TranceAddict Forums (www.tranceaddict.com/forums)
- Production Studio
-- Specialization of Labor

Specialization of Labor

People continue to improve their home studios (gear, room treatments, etc.) and their mixing/mastering skills, taking on a lot of responsibility that could be divided amongst several people (writing, recording/engineering, mixing, mastering). I don�t think it�s necessarily bad, and believe people should have exposure to all elements for making a song.

But, where do we start spreading our capabilities too thin? Most won�t be experts at all aspects; most won�t have the resources to actually do some of those steps properly.

What impact does this have on final results? Someone spending more time in an area they have weaknesses instead of focusing on their elements of strength. It seems it could result in songs that don�t live up to their potential in one way or another.

I understand that EDM is not lucrative and there are built-in limitations for entry. There are always exceptions and exceptional people that will counter the above. But I think there is vast potential that benefits all of us that circumstances might be pushing out or precluding.

Just interested in other opinions and thoughts�

Re: Specialization of Labor

i won't be releasing anything in the future unless it's mixed/mastered by a professional. I've learned my lesson, although depending on the music you make and your audience, with Landr coming about I think that'll be good enough for the vast majority. How many people can even tell the difference really. Again it depends on your audience.. I'm doing my best not to sound cynical but I think you get the point. It's sort of a non-issue with the current state of things

Aye what palm said, touchay

lol

I don't necessarily disagree... although the paradigm may be shifting.
the exceptional cases will continue to garner success.
But, just look at guys like TILT. They are a model of specialization and workflow. 2-3 guys handling everything, for the best album out this year.

I think the biggest reason I lost interest in trance was my inability to balance songwriting and production. I just didn't have the patience to sit and fiddle with onscreen knobs and sliders for hours trying to chase a certain sound that I didn't know how to accomplish without trial and error. I'd be so burned out by the end of it that arranging all the patterns and automation clips into a cohesive song just seemed like too much of a chore to approach from a creative standpoint and my music sounded generic as fuck because of it.

I've been recording music with a friend of mine for the last year or so and he has a mixer that we plug guitars and keyboards into and just fuck around with. We'll record a quick loop on guitar, hit record on the mixer, let it run for 3 minutes and turn it into a song by adding layers bit by bit. It's a ton of fun and very refreshing compared to the sort of workflow you're stuck with on a DAW.

Welcome back Kysora! I wondered what had happened but you did exactly the right thing; Endlessly trying to construct a track on laborious and slow going workflows is a sure-fire way to kill your passion for making music.

I once did a week long session with Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (mars volta, Antemasque etc) - they would even go so far as to completely ban any talk of production among band members when writing, not even little comments while jamming etc. You just play, that's it, and have engineers/tech record it. Period.

It sounds extreme but his method was that role of production itself, kills pure creativity so do not allow one to bleed in to the other.

Not saying that I totally agree, but when you're regarded as one of the greatest living guitar players, you do kind of have a point.

Getting to the crux of the topic, EDM is virtually completely unique in that we have always been expected to do so many roles that in any other music genre, you would have several, if not many other people doing.

We're the sound designer, composer, arranger, sequencer, synth programmer, orchestrator, engineer, assistant engineer, producer, mix engineer and mastering engineer, all in one.

Some do it really well (like PVD and Jaytech) but others need a lot of help.

I once saw a documentary on SisterBliss (of Insomnia) in the studio and she was literally telling a guy "I want it to sound more whoofy" etc and not even touching an instrument, key or mouse.

One guy I know who had quite a successful DJ and track career,

was telling me how he doesn't step foot in a studio without his preferred engineer as he just can't do both the writing and producing without someone technical.

Just like him, some "producers" just write the melodies and have a engineer put it all together and make it sound right.

Even DeepDish would do this. For any recordings, they would hire a studio, have their engineer guy do the recording, they would then do the work in Logic to make the track, but then it was given to a protools engineer to mix.

Personally, I try to do it all myself, but that more because I love geeking out on the process. If I was serious about really wanting to put tracks out, I'd probably just invest in more things that allow me to just jam like electribes and synths etc, then treat the rest of the elements (Sound design, engineering, mixing) as completely separate / compartmentalized stages of the process, not this "do it as you go / wear all hats at once" thing.

That bit about Omar is awesome, I feel like that's the attitude I have at this point with music. I don't even save most of what I write anymore, I just have a guitar, an electronic drum kit and some Korg synth from the 80's plugged into a mini mixer, which outputs to a TC Flashback X4 looper and finally an amplifier. It's a giant mess of cables and instruments all over the floor and it's just fun as fuck to build up a nice layered loop and jam over it, then just start over and try something else.


The cool part is, I tried picking up FL again after that and I had so many new ideas and approaches that I never considered before. You know how some synths make crazy modulation sounds if you play and hold a patch, then switch to a different preset while it's still playing? I was messing around with Synth1 and really liked those sounds, so I recorded myself doing it with random patches through Edison while the rest of the song was playing and it pretty much made the whole track. You can really hear it when the bass changes and during the breakdown. And the best part? That whole song took me maybe 2 hours to write beginning to end, it doesn't sound polished but fuck, I've put weeks of daily work into tracks that I think sound terrible now, I don't think it's worth the grind anymore.

It's pretty neat what you can learn from going out of your comfort zone. All I ever knew for the better part of 7 years was a 100% software workflow, I wish I realized how much it was holding me back.

yeah i cant mix master or produce for shit but have good ideas and can arrange well i just want to let things flow i wish i could go live but im not technical at all

quote:

Originally posted by Kthought I don't necessarily disagree... although the paradigm may be shifting. the exceptional cases will continue to garner success. But, just look at guys like TILT. They are a model of specialization and workflow. 2-3 guys handling everything, for the best album out this year.

The exceptional cases will continue to garner success, that's why I was trying to preclude them from the conversation. They're what I consider the exception to the rule.

Edit: misread part of your post. I do agree with what you're saying. And I would like to add: I think many successful artists out there are doing exactly this, but not making it apparent. They act as one, but there are several people behind them.

The comments posted I think reflect a general tendency towards agreeing with the concept that specializing is overall the better approach. I'm concerned that collectively we are experiencing a dilution of output and talent because so much responsibility falls on one person.

I don't think this is entirely unique to EDM either. But the effects are all the same.

quote:

Originally posted by DJ RANN I once did a week long session with Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (mars volta, Antemasque etc)

and at the drive-in, and de-facto, and bosnian rainbows, and ximena sari�ana... and le butcherettes.. and a million others..


Just saw Antemasque at the Metro a couple weeks ago. That guy has unbelievable stage presence. Same thing all the legends had. About what year did you work with them? I've read stories about recording Frances the Mute where the band was completely isolated and were told to play their parts with no actual context of the songs

quote:

Originally posted by meriter and at the drive-in, and de-facto, and bosnian rainbows, and ximena sari�ana... and le butcherettes.. and a million others.. Just saw Antemasque at the Metro a couple weeks ago. That guy has unbelievable stage presence. Same thing all the legends had. About what year did you work with them? I've read stories about recording Frances the Mute where the band was completely isolated and were told to play their parts with no actual context of the songs

Nice! I didn't bother listing the other ones because most people don't know them.

This was in 2008. He wrote some the tracks / co-scored (if you for a film with my old boss and I was assistant engineer on the project.

It was bonkers, not because of him - he's a really nice guy, very chilled but at the same time extremely focused on his craft, like most true artists. What was bonkers was that they had been working on the film for 5 years, finally got to the point it had been filmed....

....and we had all of 5 days to compose, record, engineer, mix and deliver a fully finished score.

It was during these sessions that I learned what my limits are in terms of work vs sleep.

Omar is just raw talent in the truest sense. The only other person I've worked with that had that sort of natural un-academic talent was Tom Morello (but that's a story for another time ).

The issue was that with score composing (more so than any other type of music) is the pinnacle of intellectualization of music; By that, you have to think from an incredibly analytic standpoint to compose music that not just conveys the emotion, but both adds to, and compliments the images dialogue - in some cases the score makes the film something greater than the sum of it's parts and the best composers are incredible at making intelligent choices and intellectual analysis on what fits etc.

With Omar, he it quite literally the best example I can think of for the exact opposite. It's all about feeling and letting what comes flow. He even said while we were doing it that he has no idea about the process we were all trying to achieve because he is so far removed from that method of working.

I was chatting to him and his guitar tech (who also happened to play in some of the bands at the time) and they would have this look that would get shot to whoever started tying to talk about the music/what to play or think out loud - basically a cold "don't you fucking dare". That's how they work. It's the extreme end of don't over think it. (Kinda don't fucking think it at all).

All we were given we quite literally a few "sketches" of ideas for themes for certain cues which amoutned to little more than 30 second guitar riffs. We tried a million different things including writing new material from scratch but ended up really just going back to those sketches in the end and recording polished versions. We made it after a week of sleep but I've done a project like it; Thankfully with the talent involved (both Omar and my Boss) the finished product was realized.

It was like putting together a band of talented people who had never worked together, then locking them in a studio and a week later somehow coming out with a finished product.

Sure, you think, why not sounds like a cool idea?

Then you remind yourself this is for a film score on a $20 dollar movie that took 5 years to make and is going to be released in 10 days

Crazy fucking times.

Given a choice, I would stick to just composition. I would leave the mixing and mastering to someone else. I'm fairly good at mixing, but I always begrudge the process. I just spent 3 days trying to fix a click or bonk in a track. It was several instruments converging only when certain notes were being played. I tried EQing, that only helped a little. I finally just removed one of the instruments, problem solved. Anyway, three days lost that I could of spent composing.

Oh well, that's bedroom producing for you, we have to do everything ourselves. Specialization of labor is ideal, but most of us don't have that luxury.

Good points sonix and zodiac, but this is really what it all comes down to;

Where do you draw the line? In EDM, especially when starting out, you simply don't have the resources to pay people for each part. Sure, you might be able to beg, steal, borrow, BJ, for help but 99% you're on your own.

This is where the traditional "producer" meaning comes in, not the broad bastardization that we use for EDM.

I know traditional "producers" that don't touch a thing in the studio. They literally give direction and everyone from Enigneers to Musicians all do their thing and the "producer" just leads the direction - in many instances they really are just going with the talent in the room.

One very well known grammy and emmy winning TV and Film composer I know, has quite a bad rep by those that truly know him (aside form him being an asshole as well) for quite literally, gathering studio musicians, having them play what they think will work, having his assistants arrange and orchestrate, then having engineers producer the final thing and him taking all the glory in his acceptance speech. He can write themes but about 90% of his work is other people's doing while he executive produces it.

I'm shit at writing melodies. I'm a ninja at engineering and mixing. I should really just hook up with someone that musical talent but is weak on the technical side, rather than always trying to do it myself lol.

Powered by: vBulletin
Copyright © 2000-2021, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.