Music Tech Forum Week 4

In our second week of looking at producers in-depth we discussed the importance of picking the right producer for an artist along with choosing the right producer for their genre and what it is that makes a great release. Artists along with the help of their producers are constantly striving everyday to record a great release but what exactly does that mean? A great release isn’t just an album that rates no.1 on the charts and rakes in millions of dollars (although that doesn’t hurt) but rather an album that makes you want to play it over and over until the laser of your CD player dies.

A good producer earns their fame and name by creating something that makes them unique. That something is a sound that they then become wanted for by every artist in that particular genre(s). Selecting the right producer for an artist can be the most the most crucial factor behind their success, imagine The Beatles without the brilliant mind of George Martin would they still be the world wide phenomenon we remember them as today? But with this being said it’s not always the case of putting a great artist with a great producer to get a great release as history has shown. With technology becoming easier and more accessible a large number of famous artists are taking control of their sound and producing it to get the sound that they have in their head e.g. Female singer PJ Harvey now produces her own songs and has had great success in doing so.

Another common thing with producers are that they may not want to have anything to do with the engineering on the album just so they can concentrate on pre-production, creating a great release and squeeze every bit of talent out of the artist onto the album.
So as history has shown us this far it has now become evident the fact that thousands of artists around the world are beginning to engineer and produce their own work. We then have to ask the question will there be any work left for engineers like us in a few years due to the lowering prices and easiness of technology.

References: Fieldhouse, Steve. 2007, Adelaide Uni Lecture