When everything is perfectly in tune in a recording you end up with a boring recording. It’s as if the music was created in a laboratory by machines mixing chemicals together.

Consider the best, most timeless works of literature. They are often crafted with themes of imperfection, struggle, and the reformation of someone or something. Likewise, the best songs are often written using similar lyrical content. The advantage a songwriter has is that they are able to more powerfully evoke the desired emotional experience with musical accompaniment.

The producer has the opportunity (perhaps the responsibility?) to augment the emotional evocation, by utilizing production techniques which subconsciously provide context. One of the best ways to communicate the emotional imperfections and moral complications of human beings, is by using slightly out of tune instruments.

For examples of what I’m talking about, dig up your old Bob Dylan, Velvet Underground, or Pixies records. There are no shortage of fans who will regard each one of these record catalogues as timeless masterpieces, despite the fact that you can find many instances where the instrumentation is blatantly out of tune (I don’t even need to bring up Kurt Cobain, who quite possibly may be the poster child for out of tune rock guitars). And you know what? They’re right it sounds great!

Spin The Wink by The Velvet Teen is an example of a fairly recent song which has always stuck out in my mind because of the out of tune piano, which is very prominent in the intro. I don’t know if the piano is deliberately out of tune, but it certainly inspired me as a record maker. I love how the piano being out of tune adds depth, tension, and complexity to the recording.

In each one of these examples, the “tastefully out of tune” instrumentation worked. It sets up the context for the lyric. It augments the emotions in the story with human imperfections. Work to provide context for the emotions that the artist is evoking, by experimenting with the textures of slightly out of tune instrumentation.