A producers integrity

[Soliloquay]

Hello,

This is just a general question to professional producers. When you give a producer a song to produce how much work should I expect he/she to put in on working with the vocals? I have had two experiences whereas people think that melodyning and auto tuning is the "it" factor. No TCE no scrubbing, no draw waves rectified no Nothing. To top it off when they are artists themselves they try to insert themselves/their instruments to drown out you and yours as if they are the performer. Where is the integrity?

[Southsidemusic]

Look for better producers ...

I would never give a song to a producer. I give it to a Mix Engineer and a Mastering Engineer.

[amagras]

Originally Posted by Southsidemusic

Look for better producers ...

What he said ^^ being a producer means not only be skilled but also being as nice and communicative with the artist. A good producer won't stop until the song is perfect and won't hesitate doing what's needed, at least that's what I repeat to myself every day. Now get your pockets ready because it takes a lot of effort and years for a producer to get there.

[albee1952]

Even as comfortable as I am with most of the producers that I work with, I still end up doing a fair amount of "producing" without the credit. Then there are also times where if the producer accepts a take that I really don't like, I will ask for another pass under the guise of either trying something "for me", or I might say that I heard some distortion or other technical excuse to get another take. The flip side of that is, I can often tell when a singer is never going to hit the mark(but I know I can fix it) so I just say. "that's a simple edit. We don't need to burn out the singer over little stuff".

I remember the good old days when the producer would hit the talkback after a take and say, "that take sucked....do it again". Nowadays the producer hits the talkback and says, "that take sucked.....come on in and we'll fix it"

[Soliloquay]

Mybe the problem lies in getting it done on the so called 5 star rated SB. For my last production and mastering every correction that needed to be done on the vocals I had to do it myself and i don't mean re singing. I meaning simple things like TCE of a word or making sure you can clearly hear words that end in consonants or that consonants are not too pronounced. Every time i told the engineer to fix something i had to fix it myself and send him the audio. So what was i paying him for. Besides, I don't know much about working with audio and therefore would rather not have to touch anything.

Couple a years ago someone who i was studying with told us that you should get your song as close to the way you want it as possible because "they don't know squat" At the time I did not think much of it, and now as i begin to work with producers and engineers I realize he was right.



Here is a great story: when Randy Travis who wrote the song "Forever and Ever amen" first brought that song to the studio for production they told him that's not the way its done and that he should go back an re do it. Soon after he re-did it, and brought it back for production the song became a number one hit. Those producers and engineers had integrity. If my song or my singing sucks I want to be told. I don't want people taking my money just to make money. Amen!

[Emcha_audio]

Originally Posted by albee1952

.

I remember the good old days when the producer would hit the talkback after a take and say, "that take sucked....do it again".

I still do that Without using sucked though :)

[Southsidemusic]

Originally Posted by Emcha_audio

I still do that Without using sucked though :)

Same here. I would never let anything pass me by that I can’t say I did everything I could to make the song and takes ss good as possible.

We are on a mission to bring back the great sounding recordings from earlier days as the whole edm pop music producers (most of these guys) have no clue what they are doing and have 0 knowledge of the recording process as they grew up using nice pictures of analog gear on a laptop and a $100 mic going into a cheap interface with too much distortion and call that setup a studio!!

In reality i would call it a computer and a mic, no where near calling these setups a studio. That word has been washed to death and anyone with a laptop and a small 2i2 call their setup studio which is wrong in soo many ways.

Imagine if our songs we deliver to record companies had this low totally smashed and untimed crap done to them ...

Case in point:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HFsKxbrZKNQ

I threw this on to our 5.1 Genelec 1032 system and listened ln our Barefoot monitors MM27 and thought both systems had gone bad with crackling subwoofers and the distortion OH GOD The Distortion ?? They destroyed everything on this ”song” and this type of wannabee producers are destroying music quality all together! Don’t get me wrong, I love Rap and the new sound from Drake, Offset, Migo’s et al HOWEVER Have a quick listen to Snoop Dogg and Dr Dre from the Chronic album for example and just marvel on how great those rap tunes sounded compared to todays extremely sad state of music mixes.

Who in their right mind thought this was a finished product with this aweful extremely sorry mix technique?? WOW!! Enough is ENOUGH

[Emcha_audio]

Originally Posted by Southsidemusic

Same here. I would never let anything pass me by that I can’t say I did everything I could to make the song and takes ss good as possible.

We are on a mission to bring back the great sounding recordings from earlier days as the whole edm pop music producers (most of these guys) have no clue what they are doing and have 0 knowledge of the recording process as they grew up using nice pictures of analog gear on a laptop and a $100 mic going into a cheap interface with too much distortion and call that setup a studio!!

In reality i would call it a computer and a mic, no where near calling these setups a studio. That word has been washed to death and anyone with a laptop and a small 2i2 call their setup studio which is wrong in soo many ways.

Imagine if our songs we deliver to record companies had this low totally smashed and untimed crap done to them ...

Case in point:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HFsKxbrZKNQ

I threw this on to our 5.1 Genelec 1032 system and listened ln our Barefoot monitors MM27 and thought both systems had gone bad with crackling subwoofers and the distortion OH GOD The Distortion ?? They destroyed everything on this ”song” and this type of wannabee producers are destroying music quality all together! Don’t get me wrong, I love Rap and the new sound from Drake, Offset, Migo’s et al HOWEVER Have a quick listen to Snoop Dogg and Dr Dre from the Chronic album for example and just marvel on how great those rap tunes sounded compared to todays extremely sad state of music mixes.

Who in their right mind thought this was a finished product with this aweful extremely sorry mix technique?? WOW!! Enough is ENOUGH

I had my akg k271 mk2 on when I clicked on that link and regretted it instantly, not even going to try listening to it on my Genelec 8040

[amagras]

For someone who doesn't know much about working with audio you have it all pretty clear, that's a great thing to start with!

[Southsidemusic]

I think you are confusing a producer and a mixer as they do different things and you mention sending songs to an engineer in one part of the post and to a producer in another place. Maybe start there and see who does what and then you will understand more what you can expect from each of those titles.