Producers

Does the title "Producer" get thrown around too loosely for your comfort?

  • Yes

    Votes: 42 79.2%
  • No

    Votes: 8 15.1%
  • If I make beat, I'm a producer!

    Votes: 3 5.7%

  • Total voters
    53

Cult_Status02

New member
I am not a fan of the title, unless it's rightfully earned. I was wondering what you guys think about the title. I get annoyed by the people that say they are "Premeir(sic) up and coming producers in (insert city)." Even though they just recorded a friend's band and their band one time on a karaoke machine. Anyway, I'm not a fan of people throwing around the title more than "engineer," which is pretty bad too, but just wondering what all of you think of it.

Oh yeah, I thought this was the best section to post in because...well, mixing and mastering is an action, as is producing, and not equipment or software. That's all I could come up with. Sorry if this has been asked before, but I couldn't find it in the search.
 
I'm not a big fan of labels of any kind. Sometimes, when I'm at a bar, I'll tell women that I'm an astronaut, though.

It seems to work better than "producer".
 
the way I see it is producers work closely with the band in order to get a good record out of them. A lot of times they are employed by a company (typically a record company) and are payed to keep the band on task and to make sure that time is used wisely. They're the liaison between the record company and the band...representing both parties.

depending on the situation (and usually budget), the engineer (recording/mixing) can be considered the producer. If the band isn't having their album released by a major company, they may turn to the engineer who has a lot of experience with recording albums.

In the hip hop/rap world, they seem to view things differently. This is why a lot of aspiring "producers" go to learn about recording at schools and are surprised that being a recording engineer and a "producer" is not at all the same thing. People learning to be an engineer study the technical side of things and not how to just make beats. I've seen many people surprised at this. Puff Daddy and Dr Dre may be great producers, but they've got someone behind the curtains running the gear for them.
 
bennychico11 said:
Puff Daddy and Dr Dre may be great producers, but they've got someone behind the curtains running the gear for them.
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, too.

I mean, they didn't actually design these rocketships. Right?
 
ez_willis said:
I'm not a big fan of labels of any kind. Sometimes, when I'm at a bar, I'll tell women that I'm an astronaut, though.

It seems to work better than "producer".
I tell you, the one that's a no-miss at the bar is "Alaskan fur trapper." Especially if you have a beard. If you go with a friend he can play the local buyer.

But that's far more realistic than someone who can throw a four-note synth sequence together calling themselves a "producer". What horsesh!t. The new wave of "producers" have no idea what it actually takes to manage a production - which is what the term "producer" really means.

That's even more aggregious than a kid with PTLE and a Waves crack calling themselves a "mastering engineer".

G.
 
Except in rare instances I've heard too may artist's work ruined by "producers". Unless a person has had a good background in music and/or engineering, and also works with the artist rather than leaving their own imprint, when someone tells me that they are a producer it's usually a signal to me that they are a bullshit artist. So the term "producer" in the cases given is totally apropos.
 
A producers role can be many different things, from overseeing the project is running smoothly, to helping out the recording and mixing engineers and even playing parts of the song for the band, or coming up with new ideas or riffs to make the final mix sound the best it can be.

Eck
 
Just to offer a different perspective: Perhaps it's wise not to let what someone calls him/herself bother you too much. Calling myself Quincy Jones doesn't make me a great producer, and Quincy Jones denying that he is a producer wouldn't make his recordings any less great. The cream will rise to the top-- let the phonies do what they will.
 
ryman said:
Perhaps it's wise not to let what someone calls him/herself bother you too much.
That's true, but there is a practical issue here. When someone takes on a title that historically or typically has meant something entirely different, it leads to rapid misrepresentation and misunderstanding.

It has happened more than a few times on this board. Someone starts a thread saying that they are a producer or prepping to produce a project and then asks a question regarding audio engineering. More times than not, the kind of answer one would give to someone producing a recording project in the traditional sense is entirely different than what one would give to a beatmaker or sequencer. The prerequesite level of knowledge in music, audio, business, etc. is about as different for each "producer" as it is between a shade tree mechanic and the owner of a Nascar racing team.

More than once a new member of this forum has been scared away because he or she represented themself as a "producer" and then asks an ultra-basic newbie question that would get any self respecting traditional producer laughed right out of the project, and then couldn't understand why they couldn't get the kind of answer they were looking for.

If this were the film industry - with their own flavor of producer - if all of a sudden a new generation of folks who specialized in writing snippets of dialog or designing specific camera moves came along, and then tried to call themselves "producers", they would be run out of town on a rail.

And let me turn the question around. Why do newb beatmakers/sequencers find it so important to call themselves "producers"? It cuts both ways; if I am supposed to not be concerned about what title Joe Beatbox gives himself, then Joe Beatbox shouldn't be interested in apprehending that title either.

G.
 
ryman said:
Just to offer a different perspective: Perhaps it's wise not to let what someone calls him/herself bother you too much. Calling myself Quincy Jones doesn't make me a great producer, and Quincy Jones denying that he is a producer wouldn't make his recordings any less great. The cream will rise to the top-- let the phonies do what they will.


SouthSIDE Glenn said:
That's true, but there is a practical issue here. When someone takes on a title that historically or typically has meant something entirely different, it leads to rapid misrepresentation and misunderstanding.

It's not really about how I feel about, which is just annoyed, and then I move on, it's about the effect their "actions" have, as SouthSIDE Glenn was saying. What all the kids and uneducated people say can get to a lot of people's ears, being that there are a lot of those people. I think in the hip-hop community, the term has come from a contextual interpretation. Basically: "I make beats, I produce the beats, I am a producer of beats, I will be a Producer." So I think, even though they may not realize it, they call themselves "producers" in the sense that they are creating a product.

Equally as bad are the "mastering engineers" Glenn also pointed out. I have a hard time taking anyone serious around me anymore when some guy with an Mackie 8-bus and Fostex monitors with no acoustic treatment calls himself a "mastering engineer."

What has happened is now anyone can give themselves a title, and becuase of the nature of the title and the ignorance of many people, said title is accepted. You can call yourself Quincy Jones if you want, but all will know different (unless it's on myspace), but if you call yourself a producer people just accept you as a producer. So, in 20 years if I feel like I want to call myself a producer for some reason and I have recorded hundreds of bands or have platinum records (I wish!), all of a sudden I have this title that does not get the proper respect and I'm on the same level, lable-wise, as a 15 year-old with Fruity Loops.

Obviously, I would get the respect I deserve once people find out what I have accomplished, but there should not have been a confusion about my credentials in the first place...

There should be "Producer" or "Engineer" certificates you put up in your studio that AES gives out or something! :o

Lables exist to help classify and understand something. If I only listened to jazz music, it'd be nice to have something to call that kind of music I like. The only lables I hate are those new retarded ones like "Post-Hardore, Crunk, New-Wave Core Surf." When people started classifying things past maybe class or order, it gets annoying. I stop listening when you get into family or genus.
 
What is an appropriate title for the person who records a band, mixes the tracks, and burns the CD? I agree that "producer" implies many things that may not be true of the person that does these things. But if you make such a CD and want to take credit for it, what's the best way to describe your role?
 
All good points Glen, but from my point of view working hard to improve one's own skills is probably more productive than worrying about what title someone gives themselves. If people calling themselves producers are actually know-nothing newbies, that will become apparent very soon.

I do empathize with the frustration of wasting time on someone who's misrepresenting him/herself, but adding to that time by lamenting that people can be idiots (hardly a startling new discovery) only takes away from the energy you could be devoting to your own knowledge and projects. After all, we can't control what Joe Beatbox calls himself; we can only control our own behavior. That's the good news-- we can refuse to give Joe Beatbox our time and energy if we so choose. Let people with enough time and energy on their hands run pseudo-producers out of town-- I'm gonna be learning and experimenting with my gear! :D
 
It's not really about how I feel about, which is just annoyed, and then I move on...
...Obviously, I would get the respect I deserve once people find out what I have accomplished, but there should not have been a confusion about my credentials in the first place...

Cult, I think this is about your feelings more than you realize. Do you record to make great music or to make sure you are properly recognized by "people" who understand what your title should mean?
 
EddieRay said:
What is an appropriate title for the person who records a band, mixes the tracks, and burns the CD? I agree that "producer" implies many things that may not be true of the person that does these things. But if you make such a CD and want to take credit for it, what's the best way to describe your role?

That sounds like an engineer to me. A producers role would have been to hire you to do that, to pay you, to arrange for and pay for any session musicians to bring into the project, to force a couple of re-writes on the band in the middle of it, to handle all the scheduling, to try and keep the band straight enough to play, to explain the the A&R guy why the project is late...... that kind of stuff.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
I tell you, the one that's a no-miss at the bar is "Alaskan fur trapper." Especially if you have a beard. If you go with a friend he can play the local buyer.

G.

Oh jeez, I screwed that up and always used "Beaver Inspector". :D

Actually, I'm from Alaska, and have done the trapping thing. That was before I moved to pc California, where "Alaskan fur trapper" would fly about as far as "I club cute baby seals to death".
 
ryman said:
All good points Glen, but from my point of view working hard to improve one's own skills is probably more productive than worrying about what title someone gives themselves.
Well, by that logic, let's just start calling compressors equalizers (they equalize the volume, don't they?) and reverbs we'll call mixers (they do mix the sound up, don't they?). Oh, and every traditional producer is now called Quincy Jones, just so they're not mistaken for beatmasters. But we'll still also call equalizers equalizers, well still call mixers mixers, and we'll still call Quincy Jones and have him not return our calls :-)D). Now, let's talk about audio production and engineering and see just how far we can get how fast. It *does* matter.

Anyone familiar with Parade magazine that shows up in many Sunday newspapers across the country every week probably knows that they have an annual issue, "How Much Do We Make", that goes over a large sample of different career titles and jobs, literally from fry cook to rocket scientist. The cover of that issue always shows a series of picturs of people in all different walks of life along with their job title and annual salary.

The latest issue showed a guy from Texas that gave himself the title of Music Producer. From reading the article, he was basically a "producer" in the beatmaster sense, and not a traditional music producer in the vein of T-Bone Burnett or Quincy Jones. His stated anual salary, if I remember correctly, was somehwere in the mid twenty thousand dollar range.

Now, some high school junior or senior who is reading this article - and they are the demo that traditionally takes the most interest in that article - knows enough about music to know just what an actual music producer really is. He may be considering persuing a career in engineering or production. He sees that a music producer, someone near the top of the music food chain, is making only $25-$27K a year, and he is going to be *very* disappointed and *very* mislead. All because this guy in the magazine is representing himself as something he's not by, with utter disrespect for it's value, hijacking a title that does not belong to him.

It's that disrespect that bugs me the most. In fact, not even the disrespect for the title so much; it's the disrespect for the work ethic, the idea that all one needs is an 808 and an attitude and they too can be a "producer". They are deceiving themselves more than they are deceiving you or I. That's the part that's gonna hurt the most. It *does* matter.

G.
 
ryman said:
Cult, I think this is about your feelings more than you realize. Do you record to make great music or to make sure you are properly recognized by "people" who understand what your title should mean?

Of course it does erck me. As you can see, I've vented a lot in the past couple posts. However, you make it seem like I am so bothered by it that I can't possibly do anything else. I started this thread because I was wondering where people stood on the all too often used title. I've put in my two-cents on the topic which obviously consist of my personal feelings. My opinion showcases my feelings, and I ask others to show theirs. When I said it's not about my feelings, I meant this poll is not to disgust my feelings on the subject, it's to discuss everyone's ideas of this topic. What I see in your posts is "Why care?" and that's fine, but it's pretty abstract. Why care about anything? Why care about what use to happen in Sierra Leone? Why care about the Holocaust? People care because people are human. I am human, thus interested in things...like other's opinions. Clearly if someone posts their opinion I'm not going to say "Oh, ok, I don't mind people disgracing the audio field." It's not a debate, just a poll.

I make and record music because I enjoy it, that's it. I do not do it for a label, but there are certain labels that come with what I do, or what others do. So the question does not beg a psychological evaluation of why I get annoyed with something. The question just basically asks if anyone feels the title is overused.
 
Robert D said:
Actually, I'm from Alaska, and have done the trapping thing. That was before I moved to pc California, where "Alaskan fur trapper" would fly about as far as "I club cute baby seals to death".
Haha! Yeah, the baby seal won't fly very well here either. But keep the baby seals out of the equation and spin it more along the lines of tracking grizzly or something like that. take your act down to River North in Chicago, and I almost guarantee you more at the end of the night than just a hangover. That is, until the regulars catch on :D.

G.
 
EddieRay said:
What is an appropriate title for the person who records a band, mixes the tracks, and burns the CD? I agree that "producer" implies many things that may not be true of the person that does these things. But if you make such a CD and want to take credit for it, what's the best way to describe your role?
The correct title is "Guy who has project studio"


The "producer" is usually the guy who writes the checks and owns the masters.
 
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