Production is NOT Composition!!

[Wibbles]

30 minutes ago, David Sprouse said:

Is it a product if there's no commerce?  See that's the deal...money....It'll never happen here though you can bank on that.  FAO

My apologies for not being clear. 

By end product, I meant the quality of the music at the end of the process, not it's commercial viability. 

[David Sprouse]

ok.  Thanks for taking the time out of your busy day to respond to my post!

[David Sprouse]

7 hours ago, craigb said:

Hi back at ya! 

Jaymes got old and can't take the buffoonery any more apparently.  He still contributes on the occasional song though (adding some great videos too).  Hopefully, he'll find being old gets boring and come back. ?

As for the hairy Prince and his misbehaving wife, my last name might be very English, but I'm 100% American, so I can only laugh at the situation (and feel sorry for Canada)! ?

I bet you're glad the weathermen around here are both alarmists and alarmingly WRONG 90% of the time, ya?  Ten days ago the forecast was for about a foot of snow between Tuesday and Thursday, but all we got was about 1/32nd of an inch - LOL.  I'm still glad I chose to stock up on supplies and stay home all week.  Even in the best weather, the loons around here are horrible drivers!

Right, the angry inch of snow.  Well,  I've given up on anybody around here's ability to predict the future. 

[Wibbles]

5 minutes ago, David Sprouse said:

ok.  Thanks for taking the time out of your busy day to respond to my post!

My schedule could never be described as busy. 

Everyday is Saturday for me. 

[Starise]

I keep forgetting this isn't a serious discussion lol.

[slartabartfast]

It is still fairly easy to define a composer: a person who imagines and captures original musical ideas in a transmittable format. In recent centuries that usually means someone who wrote down the notes the performers would play, although music notation literacy is not required to transmit musical ideas. The composer was typically distinguished from the arranger: someone who takes a basic musical composition and modifies it to be played in different voices, styles etc. Those roles were often performed by the same person. And from the performer: the person who used some physical action to produce the sound. The same person could obviously be performing more than one of these tasks. 

Similarly it is fairly easy to get consensus on the terms recording engineer: the person who manages the technology to record a performance. Or a mixing engineer: the person who adjusts the levels and effects to produce the final mix. Or the mastering engineer: the person who managed the levels so that the stylus would not cut through into an adjacent groove on the wax master at the peaks while still producing a pleasantly audible signal on playback. 

I think it has never been clear how to define the record producer. A good attempt could be made by saying it is the person who is hired to have the final decision as to when the recording process is over, although for various reasons that decision may be made, in practice,  by performers, financial managers or others. A more generous definition would be the person who has overall responsibility to manage the recording process offering whatever input he can get the other participants  to accept. To the extent that he offers alternatives to the basic musical structure, he is acting as an arranger or co-composer. To the extent that he sits in, either in real time studio or in the box he may be acting as an engineer or even as a performer. 

The fact that one person is capable of performing many roles complicates the problem, but it does not mean that the specific roles are identical. Of late it has become the fashion to have the producer, which was formerly a more circumspect role often played by a recording house executive or assistant, claim credit for the recording. In the era of the superstar producer, it is difficult to say what specific roles are being taken, and it is to the producer's advantage to keep any limitation to his contribution hidden and take credit for everything.

[Michael A.D.]

Me:

Composition --> Production -->  Composition is refined --> Production is refined --> repeat till finished.

 

[bayoubill]

Production for me is hitting the record button 

[bayoubill]

Composition for me is already done before I record anything 

[Starise]

People like titles for some reason. He's a "composer". She's a "producer".  I don't even think that way. I simply look at where I am, where I want to be, and what I need to do in order to get there. If I need help in an area I will look for it. It's a lot the same as cars are extensions of us to go somewhere. You get in it and make it do what you want it to do. You have a plan and the car is a tool. The car doesn't make anything for me, it just gets me there.

I understand there are people here who take this stuff way more seriously than I do.  There are the people looking to get "hooked up" with other people or a record company to try and make something happen. There are plenty of services offered to the wanna be professional musician for a fee.

I never had a direction other than I like to make and play music. Never cared where that took me. I remember sitting in my garage with a guitarist, a bass player and a drummer. I had some weird lyrics ...but I thought it sounded cool. When you're 27 the world is your oyster. I would play a melody and someone else would throw something else into it. Pretty soon we had a song. The hardest part was remembering what we did so we could play it the same every time and trying to make something in a group of 4 with 4 different opinions on how it should be. As seen by a professional composer we would just be a bunch of kids playing around in a garage. Like when you were 5 and pretended to be Batman. That process is still technically  composing even if it rubs Mr. Grey Poupon the wrong way. Probably most of the best rock and roll came about like this. A few guys throwing ideas together. No notation. Maybe a few lines scrawled on a napkin. No DAW for miles. I had a multi track. Our production was US. If we sounded good we could take it to a studio and any decent engineer could obtain a reasonable facsimile of us. If we didn't sound good, nothing you did in the studio could help. We liked playing and just doing that was enough then.....oh sure we had aspirations. Don't we all.

Get a group of guys like that together now. If one or two of them own or can use a DAW and knows how to mix....to heck with the studio. Most decent bands have their own studio rigs now. If you go somewhere, save the stems for a larger studio.

Production in the classical music scene is a lot different. For one thing they are funded better at the higher levels. A 50 year old who has played violin since they were 4 doesn't even think about a DAW. They make a decent salary to play. Let someone else worry about that. They bring in an engineer who makes the recordings. Someone else sells the music. Composers don't usually play in the orchestra, conductors conduct, promoters promote, accountants crunch the numbers. We aren't talking about 4 guys here we are talking about 50+ musicians who are very good at what they do. It's a whole different ballgame.

Edited January 21, 2020 by Starise

[bayoubill]

"People like titles for some reason."

I can think of 2 really good reasons not to mention how much fun they are to play with! I'd say more but I Am afraid I'd get excited and that could kill me

being so old etc

[Starise]

I see what you did there....or did you? 

[bayoubill]

sorry my bad

I didn't have my glasses on.

 

[slartabartfast]

On 1/19/2020 at 2:47 AM, Tezza said:

In film, the relationship between the Director and Producer is what drives everything. I would think of composition and production representing the Director and the Producer. The composer is the Director, assembling and creating everything and that's where it ends for most people doing music.

I think a more apt analogy exists in the world of commercial literature. It is generally understood that the author of a book is the source of the initial shape and substance of the work, and to credit him with the final form. But the role of the editor is much less obvious, and the role that the editor plays can vary dramatically.  Like the music producer the editor's basic job is to make a final decision about the publication of the work, and to shepherd it through the publication process. He may enlist the assistance of illustrators, cover designers, copy editors etc. in the process as well. The editor may just check for factual errors, grammar, punctuation and lack of clarity, risk of libel etc. and not offer the author much other guidance. He may also perform tasks that have a major influence on the structure of the entire project. Some editors offer suggestions about basic organization, cutting and moving paragraphs or whole chapters. Some will request re-writes based on their own perception of how the reader will react to a basic theme, plot or character aspects so that in the final draft the remains of the original may be barely recognizable. Although the contributions of some talented editors of famous works are legendary among the literati, it is still the generally followed custom for the editor to remain officially unacknowledged, even when most of us would consider the editor's work to be co-authorship.

[marcL]

5 hours ago, Starise said:

As seen by a professional composer we would just be a bunch of kids playing around in a garage. Like when you were 5 and pretended to be Batman. That process is still technically  composing even if it rubs Mr. Grey Poupon the wrong way. Probably most of the best rock and roll came about like this.

Sorry, I don't agree at all! If I consider all the renowned songs that I like and where I know something about the composers, then I dare to say that most of the time there was/were only 1 or 2 persons involved in the composition of the songs! Only the arrangement was usually created by the whole band.

[Christian Jones]

To counter my own previous statement I can think of one person right now, Diane Warren, who I'd say draws a clear line between composer and producer. I don't know what she's doing now, but when she was writing songs for Milli Vanilli and Aerosmith et al she just had a simple keyboard and recorder, really nothing special, and she'd write these simple little ditties on the keyboard and record them and give them to some producer(s) who'd make those little ditties into hit songs. You know what, no.. whoever that dude was who made her keyboard riffs into songs most definitely engaged in composition. Or production. What's the difference? Call it what you will but when I'm sitting at my daw pocketing notes and making them groove or even putting a tremolo or a delay on a guitar part that's all songwriting to me. 

[David Sprouse]

2 hours ago, Christian Jones said:

To counter my own previous statement I can think of one person right now, Diane Warren, who I'd say draws a clear line between composer and producer. I don't know what she's doing now, but when she was writing songs for Milli Vanilli and Aerosmith et al she just had a simple keyboard and recorder, really nothing special, and she'd write these simple little ditties on the keyboard and record them and give them to some producer(s) who'd make those little ditties into hit songs. You know what, no.. whoever that dude was who made her keyboard riffs into songs most definitely engaged in composition. Or production. What's the difference? Call it what you will but when I'm sitting at my daw pocketing notes and making them groove or even putting a tremolo or a delay on a guitar part that's all songwriting to me. 

Agree again.   Look at the new plugin by clearmountain.  All of the effects are those signature sounds from songs that he produced.  They really were essential to the process of creating the songs.  

[Christian Jones]

31 minutes ago, David Sprouse said:

Agree again.   Look at the new plugin by clearmountain.  All of the effects are those signature sounds from songs that he produced. They really were essential to the process of creating the songs.  

Word. Yeah terms and different people's interpretations of them are funny to me sometimes. I know we have classic definitions of these things and I respect that but I've got my own ideas. Like, I use the term "write" or "wrote" a lot. I'll tell my friend I wrote this guitar riff or that I'm writing this song and he (before I schooled him on my terms) used to take that as I meant that I wrote the music notation of the riff or song. I could do that though I've never written a riff for any instrument that way outside of theory class. It simply means I came up w/ something. This other guy I know--a drummer (go figure)--I'll tell him I'm working on this beat or that beat and he still always takes that to mean that I wrote a drum part and *only* a drum part. I'm having a hard time schooling that cat though despite that--and this is especially true in electronic and hip hop circles--just about everyone knows that a "beat" doesn't usually denote a lone drum beat. 

56 minutes ago, David Sprouse said:

They really were essential to the process of creating the songs

I consider myself a songwriter and that's all, and *anything* I do after that is from that perspective. So if I'm "engineering" or whatever it is, to me it's just another step in the song creation process. Mastering, however.. I think that's removed enough to be its own thing. 

[Starise]

4 hours ago, marled said:

Sorry, I don't agree at all! If I consider all the renowned songs that I like and where I know something about the composers, then I dare to say that most of the time there was/were only 1 or 2 persons involved in the composition of the songs! Only the arrangement was usually created by the whole band.

I can see why you  disagree since a lot of good music was written by only one or two people. I've seen the whole band work on stuff as well. Depends on the group I suppose. No two bass players would play a run the exact same way, no two drummers would play it the same, so I see that as a part of the composition if all they had was a chord chart or some kind of an idea of what was wanted. Until you have all of that you don't really have a composition. Unless a person steps in with very strict ideas and maybe even some notation that are to be followed the band has some creative input into the composition which is part of the composition.. This is why I always thought session players got a bad deal...feel free to agree to disagree.

I always favored the more open democratic band as opposed to the closed minded few. Both have been successful. I was once in a band with a guy who was always quick to enforce that this was HIS song. Fair enough, but that same person just did whatever he wanted to do with others work without any regard for anyone else. It wasn't he didn't care. He just didn't think because it was about him. In some ways DAWs are a way to get away from all of that crap. In other ways it can be negative because so much more could happen with a team of real people. I have co written with people from all over the world using a DAW. That can be a really great thing, can also be frustrating. It's an nice solution though to writers block when you put two or three minds together on something.

 

 

[marcL]

12 hours ago, Starise said:

I can see why you  disagree since a lot of good music was written by only one or two people. I've seen the whole band work on stuff as well. Depends on the group I suppose. No two bass players would play a run the exact same way, no two drummers would play it the same, so I see that as a part of the composition if all they had was a chord chart or some kind of an idea of what was wanted. Until you have all of that you don't really have a composition. Unless a person steps in with very strict ideas and maybe even some notation that are to be followed the band has some creative input into the composition which is part of the composition.. This is why I always thought session players got a bad deal...feel free to agree to disagree.

I always favored the more open democratic band as opposed to the closed minded few. Both have been successful. I was once in a band with a guy who was always quick to enforce that this was HIS song. Fair enough, but that same person just did whatever he wanted to do with others work without any regard for anyone else. It wasn't he didn't care. He just didn't think because it was about him. In some ways DAWs are a way to get away from all of that crap. In other ways it can be negative because so much more could happen with a team of real people. I have co written with people from all over the world using a DAW. That can be a really great thing, can also be frustrating. It's an nice solution though to writers block when you put two or three minds together on something.

 

 

I think I understand what you and some others here mean. I totally agree that each bass/guitar/keyboard player or drummer does play differently to the same song and I 100% agree that there are definitly songs that profit of a special, inventive instrument line (a good sample is the bass/drums of "Come Together"). I also agree that there are songs that would not be half of the value without some instrumentation or vocals. But nevertheless I think this is instrumentation and not composition! And it is wrong to believe that the composition is the thing with most value, in some songs the other parts of the whole process are even more important! ?