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Why You Need a Producer
Have you ever heard the phrase, “Designed by a blind architect”?
This phrase is often used by people who live in older houses that have
had several additions over the course of time. Usually, the
houses have several different exterior finishes (brick, vinyl, stucco), several
different floor heights, different window styles all over the place, odd
rooflines, a rabbit’s-warren of small rooms connected by doorways etc.
They’re generally pretty big, but they lack any sense of “big picture
planning”.
Often, a self-produced project comes across as an earnest attempt at a
legitimate record, but just not quite making it. Like Aunt
Betty’s famous lime-jello salad, the self-produced record is often greeted with
a forced smile, averted eyes and a strained “That’s… nice!”. Genuine enthusiasm
or true enjoyment are emotions rarely seen as you take your minty-fresh new
project from its jewel case, pass around the liner notes and force the family to
listen to 50 minutes of your latest recording endeavor.
Why do self-produced projects so frequently end up sounding so obviously
self-produced? Simple: they lack the
dispassionate oversight of an experienced producer. Let me
explain what I mean.
An artist’s entire psyche is based on emotion. That’s what
makes songwriters write, singers sing, musicians play, painters paint etc.
Consumers of art look to artists so that they can vicariously experience
a taste of the emotion that the artist felt when executing the work.
However, artists are frequently unable to judge exactly how much of a
good thing is appropriate and how much is too much. It’s like
Aunt Betty’s famous pink bathroom – she got so carried away when decorating that
EVERYTHING (towels, bathtub, sink, tiles, shower curtain, toilet paper etc) is
pink! Oh Aunt Betty… if only you had a producer…[shakes head]
A producer helps the artist to establish the fundamentals of their project, in
the same way that an designer helps a family define the fundamentals of their
house. Without either, the project / building would likely be
hopelessly haphazard, or at least fall short of what it could have been.
To continue the analogy, the designer has the additional benefit of not
living in the house when it’s completed, which allows her to be dispassionate
about the decisions she makes – decisions that ultimately need to be in the best
interest of the house design, not the inhabitant’s immediate wishes.
When you hire an experienced producer, you gain several benefits that may not be
apparent at first. One, you gain the benefit of his prior
experience – prior experience making similar records, dissimilar records,
choosing musicians and other staff, gauging the progress of the recording, etc.
Two, you get to offload a bunch of chores that you might not truly be
good at, if you were to be completely honest with yourself (chart writing, for
example, or budgeting, hiring / firing, scheduling and sticking to a schedule…
the list goes on, but most artists are not great at any of these
things). Thirdly, and most importantly, you gain an
adversary. Yup, I said GAIN an adversary.
The best kinds of producers aren’t the “Yes Man” types. Nor
are they the authoritarian Nazis – “my way or the highway, kid”.
They’re certainly not the “This is my record and you’re just the voice”
types either. No, the best kind of producer is the one that
gently challenges the artist to justify his / her decisions at every turn, to
ensure that the final product has an overall artistic coherence.
It is the producer who helps the artist filter through their overt
emotional attachment to their music and arrive at something that has a unified
and consistent sound, with enough variety to be interesting, yet not
schizophrenic.
Sure, a producer can and must encourage the artist. But s/he must
always be careful to not become the tacit affirmer, unthinkingly permitting the
artist to overindulge in their own unbridled love of background vocals, guitars,
auxiliary percussion or reverb. (Think of Templeton the Rat,
from Charlotte’s
Web – remember how he looked after eating everything in sight at the County
Fair? Too… many… guitars…ugh…) Indeed, the
producer’s job is to observe the interaction of all the elements in a song, to
corral them should they get out of hand, and to keep a gentle but constant hand
on the tiller of the entire project to ensure that it steers purposefully
towards its intended target.
It may seem like an odd way to spend money, especially when most artists feel
that the last thing they need to do is pay someone to make decisions about THEIR
project. But the fact is, if you don’t pay someone to make
these decisions, you’ll be the one making them, and chances are good that you’re
too close to the emotion of what you want in project (“it’s my first record,
don’t want to screw it up, I’ve always wanted to have bagpipes on a song, maybe
I’ll just do another track of vocals here, I can’t do this song unless I get a
bagpipe player, should I have taken more time on that track, I NEED A BAGPIPE
PLAYER” etc) to make good, objective calls.
It’s why psychologists don’t self-assess. That’s why you need
a producer!
© 2009 Advantage Music Production