Stepping into the shoes of a record producer
Yes, my shoes say I am a record producer.
My job is to take a band, and translate their sound from a live band jamming and having fun, into a product with a quality good enough to be offered to the public.
Producers will differ according to what level or direction of production is needed.
Ideally, music is produced with an artistic integrity. That means, the music produced is true to the music composed and played within the nature of the musicians/composers main objective. It is that objective which attracts a wide enough audience to “produce” it into a commercial viable music track.
Commercial music is often produced and manipulated by a set formula, based on how to produce popular music, which is very much a mass production, with a set of rules which have been proven successful in the past to help the song achieve maximum effect over a new listener, who has otherwise never heard the song before, but will easily find it familiar, recognisable and catchy.
Music can be produced for a specific artist. The music produced that way, applies rules of production, which make use of the listeners attribute to love music he or she likes already.
Other record producers may come from a different direction altogether.
Gifted sound engineers, musicians, composers, who are confident in their own ability to show an audience something different, unique, of how they see and perceive sound, can also produce themselves.
That sound and music may fall into the pop category, simply because it works, but often it creates a niche market or slots into one of the many different music genres.
Generally speaking, a record producer is always both, able to add their own characteristics to a new project, and also bring out key characteristics from the band or solo artists, with the intention to set them aside from the countless self-produced musicians or composers.
Both styles of producers have their place in the music industry, however, music produced within the field of “Music Business” will always be motivated by “earnings” in order to stay viable.
You also have producers who only produce their own music; they are usually gifted or creative musician and composers who go the next step and learn about audio engineering.
It can be quite easy and fast for them to create their own tracks. It can be an advantage not to have to communicate through another person what sound they would like to achieve.
If there is that technical skill combined with the needed creativity, this can achieve classic results and can also seem quite easy to the gifted few.
This musician/composer/producer process naturally began when the age of computers allowed artists to engage with recording mediums at an affordable cost.
Now, more and more bands and solo acts record and produce themselves.
Like with most things, only a very small percentage of acts are actually good enough at self-production to reach the needed commercial level.
As a professional producer, I urge musician/ producers who want to achieve success, to take their product to a production studio for a final work over and mastering.
It’s amazing what a difference a fresh pair of ears can make to your product.
So there you have it, a crash course into various producer personality types. One important thing is, you never know when the big hit will arrive, but you have to be willing to believe in its occurrence.
Rules or no rules, you need to be working and expressing with full intent, loving it and sharing your true characteristics.
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