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Call Yourself A Producer? The threat of recession seems ever closer, when instead of folding money we have folding banks, but that doesn’t mean you can’t upgrade your studio at minimal cost — as you’ll see from our extensive feature on the subject elsewhere in this issue. In the meantime, though, let’s look at some simple techniques that you can use to improve your studio and recordings on a shoestring budget. I recently visited one of the major music companies, and was asked if I’d take half an hour to talk to their salesmen about the recording market in general, with particular regard for what might happen in the future. One of the salesmen kicked off with the age-old question about whether technology such as Auto-Tune, Melodyne and the quantise button meant that anybody could make good music. My reply was the same as ever: all these tools will let you put a performance in time and in tune, but there’s so much more to a good performance. Forcing a bad singing voice into pitch doesn’t usually result in a pleasant-sounding vocal.
Creating a good song and a good performance is just as hard as it has ever been, which is why those making music at home need to be careful not to lose touch with the musical instrument that fostered their interest in the first place. In the studio you may be able to get by being able to play no more than four bars without making a mistake, but in live performance that simply isn’t good enough. To have something worth recording, you either need to be a reasonably good musician or a good composer with worthwhile ideas in your head — which the computer can then help you turn into reality. Trading in all your guitar practice time for dabbling with plug-ins and loops is not the way to improve your musicianship. On a similar tack, I managed to upset a class full of music technology students on one of our college visits by saying that learning to manipulate loops of pre-recorded material wasn’t enough to make you a good recording engineer or producer. You should have seen the looks I got! Certainly, being able to do so is a worthwhile skill and, indeed, is necessary for much contemporary music production, but it is only a tiny subset of what music recording is really about. If you’re good enough to create loops of commercial quality from the ground up by recording your own instruments and those of other ‘real’ musicians, you’ll be lot closer to your goal. Having said all that, the future will inevitably see more ‘dumbing down’ of both musicianship and recording practices. Already we see music shops stocking Guitar Hero-type musical games, which promote the idea that they’ll encourage an interest in playing the real thing. While this might be true in the case of drummers (as you need a sense of timing to play with these things), I can’t imagine many people making a smooth transition from a plastic plank with buttons that trigger somebody else’s riffs to actually learning the guitar. So if you really want to learn how to make and record music, do yourself a favour and lock away all those sampled phrases and loops until you’ve learned to make music without them. Once you can, you’ll be able to use them in the right context, rather than as an imagined shortcut to being a ‘producer’. Paul White - Editor In Chief http://www.soundonsound.c...r_0309.htm =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= From the March 2009 edition of... 
...Sound On Sound This is another magazine that I would gladly pay for. tA  Tribal Disorder
http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431 "Ya see, we're not interested in what you know...but what you are willing to learn. C'mon y'all." | |
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theAudience said: The threat of recession seems ever closer, when instead of folding money we have folding banks, but that doesn’t mean you can’t upgrade your studio at minimal cost — as you’ll see from our extensive feature on the subject elsewhere in this issue. In the meantime, though, let’s look at some simple techniques that you can use to improve your studio and recordings on a shoestring budget. I recently visited one of the major music companies, and was asked if I’d take half an hour to talk to their salesmen about the recording market in general, with particular regard for what might happen in the future. One of the salesmen kicked off with the age-old question about whether technology such as Auto-Tune, Melodyne and the quantise button meant that anybody could make good music. My reply was the same as ever: all these tools will let you put a performance in time and in tune, but there’s so much more to a good performance. Forcing a bad singing voice into pitch doesn’t usually result in a pleasant-sounding vocal.
Creating a good song and a good performance is just as hard as it has ever been, which is why those making music at home need to be careful not to lose touch with the musical instrument that fostered their interest in the first place. In the studio you may be able to get by being able to play no more than four bars without making a mistake, but in live performance that simply isn’t good enough. To have something worth recording, you either need to be a reasonably good musician or a good composer with worthwhile ideas in your head — which the computer can then help you turn into reality. Trading in all your guitar practice time for dabbling with plug-ins and loops is not the way to improve your musicianship. On a similar tack, I managed to upset a class full of music technology students on one of our college visits by saying that learning to manipulate loops of pre-recorded material wasn’t enough to make you a good recording engineer or producer. You should have seen the looks I got! Certainly, being able to do so is a worthwhile skill and, indeed, is necessary for much contemporary music production, but it is only a tiny subset of what music recording is really about. If you’re good enough to create loops of commercial quality from the ground up by recording your own instruments and those of other ‘real’ musicians, you’ll be lot closer to your goal. Having said all that, the future will inevitably see more ‘dumbing down’ of both musicianship and recording practices. Already we see music shops stocking Guitar Hero-type musical games, which promote the idea that they’ll encourage an interest in playing the real thing. While this might be true in the case of drummers (as you need a sense of timing to play with these things), I can’t imagine many people making a smooth transition from a plastic plank with buttons that trigger somebody else’s riffs to actually learning the guitar. So if you really want to learn how to make and record music, do yourself a favour and lock away all those sampled phrases and loops until you’ve learned to make music without them. Once you can, you’ll be able to use them in the right context, rather than as an imagined shortcut to being a ‘producer’. Paul White - Editor In Chief http://www.soundonsound.c...r_0309.htm =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= From the March 2009 edition of...
...Sound On Sound This is another magazine that I would gladly pay for. tA Tribal Disorder
http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431 music racist! i have a new instrument, its a trashcan with a lid and a stick... and boy am i good at it. cheers! ~svn seven | |
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Someone who KNOWS of what he speaks.
Keep up the GOOD work.  | |
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7e7e7 said: music racist! i have a new instrument, its a trashcan with a lid and a stick... and boy am i good at it. cheers! ~svn seven Tsk, tsk, tsk.... 
...Done only the way Basil Fawlty could. (After all, it is a U.K. audio magazine) I'm telling you. The absolute nerve of this editor to actually suggest that someone waste time learning something about the art of producing music. It's simply outrageous.  There must be a way to charge and convict him of something.
Ah yes, for telling THE TRUTH! tA Tribal Disorder
http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431 "Ya see, we're not interested in what you know...but what you are willing to learn. C'mon y'all." | |
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Graycap23 said: Someone who KNOWS of what he speaks.
Keep up the GOOD work. Somebody has got to cut through the B.S. Great mag. tA Tribal Disorder
http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431 "Ya see, we're not interested in what you know...but what you are willing to learn. C'mon y'all." | |
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theAudience said: Graycap23 said: Someone who KNOWS of what he speaks.
Keep up the GOOD work. Somebody has got to cut through the B.S. Great mag. tA Tribal Disorder
http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431 Co sign. | |
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Call we all just agree that a PRODUCER today for the most part is NOT what it was, today 95% are "beatmakers" searching out loops and sounds and cutting and pasting there way into the industry. You cannot possibly put someone like Danja or Timbaland or even the Neptunes in with people like Arif Mardin, i mean that is just something that cannot be done. Arif produced albums by the Bee Gees, Chaka,Hall and Oates, and Norah Jones just to name a few, now that is a WIDE spectrum, and all will agree that HAVE HEARD those records that Arif brought the best out of those artists, which is what a producer does. He doesnt sit in the back, chant his name over beats and call it a production. "We went where our music was appreciated, and that was everywhere but the USA, we knew we had fans, but there is only so much of the world you can play at once" Magne F | |
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Yeah, I end up in arguments with youngbloods that try to rationalize that the MPC is a musical instrument. I have said on other occasions that music is a language. As with any language, you can learn it phonetically without knowing what the words you use mean but ultimately, you will never be considered a great linguist without said knowledge. A lot of these so-called producers know how to put sounds together but they are OTHER POEPLES' SOUNDS. Its like singing through someone else's voice.
That's another reason that you don't hear many changes in contemporary music. You don't hear many bridges or complicated arrangements. They don't know how to compose them. Instead they rely on what someone else has done. Finally the kid that used to bang out beats on his desk with his hands in jr. high school has found a way to get famous for it. | |
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I would hope the economy WOULD force these lazy nuts to actually play an instrument and actually "produce" an artist rather than create beats as lastdecember said. But you know the music industry has a lot of dumbnuts.  Actually if that happens, hip-hop music and contemporary R&B sound would change dramatically and revert back to instruments... GASP. [Edited 2/26/09 13:46pm] | |
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BlaqueKnight said: Yeah, I end up in arguments with youngbloods that try to rationalize that the MPC is a musical instrument. I have said on other occasions that music is a language. As with any language, you can learn it phonetically without knowing what the words you use mean but ultimately, you will never be considered a great linguist without said knowledge. A lot of these so-called producers know how to put sounds together but they are OTHER POEPLES' SOUNDS. Its like singing through someone else's voice.
That's another reason that you don't hear many changes in contemporary music. You don't hear many bridges or complicated arrangements. They don't know how to compose them. Instead they rely on what someone else has done. Finally the kid that used to bang out beats on his desk with his hands in jr. high school has found a way to get famous for it. It's sad really. I take it as disrespect 2 the art.....but that is just me. | |
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Timmy84 said: I would hope the economy WOULD force these lazy nuts to actually play an instrument and actually "produce" an artist rather than create beats as lastdecember said. But you know the music industry has a lot of dumbnuts.
Actually if that happens, hip-hop music and contemporary R&B sound would change dramatically and revert back to instruments... GASP.
With technology being what it is, there should be a huge progression. We shouldn't have to revert "back" to anything but rather incorporate new technologies into the arsenals already available to us. That's what Stevie, Prince, Herbie Hancock and so many others did. Technology is currently being used as a crutch instead of a tool to create better music. [Edited 2/26/09 13:50pm] | |
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BlaqueKnight said: Yeah, I end up in arguments with youngbloods that try to rationalize that the MPC is a musical instrument. I have said on other occasions that music is a language. As with any language, you can learn it phonetically without knowing what the words you use mean but ultimately, you will never be considered a great linguist without said knowledge. A lot of these so-called producers know how to put sounds together but they are OTHER POEPLES' SOUNDS. Its like singing through someone else's voice.
That's another reason that you don't hear many changes in contemporary music. You don't hear many bridges or complicated arrangements. They don't know how to compose them. Instead they rely on what someone else has done. Finally the kid that used to bang out beats on his desk with his hands in jr. high school has found a way to get famous for it. Exactly. It's like legally stealing music. It's worse than "illegal downloads". Artists today can just cut their vocals no matter how bad and the "beat maker" can just fix the vocals either through Pro-Tools or Autotune and then do some quirky beat that we later find was stolen and then put the album out and "music critics" would call it "brilliant". I'm hearing Diana Ross' "Reach Out and Touch (Somebody's Hand)" right now and you could actually feel the soul and heartbeat in that song. You just don't get that same feeling when you listen to "Single Ladies". | |
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BlaqueKnight said: Timmy84 said: I would hope the economy WOULD force these lazy nuts to actually play an instrument and actually "produce" an artist rather than create beats as lastdecember said. But you know the music industry has a lot of dumbnuts.
Actually if that happens, hip-hop music and contemporary R&B sound would change dramatically and revert back to instruments... GASP.
With technology being what it is, there should be a huge progression. We shouldn't have to revert "back" to anything but rather incorporate new technologies into the arsenals already available to us. That's what Stevie, Prince, Herbie Hancock and so many others did. Technology is currently being used as a crutch instead of a tool to create better music. [Edited 2/26/09 13:50pm] These dummies don't know how to incorporate ANYTHING though, they just all sit there and put whatever sound they want in hopes to get a quick buck nowadays. It was always used as a crutch tho. That's what crazy about it. | |
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Timmy84 said: BlaqueKnight said: Yeah, I end up in arguments with youngbloods that try to rationalize that the MPC is a musical instrument. I have said on other occasions that music is a language. As with any language, you can learn it phonetically without knowing what the words you use mean but ultimately, you will never be considered a great linguist without said knowledge. A lot of these so-called producers know how to put sounds together but they are OTHER POEPLES' SOUNDS. Its like singing through someone else's voice.
That's another reason that you don't hear many changes in contemporary music. You don't hear many bridges or complicated arrangements. They don't know how to compose them. Instead they rely on what someone else has done. Finally the kid that used to bang out beats on his desk with his hands in jr. high school has found a way to get famous for it. Exactly. It's like legally stealing music. It's worse than "illegal downloads". Artists today can just cut their vocals no matter how bad and the "beat maker" can just fix the vocals either through Pro-Tools or Autotune and then do some quirky beat that we later find was stolen and then put the album out and "music critics" would call it "brilliant". I'm hearing Diana Ross' "Reach Out and Touch (Somebody's Hand)" right now and you could actually feel the soul and heartbeat in that song. You just don't get that same feeling when you listen to "Single Ladies". It is stealing.....no other way 2 look at it from my perspective. | |
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Using loops never really sat well with me...
I don't even use drum loops anymore, because I just feel lazy when I use them. I feel if your gonna call yourself a songwriter or producer. You have to do it by yourself, without loops. If its a question of musicianship, than just upgrade your practice time. because a producer without any musicianship, is just a hack. i say its ok to use loops, when your basically trying to fill up an arangement. Once the overall skeleton of the track is complete IE, Bass, Drums, Harmony based instruments. And you feel it needs more balls, fine. But even in that regard its still a crutch for the sloth and the untalented. I am a Rail Road, Track Abandoned
With the Sunset forgetting, i ever Happened http://www.myspace.com/stolenmorning | |
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BlaqueKnight said: Timmy84 said: I would hope the economy WOULD force these lazy nuts to actually play an instrument and actually "produce" an artist rather than create beats as lastdecember said. But you know the music industry has a lot of dumbnuts.
Actually if that happens, hip-hop music and contemporary R&B sound would change dramatically and revert back to instruments... GASP.
With technology being what it is, there should be a huge progression. We shouldn't have to revert "back" to anything but rather incorporate new technologies into the arsenals already available to us. That's what Stevie, Prince, Herbie Hancock and so many others did. Technology is currently being used as a crutch instead of a tool to create better music. [Edited 2/26/09 13:50pm] The technology today is different compared to the stuff that came out in the late 60s. Everything is digital, when it was analog, the musician's where still able to create/play a melody, nowadays the melody is already created, these beatmakers or whatever you want to call them just press buttons. Analog electric instruments still exist but none of these dummies know how to program it. | |
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thatruth said: BlaqueKnight said: With technology being what it is, there should be a huge progression. We shouldn't have to revert "back" to anything but rather incorporate new technologies into the arsenals already available to us. That's what Stevie, Prince, Herbie Hancock and so many others did. Technology is currently being used as a crutch instead of a tool to create better music. [Edited 2/26/09 13:50pm] The technology today is different compared to the stuff that came out in the late 60s. Everything is digital, when it was analog, the musician's where still able to create/play a melody, nowadays the melody is already created, these beatmakers or whatever you want to call them just press buttons. Analog electric instruments still exist but none of these dummies know how to program it. Exactly! And if they couldn't afford digital productions, most of these guys would be out of business. Especially those that failed to take music courses especially when there were music classes like daily. | |
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as a musician and someone who can engineer and work a board, who did edits with a razor blade. these mechanical morons don't know shit about producing great post big brother  | |
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The age of the...
..."Push-Button Producer". I wonder if all the folks that fall into that category were transported back to let's say the late 40s/early 50s... 
...how many would be able to actually "produce" a recording session. tA Tribal Disorder
http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431 "Ya see, we're not interested in what you know...but what you are willing to learn. C'mon y'all." | |
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theAudience said: The age of the...
..."Push-Button Producer". I wonder if all the folks that fall into that category were transported back to let's say the late 40s/early 50s...
...how many would be able to actually "produce" a recording session. tA Tribal Disorder
http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431 that pic right there is the stone cold truth | |
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the MPC is an instrument, buddy
 | |
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dilwithers said: the MPC is an instrument, buddy
lmfao right so is guitar hero I am a Rail Road, Track Abandoned
With the Sunset forgetting, i ever Happened http://www.myspace.com/stolenmorning | |
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EmbattledWarrior said: dilwithers said: the MPC is an instrument, buddy
lmfao right so is guitar hero | |
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well, I've read about "real" musicians who look up to people that use samplers. not because they use them, but because of the music they make using them | |
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dilwithers said:
well, I've read about "real" musicians who look up to people that use samplers. not because they use them, but because of the music they make using them like? I am a Rail Road, Track Abandoned
With the Sunset forgetting, i ever Happened http://www.myspace.com/stolenmorning | |
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dilwithers said:
well, I've read about "real" musicians who look up to people that use samplers. not because they use them, but because of the music they make using them They look up to samplers because they get money from the works that get sampled. | |
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I'm talking about people who have collaborated with people that use them or encouraged them. | |
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dilwithers said: I'm talking about people who have collaborated with people that use them or encouraged them.
aint nothing wrong with sampling or mixing... it is an art in some mediums, and done a certain way... BUT they're not musicians never will be... I am a Rail Road, Track Abandoned
With the Sunset forgetting, i ever Happened http://www.myspace.com/stolenmorning | |
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EmbattledWarrior said: dilwithers said: I'm talking about people who have collaborated with people that use them or encouraged them.
aint nothing wrong with sampling or mixing... it is an art in some mediums, and done a certain way... BUT they're not musicians never will be... Exactly. They're called "beat makers" for a reason. | |
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EmbattledWarrior said: dilwithers said: I'm talking about people who have collaborated with people that use them or encouraged them.
aint nothing wrong with sampling or mixing... it is an art in some mediums, and done a certain way... BUT they're not musicians never will be... pfft, I think you're wrong  | |
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