Working with an engineer

ChrisCV · Post by **ChrisCV** » Thu Oct 07, 2010 2:33 pm

ian who will you be paying your dues to? is there a music producer collection box that you send money to?
i hate this whole chip on the shoulder idea that you have to do what everyone else has done because they had to do it... its like that whole beat matching argument/ideology..

anyways if you've got an idea and you want it out there.. then you should do all you can to get it out there.. but it better be a good one worth spending money on

if your idea is good and you give the producer enough direction and work with him well... then it might work out.. and you might even learn a bit along the way...

if your idea is sh!t.. and you don't know what you want then you're gonna waste a fair amount of money and have nothing to show for it...

ChrisCV · Post by **ChrisCV** » Thu Oct 07, 2010 2:36 pm

also coming back to the technical know how, music theory point..

i just thought of another example...

like i reckon a lot of the hip hop producers in the early days didn't study music theory and stuff... they were just playing around with samplers and stringing things together to create something that sounded great.. had feeling etc...

in fact maybe not knowing music theory or conventional music production may have given them the freedom to create a completely new sound and way of making music...

jackbrazzo · Post by **jackbrazzo** » Thu Oct 07, 2010 2:52 pm

Perhaps what gets peoples goat is for example if someone designed a new Intranet site or Internet site or whatever.

Someone in there would have done some serious coding or whatever, whilst someone may have come up with a fancy flash stylii pop up, and that takes the glory

mattburns · Post by **mattburns** » Thu Oct 07, 2010 4:11 pm

iainkerr7 wrote:Agree with Chris here.

@ Matt - do you also think that producers should do the mastering process themselves?

Take time, pay their dues etc?

Not really. But it's not the same.

Why call yourself a producer if u can't produce?

tone-def · Post by **tone-def** » Thu Oct 07, 2010 4:39 pm

ChrisCV wrote:also coming back to the technical know how, music theory point..

i just thought of another example...

like i reckon a lot of the hip hop producers in the early days didn't study music theory and stuff... they were just playing around with samplers and stringing things together to create something that sounded great.. had feeling etc...

in fact maybe not knowing music theory or conventional music production may have given them the freedom to create a completely new sound and way of making music...

exactly! if you play around with stuff and experiment you will probably make something new. having an engineer completely removes this part of music composition. with electronic music the technical and creative sides overlap so much that it's almost impossible to get an engineer to just do technical stuff. if the engineer is trying to interpret what you say to him it will be mostly his creativity and personality that gets stamped on the track. i've tried making tunes with mates who love but don't do music and the instructions they gave me were very abstract. if you have no musical or technical knowledge the chances are the engineer will not understand and your original idea will probably never happen.

wax works · Post by **wax works** » Thu Oct 07, 2010 4:43 pm

mattburns wrote:
iainkerr7 wrote:Agree with Chris here.

@ Matt - do you also think that producers should do the mastering process themselves?

Take time, pay their dues etc?
Not really. But it's not the same.

Why call yourself a producer if u can't produce?

Are you serious?
No one said they were a producer?

tone-def · Post by **tone-def** » Thu Oct 07, 2010 4:45 pm

mattburns wrote: Why call yourself a producer if u can't produce?

actually the person we're calling 'engineer' is actually the producer.

i guess you could call yourself a co-writer and take all the credit but thats about it.

wax works · Post by **wax works** » Thu Oct 07, 2010 4:45 pm

tone-def wrote:
ChrisCV wrote:also coming back to the technical know how, music theory point..

i just thought of another example...

like i reckon a lot of the hip hop producers in the early days didn't study music theory and stuff... they were just playing around with samplers and stringing things together to create something that sounded great.. had feeling etc...

in fact maybe not knowing music theory or conventional music production may have given them the freedom to create a completely new sound and way of making music...
exactly! if you play around with stuff and experiment you will probably make something new. having an engineer completely removes this part of music composition. with electronic music the technical and creative sides overlap so much that it's almost impossible to get an engineer to just do technical stuff. if the engineer is trying to interpret what you say to him it will be mostly his creativity and personality that gets stamped on the track. i've tried making tunes with mates who love but don't do music and the instructions they gave me were very abstract. if you have no musical or technical knowledge the chances are the engineer will not understand and your original idea will probably never happen.

Yeah I completely agree with this, unless you had a solid idea of what you wanted and how you would achieve it then the majority of it would end up being the engineers ideas which you liked.

I don't think that means you need a degree in music theory for you to turn your ideas into reality though.

BTW anyone help with a home studio set up for £1500?
ta.