ARE QUALIFICATIONS NECESSARY?
Benjamin Franklin said, “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” This is true, and there is a distinction between knowledge and qualifi cations. Qualifi cations may substantiate ability and/or knowledge and are worthwhile for career backup,
should plan A fail. Nonetheless, qualifi cations are rarely a factor in fi nding pro-duction work. Many producers are highly trained musicians and/or engineers, but there are far more graduates of music and audio engineering schools than there are working musicians, engineers, and producers. Even in classical music produc-tion, where conservatory music degrees are necessary, experience and exceptional achievements are required in addition to a degree and can sometimes substitute for the qualifi cation.
In the commercial music and major label arena, Atlantic Records executive VP Pete Ganbarg said that if an “unemployed high school dropout” produced a great record, “everyone’s going to want that guy. You could be musically illiter-ate as long as the record sounds great.” He said it is the “magic” that “people are looking for.”
Assuming that qualifi cations are irrelevant, what training would be most useful?
A music degree with a concentration in arranging and composition would defi nitely help. A certifi cate or degree from a reputable school in music/audio technology, music production, or recording or audio engineering would reduce trial-and-error learning. Some courses (such as Tonmeister) are highly regarded by studios and have good job placement results. Some producers suggest that psychology credits would be advantageous.
Producers today rely on discography and reputation. Mitch Miller (Tony Bennett, Rosemary Clooney, Johnny Mathis) 35 and Goddard Lieberson ( Pal Joey , Porgy and Bess , studio revival recordings) graduated from the Eastman School of Music. Teo Macero (Miles Davis) earned a master’s degree from Juilliard, and many other successful producers were highly qualifi ed musicians. In 1960, Columbia Records in New York City ran an A&R training course. Goddard Lieberson, the president of the company, took a great personal interest in it. Mike Berniker qualifi ed for the program after passing aptitude tests, such as following an orchestral score while keeping up with a conductor of the stature of Leonard Bernstein. 36 Berniker went on to produce Barbra Streisand, Eydie Gorme, Brenda Lee, Perry Como, many jazz artists including Irakere, and Grammy award-winning Broadway shows.
Peter Collins spoke to me about starting as a producer trainee at Decca studios in North London:
In those days, labels owned their own studios and they groomed people to become staff producers. Gus Dudgeon, John Burgess, and George Martin, all those guys came through the studio systems. And I was destined to become a staff producer when it all started going pear shaped for Decca fi nancially.
Labels no longer seek trained musicians, nor do they develop staff this way.
Producers’ educations can be oblique. Jerry Harrison took a course at Harvard that could have led into either painting or fi lmmaking. He joined Jonathan Richman’s Modern Lovers, taught a little at Harvard, worked for a computer company, and was eventually asked to try out for Talking Heads.
WHAT IS HELPFUL?
Having an opinion without being dogmatic is an important quality for success as a producer. (Although one of the many answers to “How many record producers does it take to change a lightbulb?” is “I don’t know, what do you think?”) Neil Finn of Crowded House said about producer Mitchell Froom, “In some cases he does hardly anything, but he’s got a solid opinion all the time. In the studio, when everyone else is wavering, he’s good for a consistent opinion.” Neil’s brother Tim adds, “Even if you don’t agree, it’s good to have someone who is clear, someone you can bounce ideas off.”
The reason why some producers earn more than others is market validation.
A successful producer’s choices jibe with many consumers. No amount of educa-tion matters if a produceduca-tion does not resonate with the target audience. An appro-priate network and strong interpersonal skills are necessary, as is perseverance.
School can establish the basics but you still have to put in the hours in a studio.
Tom Lord-Alge said,
Recording schools can’t teach you how to hear, how to mix. They can only teach you how the equipment runs. I learned in the studio, under pressure: deal with the people, sit in the chair, you sink or swim. You don’t learn until you’re put under that pressure and you learn from someone who is great. 37
He then added, “Music is hell.” 38
Based on Confucius’s formula for the acquisition of wisdom—refl ection, imi-tation, and experience, working with and learning from established and successful producers can offer all three of these methods. This is a rich and well-proven path to success. Formal knowledge is necessary in certain situations; Alan Moulder told me he wishes he could read music at times: “[w] hen I’m recording an orchestra and trying to follow the score blindly.” However, orchestral sessions are hardly a daily occurrence for him, and he added, “I wouldn’t say it was too much of a hin-drance. . . . I was lucky in that I got into an area of music that I’ve always been interested in.” Some think that formal training is disadvantageous. Moulder said,
“Having worked in America, I can see that sometimes having a formal engineering training can cause people to get hung up on what is ‘good’ and ‘bad.’ ” Alan worked with me at Trident when he was starting out as an assistant, and he was one of the most knowledgeable assistants I ever had. However, the Trident way was to use your training as a tool, not a rule. As he said, “Sometimes it’s just better to get it on tape than to worry about the technicalities too much.”
The best assistants are helpful, remain invisible, and do no harm to the session.
This was true for Moulder at Trident and both Andy Jackson and Tim Palmer who worked with me in their early days at Utopia. 39 This balance of formal and practical knowledge along with the ability to blend in while being positive and not overbear-ing or interruptive is not easy to teach or achieve. Qualifi cations and knowledge must be tempered with wisdom, sensitivity, and humility to maintain a healthy
dynamic in the studio. Jackson recalled assistants with substantial knowledge who were confrontational to the engineer: “That’s an appalling situation.” There is such a thing as too much confi dence coming into the studio. Being “somewhat overawed makes you mind your P’s and Q’s.” 40
Wendy Page learned most of what she knows “sitting with other people watch-ing them do their jobs and lookwatch-ing, listenwatch-ing, and learnwatch-ing.” Page was in the British band Skin Games and has written and produced for Hilary Duff and Lulu, among others. From producing their own demo recordings, Wendy and her producing part-ner Jim Marr learned to “comp” vocals and guitars, record drums, and position microphones by trial and error. Along with the experimentation, and what she calls
“studio patience,” they were also lucky enough to work with other professionals.
Page says, “Necessity is the mother of invention. You need to make your demos compete with records, so you have to learn.” She likes taking her time learning new software and speculates that this creative freedom is the reason home studios are so popular. A combination of self-experimentation and apprenticeships or relation-ships with talented and experienced professionals who act as de facto mentors is a good way to develop skills.
Although the industry may not value qualifi cations, it is notable that some of the most consequential producers of recent times have been highly trained musi-cians. George Martin studied music at Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. Arif Mardin won a scholarship to the Berklee College of Music. Quincy Jones abandoned his music scholarship at Seattle University to study at Berklee (then called Schillinger House). He left Berklee to play with Lionel Hampton, later studying with French composer and teacher Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Much of his early education came from working alongside some of the greatest jazz and R&B musicians of the mid-20th century. He said,
I devoted 28 years of my life developing my core skills and learned all of the principles of music. You have to develop your skills until you really know what you’re talking about—really know deep down inside. 41
Martin, Mardin, and Jones all had considerable life experience and practice work-ing with musicians and artists in addition to knowledge and qualifi cations before they began producing, which is undoubtedly an optimum combination. The for-mal qualifi cations will not result directly in production work, but the knowledge acquired does infl uence production capabilities and styles. Producing is a complex combination of science, art, and interpersonal skills. Combining all three Confucian methodologies (refl ection, imitation, and experience) is worthwhile and is evident in the backgrounds of the most successful producers.
HOW MUCH TECHNICAL KNOWLEDGE DO YOU NEED?
It all depends on what kind of producer you want to become (see chapter 1). The full spectrum of possibilities is available, ranging from technophile to technophobe, although producers who have very limited technical capabilities are increasingly rare.
Lack of technical ability will not prevent someone from producing a hit, but it calls for a managerial approach, which means hiring or collaborating with someone who has the missing skills. Your ideas will be fi ltered through your engineers and DAW operators.
George Martin produced many hits, yet he does not consider himself to be a technical producer. Talking about communication with the engineer, he said,
You might say that the drum sounds a bit dull or [you’d] like it to be “snappier.”
When it comes to other sounds, like horns and orchestral sessions, then I will be very particular about the kind of sound I want. The engineer has to realize the kind of sound you’re looking for, in [terms] of clarity and good “liquid”
sound from the strings.
Producers who work this way are usually not micromanagers when it comes to tech-nical considerations; they choose their techtech-nical staff carefully and give them lati-tude in sonic decision-making.
Prior to the mid-1960s, recording engineers often needed to design, build, and repair their own equipment (including consoles). Equipment today is signifi cantly more complex in its principles and construction, and it is rare to fi nd a producer (even one with an audio engineering background) who can repair a piece of record-ing equipment. With the increasrecord-ing miniaturization and integration of components, most modern electronic equipment is no longer fi xed with a soldering iron and discrete components—the board, module, or even the entire piece of equipment is simply swapped out. This is the societal progression of specialization in technology.
However, underlying complexity creates greater ease of operation. Although many producers used to work with engineers who operated the equipment and understood how best to manipulate the audio, producers who can run the machin-ery themselves are now common. Of course, producers running equipment is noth-ing new. Pioneers such as Fred Gaisberg, Frances Densmore, and the Lomaxes did so, as did Les Paul, Moses Asch, Sam Phillips, and newer generations of producers from an engineering background such as George Massenburg and Hugh Padgham.
The current merging of roles is partly a function of the new music industry eco-nomics taking advantage of the Moore’s law-like rule of ever-decreasing cost and ever-increasing power. This, combined with the universality of computer technol-ogy and the graphical user interface (GUI) since the ’80s, has increased ease with technology. Now most people (in countries with relatively affl uent populations) are comfortably operating computers, relatively complex software, and smart phones or other software and menu-driven devices on a daily basis.
This now-essential everyday equipment is no longer considered technically complex enough to require specialist skills. Similarly, the level of technical knowl-edge required to run the most sophisticated DAW is not signifi cantly greater than that of most other software. Nevertheless, the particularities can present a learning curve that forms a psychological barrier for some. A high-altitude understanding of functionality helps in optimal operation of complex equipment. Equipment design and repair has been a separate specialization for the past 40 years or so, with a few notable exceptions such as Tom Dowd, Roger Nichols, and George Massenburg.
Grammy-winning mixer Chris Lord-Alge’s attitude to technology is “Give us the toys, and we will play with them. We take the manual and throw it in the garbage and turn the knobs until it blows up.” 42
Classical producers usually use their equipment within its technical specifi ca-tions because their primary objective is to capture the natural sounds of the instru-ments and the acoustic performance space. Even so, most classical producers do not need advanced technical skills, focusing instead on the musical performance, overseeing and critiquing articulation, timing, pitch, and interpretive qualities.
Generally, if classical producers think the sound quality needs adjusting, they com-municate their ideas to the engineer, who will make the appropriate adjustments.
There are exceptions, 2012 Grammy winner (producer, classical) Judith Sherman was trained as an engineer. 43 She chooses the microphones and sets them up with what she refers to as her “engineer hat on.” Then she reverts to her producer role, which she defi nes as being “in charge of what notes go on the CD” and “capturing it before everyone falls off their chairs with fatigue.” 44
This touches on another dichotomy that all producers face, which is how to manage and even micromanage musical and technical details while guiding the project toward the wider creative vision. Some producers (even those with technical skills) still do it by outsourcing the detailed technical work. Others constantly fl ip back and forth from detail to overview, analytical to creative, technical to musical—
a diffi cult skill for some. New generations of producers are, as Marc Prensky puts it, “digital natives” who speak the language of technology fl uently. Many older producers have also become fully conversant with digital production—in Prensky’s terms, these are “digital immigrants.” 45
Digital technology has lessened the technical responsibilities during a take, allowing an operator/producer to concentrate on performance qualities rather than watching levels and thinking about balances, EQ, and compression. Bit depth that exceeds the dynamic range of human hearing decreases concern about the noise fl oor and overloads, reducing the need to ride levels, and unlimited tracks allow instruments to be recorded fl at. Compression, EQ, and other treatments can be added and changed throughout the project in non-real time. Of course the undo and redo function, along with the ability to save multiple versions, allows for a more relaxed approach to decisions made on the fl y. If the producer is a sole operator, setup still falls under the analytical/logical mindset, but it can be time-separated from the creative elements of the production, making the mental switch from the engineer to producer role less challenging.
Producers who also engineer need to beware of allowing technical consider-ations to override musical ones. Performance qualities generally take precedence over sonics: Think about old jazz, traditional music, or any recordings prized for their performance values. They are noisy with limited bandwidth, both of which qualities afi cionados overlook. Perhaps the producer’s most important technical consideration is to make sure the technology is transparent to the artist. Tinkering with equipment when an artist has a creative spark or is “on a roll” can miss the
moment of a great performance or idea. Producers need to have or hire enough technological expertise to use the equipment as an invisible means to the most creative end.
I learned engineering skills in order to have more control in the studio. It is frustrating to fall short of a creative goal because the person in charge of the machines cannot or will not maintain an open-enough mind to reach for objectives outside of the norm. Producers have made many wonderful recordings with very little technical knowledge. However, the less technically inclined you are, the more you depend on your engineer for all sonic aspects of the production. You need to be confi dent that he or she is capable of meeting your needs.
Different types of records require different skills. What a producer does need to know about technology is how it can best serve the music and how to not allow the medium to dictate the methodology. For example, a live recording of a blues band to a DAW does not necessarily need to be tweaked, tuned, and aligned any-more than it would if it was being recorded on analog tape. For some people, being able to see those infi nitesimal discrepancies on a screen and easily (if laboriously) fi x them is impossible to resist.
Producers who are not strong technically need good managerial and commu-nications abilities. They must explain what they want in terms that engineers and operators can comprehend. The economic realities of today’s music industry tend to favor producers who operate with smaller teams. Directly controlling the tech-nology cuts at least one link out of the production chain.
HOW MUCH MUSICAL KNOWLEDGE DO YOU NEED?
How you produce is defi ned in large part by your combination of musical and technical ability. If you sing, write, play, and arrange, you will most likely gravi-tate toward the auteur typology. At the very least, you will be contributing to the arrangements, possibly playing parts and singing backgrounds on the album as well.
Perfect pitch and a degree in music are not necessary to be this type of producer, but those attributes are likely to cause you to become frustrated when persuading bands to play in time and in tune. A self-contained world in which you have direct musical control will probably be more enjoyable.
Conversely, if you have minimal musical knowledge, you will depend on others for musical input. This can include working with bands that are musically self-contained but need technical, logistical, or philosophical guidance. Should the need arise, you can contribute musical input by hiring musicians, arrangers and/or com-posers. Communication can be a binary “yes/no, I like it/I do not like it” process.
Interestingly, certain genres such as dance music, hip hop, and dubstep, all of which have crossed over into pop music, require little formal knowledge of music in order to be an auteur-style producer. In a world of samples and beats where everything is programmed into a DAW, it is no longer necessary to have a strong
grasp of music theory. If you have a reasonable ear and can pick out what you want
grasp of music theory. If you have a reasonable ear and can pick out what you want