You’re telling her that her own opinion is “wrong?”
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I think the argument about synthesizers is interesting. The one thing i would add is that limitations do not need to be externally imposed. In my experience, artists impose their own limitations going into projects all the time, choice of media, choice of tool, choice of style, sometimes as a form of self-challenge, sometimes because they are weak in a certain area and want to push them selves to get better with it. Sometimes because they’ve been inspired by another creative work and want to play.
Right, which is actually the exact point I was trying to make. Two different takes on the same material, one of which was clearly different due to the impact of the producer.
Yeah, famously they all hated it at the time (at least on Unknown Pleasures), which is admittedly kinda shitty. Although interestingly, both Stephen Morris and Peter Hook’s biographies of the era have them begrudgingly granting that they think Hannet’s take was the right choice for the record.
Its generally accepted that it belonged to Adam Horowitz (he tells its origin story in Beastie Boys Book amongst other places) though I’ve read a few other people claim a different provenance.
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One must consider the roots of those “constraints” though. Are they self-imposed? Industry imposed? Imposed by the limits of the available physical media or available tools? Many artists working within the mainstream industry (like many artists that Rubin works with) have limits imposed on them by industry standards and the like… especially younger artists, who are considered by our youth obsessed culture to be more “creative”, who are not “proven” and hence are “encouraged” to conform to one style or another…
Yeah, it is. Hannett very much bought into the cult of the producer and viewed the band as malleable putty to shape as he saw fit.
Maybe, but we have no idea how a JD album as they wanted to have it would have been different. Either way, this was still an example of a producer high on his own supply imposing his vision on a young band who had no idea how to fight for their own vision. 
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`Twas certainly not my intent. She phrased it as “I’d argue that…” which implied to me that a response (IE: a counter argument) would be acceptable.
But if I was wrong about that or caused offense, I sincerely apologize.
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Agreed. What would’ve become of their career (and that of New Order) if they had known how to do so is fun to think about.
I remember learning this in college. I think it was a discussion on Free Jazz, and one of the reasons why it’s often crap (I love good free jazz, btw, but it’s very rare to actually find it).
Another thing that came up is that even if you think you have no limits on your work, you still do. Your skill level is a limit. Your instrument’s range and timbre are limits. Non- chording? Limit. The list goes on. And the more limitations you place the more creative you need to be to work around those limitations. One of my teachers used to practise for an hour on two notes. Any octave, but just two notes and going back and forth between them in order to find as many ways of playing those two notes as possible.
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he’s an amazing guy. i’ve listened to several podcasts with him as a guest, and he’s clearly a guy who puts a lot of thought into his work and how to help musicians get their best work down. and he’s no slouch as a designer, either. also, his voice is like warm molasses, deep and rich.
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Fully agreed. “You can do anything!” tends to work poorly, with people having a hard time choosing what to do with too many options available, and without some limits to work with / around, there’s little to stimulate creativity.
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