Blog Entry - Producers in the Music Industry

As a class we are to take on the responsibility of being our own musical producer for this upcoming project.

So what exactly does a musical producer do? What are the potential problems we could face being our own musical producers? What aspects will prove the most difficult?

A music producer or record producer (not to be confused with an executive producer, who is predominately in charge of the finance side) is essentially the overseer of the musical creation process.
Phil Ek (a noted American record producer) describes his role as "the person who creatively guides or directs the process of making a record, like a director would a movie.' ''Interview with Phil Ek'' HitQuarters. 25 May 2009.

So we, as a unit (taking the  role of a record producer) have the task to present our product (a song/s) to an executive producer - in this case the executive producer is our tutor.

Each of us are to present a brief demonstration of our own composition to the rest of the group, and based on the criteria listed below, we will then holistically judge them out of a total of 30.

The Criteria is as follows - (Each question is marked out of ten).

- How well does it respond to the brief?
This is important, as the composition should be taking inspiration from three albums we were assigned to listen to - Ry Cooder Chavez Ravine, Laura Marling and Vampire Weekend.

- Is this non person specific?
This is crucial - if the technical requirements of the song is only suited for one extremely specialist musician, this limits the capabilities that the song will have as a commercial product.  

- Is it performable?
This essentially means can the song be recognised as a stand alone piece? Is it still recognisable if played on both solo guitar and piano, or simply acapella? This is a good indication of how strong the song is as any 'hit' song can be extracted to the bare minimum and still be as effective and recognisable to the audience.

It is also important to note that 'personal preferences' should generally be avoided, as we are not trying to make friends with this task, we should instead be judging them as professional producers.