Until a session is sitting in front of me, predicting exactly what a song will require is nearly impossible. The boundaries between composer, musician, engineer, and producer are constantly shifting depending on where and when inspiration strikes.
This poses challenges not only when it comes to pricing my services in advance, but in defining my role as a producer more generally. When clients point to my solo work and say, “I want something like that,” my first thought is, I spent hundreds of hours on that and wore virtually every single creative hat throughout the process! Are you willing to pay me to be your composer, engineer, producer, and more?
This ambiguity is a sign of the times.
Until very recently, the technical and financial limitations associated with recording music caused the various elements of the production process to be highly specialized, sequential, and siloed off from one another. Songwriters, musicians, producers, and engineers each worked within their own spheres, rarely overlapping in their roles or responsibilities.
There was no such thing as recording without a clear endpoint in mind; studio time was simply too expensive. This meant that every note, chord progression, and lyric had to be meticulously crafted and finalized before a single recording session could begin. It wasn’t uncommon, in fact, for even the most renowned bands not to play on their own records, because seasoned session musicians like the Wrecking Crew were simply more cost effective.
Whereas today’s tools allow for hundreds of tracks to be recorded and re-recorded independently, the 4-track and 8-track machines of the past required producers and engineers to bounce multiple parts down to a single track, permanently blending those elements together and limiting flexibility during the mixing process. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is perhaps the most famous example of an album created under these stringent circumstances, an impressive feat carried out by producer George Martin.
Advancements in technology, however, have revolutionized this process. Digital audio workstations, affordable high-quality recording equipment, and sophisticated software plugins now allow for a far more experimental and free-spirited approach to music production. This makes it increasingly difficult to define the clear-cut roles and/or phases within the process of producing music.
The Weeknd’s producer Illangelo serves as a testament to this reality. When asked about his process, he replied that it is “difficult to talk about, because I do everything at once. The moment I receive files, I am composing and treating things (...) Writing, producing, mixing is all one fluid process for me. There’s no separation between any of the things that I do.”
There is great beauty in the idea of recording music without a predetermined role in mind. This enables musicians to break free from the demands of commercial music and allows creativity to flow unbounded by the constraints of time and money. At the same time, the paralysis of infinite possibilities should not be underestimated. Freedom cannot exist without context and structure, and it has never been more important for producers to develop the discipline necessary to recognize what a project requires of them.
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