny punk scene in New York at that time.

Black Flag During the Early 80's

Despite punk's huge success in the UK, it had still failed to take off in America, remaining very much in the underground and centralised to New York. During the late 70's, bands such as Black Flag from California would create an even faster, more hard-hitting and intense style of punk, therein creating the genre known as hardcore punk. Hardcore punk began spreading to many different cities, with the scenes in Washington, Boston, and New York being the most prominent. It was in these cities where bands such as Bad Brains, Dead Kennedys and Minor Threat who went on to be hugely influential in the hardcore punk genre.



Whilst these bands focused on extremity and power in their music, other bands took the opposite

Joy Division During the Early 80's

direction with punk music, adopting the DIY attitude of punk bands and incorporated it with more electronic and more mainstream music. This genre was known as new wave and initially came to form when record labels would label punk bands as 'new wave' to avoid the stigma attached to punk music. Despite starting as a simple rebranding of punk, new wave went off to form it's own unique and very varied sound. Unlike most other genres at the time, new wave allowed for a lot of experimentation and unconventional techniques, making the term new wave somewhat ambiguous due to the fact that the sound was so varied and bands shared few similarities in their music. Examples of new wave bands would be Joy Division, Talking Heads, the Police, and Blondie.

Green Day During the Mid 90's

It wasn't until the late 80's when punk would begin to reach mainstream success in America. This was achieved by blending traditional simplistic punk with melodies commonly found in pop music as well
as a very clean vocal style. This style of punk would become known as pop punk and originated in California during the late 80's with bands such as Rancid, The Offspring and Green Day. It was until 1994 however, when Green Day released their third album, Dookie, that pop punk would achieve worldwide success. The Offspring would have similar success the same year, though not on the same scale. The genre exploded in popularity yet again, with the release of Blink-182's 'Enema of the State', creating a surplus of pop punk bands during the early 00's to mid 00's. Bands such as New Found Glory, Good Charlotte, Sum 41, and Simple Plan would achieve massive success in America during this time. Following these bands, pop punk would radically change its sound during the mid 00's, focusing much more on the pop element of the music, with an even cleaner style of production and more focus on the melodic content of the genre. Bands that fall into this category would be Fallout Boy, Panic! at the Disco, My Chemical Romance and Paramore.

The Strokes in 2002

During the early 2000's, some bands sought to revive the sound of classic punk rock from the 70's with simplistic song writing and, in comparison with pop punk, much less produced style of production. Some notable names in this movement would be the Strokes, the White Stripes, and the Vines. These bands would blend the original sound of punk with elements of blues and garage from the same time. These bands would spawn new bands in mainstream rock, such as the Killers, Artic Monkeys and the Kaiser Chiefs.

Trash Talk in 2017

Hardcore punk has received a small revival in recent years, with bands such as Trash Talk, and Cerebral Ballzy gaining reasonable success online. These bands have been emulating the fast, chaotic sound of 80's hardcore punk with a modern, heavier production style. There has also been a small revival of pop punk in recent years with bands such as Trash Boat and Fidlar.



After hardcore punk and new wave had fully developed during the late 70's and early 80's, punk would spawn a multitude of genres as it progressed through the 80's and 90's. These genres include alternative rock, emo, grunge, post-hardcore, skate punk, street punk, sludge metal and thrash metal.

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Encyclopedia Britannica. 2018. Punk | music | Britannica.com. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.britannica.com/art/punk. [Accessed 08 May 2018].