|
It's time to debate: Where do you stand with ghost engineers/writing
|
View this Thread in Original format
| DjStephenWiley |
This is something that doesn't ever seem to get much attention, but is yet one of the driving factors of dance music. Quickly pull up the Top 10 Trance DJs in the world and any producer worth his salt can rattle off at least 50% of their ghost writers (or engineers as we artists like to call them, it sounds better)
So where do you stand? Don't take the middle ground here! You've got 3 choices.
1. A producer who plans to write his name on a production should write the entire song or a very large majority of it and be responsible for a very large majority of the engineering processes, leaving only the final mastering to be done by a professional. He should only refer to engineers or writers for questions, and do the work himself.
2. A producer who plans to write his name on a production should do some of the writing and give input on how the track should be born and come to life while being hands on throughout the process. Most heavy responsibilities are on the ghost engineers/writers should, and at the end the producer who plans to write his name on the track approves and then stamps his seal of approval and off to the mastering house it goes.
3. A producer who plans to write his name on a production should do little more than review basic elements and structure. He should provide he engineer/writer with a rough blue print of his desires, listen to a few updates along the way, suggest some changes here and there, and then ultimately stamp his seal of approval once he feels the track is good enough to have his name written on it.
I know there are a lot of variables not mentioned here such as multiple people working together and often projects have way more than one person. Newer artists (bedroom artists) are mostly one man machines but prior to the death of vinyl there were many more hands in the production process. With that in mind, we're nearing 2010 so let's try to look at today's practices and draw our conclusions from that.
I could make arguments for all three honestly. Some are going to say choice #3 is lame as hell, but if a producer/DJ is touring 100 days out of 365 and has his name at stake when writing it on a track, shouldn't that be enough? Is it OK to pay for this because most top names simply don't have the time to not only produce but stay up to date on technology.
Now reverse it, I can see how a music purist sitting in his bedroom who has spent the better part of his life learning both engineering and composition would be outraged at that idea. Completely understandable. How could somebody claim a track as their own when they did little to nothing to produce it?
And then of course we have #2 (which I suspect most people will agree with) - In most scenarios, the producer draws up the ideas, gathers audio, writes some of the MIDI, etc. He convey's his desires to his engineer, they go back and forth, both of them hands on with the production. The producer ultimately approves of the track, stamps his name on it, and gives proper credit in the publishing credits and sometimes $$ to compensate.
So, what do you think? |
|
|
| DJ RANN |
Personally, I'm #1 but there's not set thing in this industry.
Some composers (film score) I work with are nothing more than producers, in the extreme cases telling the talent (studio musicians, singers, players) to come up with something and them taking credit as the writer/compser becuase they led the artistic direction.
In the mainstream music industry, you'll find that most "producers" are somewhere between #2 and #3. Very little of the big producers actually do all the work themselves. Most producers whenthey reach that level are technically a team effort, relying on people they trust and are part of their circle to provide the actualy meat and potatoes under direction of the producer.
However, some of the big producers really do get deep and dirty on productions, do most if not all of the production and the engineer is not much more than doing the editing in small touches. These are the peeps such as William Orbit, Dave Holmes and Danger mouse.
An example of #3 is Sister Bliss - AFAIK, she literally just gives direction while the vast majority of work and production, including a big portion of the writing is done by engineers/sub producers.
Allegedly, Moby's Porcelain was done like this also. He went round and got the recording of those vocal samples but a lot of it was put together by other producers.
For EDM, I think you should do the work as a producer yourself. It's kind of the nature of the genre and often innovation in the scene comes from producers pushing the boundaries. Getting an engineer to do it all for you isnt cheating as such but for some reason I accept it with other forms of music, just not really with EDM - It goes against the grassroots element of EDM itself IMO. |
|
|
| zodiac9 |
When I first found out the big name DJs use ghost writers, it bothered me. I don't mind producers having a team of people, composers, engineers, ect. It's when they try to hide that fact, and lead everyone to believe they did it all themselves, that bothers me. I don't know how often this goes on, and if any of them try to hide the fact by omission. I have heard of deals where ghost writers sign a contract to keep their mouths shut, after selling their productions to DJs. That seems shady to me, it's as if they are buying someone else's creativity and claiming it as their on. EDM seems to have more of this, compared to other genres. With Country, Rock, Hip Hop, credit and/or publishing is usually given to everyone involved. No one is trying to hide the fact they have help.
I definitely would lose all respect for a DJ if I knew they used ghost writers, and tried to hide that fact. Leading people to believe they are musical/technical geniuses who do it all themselves. All that said, 1 and 2 are preferable to 3. DJs need to stop all this BS, and just admit they have help. They should lend their valuable DJ imput and oversight to a production, and give the co-writer publishing and credit. That simple, be invloved in the process and give credit where credit is due. In the end, no one is going to care what I think. So screw it. Where do I sign up to be a ghost writer anyways? :) |
|
|
| Nightshift |
Armin van Buuren is in the #2 catergory.
FYI. |
|
|
| sixofour.604 |
| quote: | Originally posted by zodiac9
it's as if they are buying someone else's creativity and claiming it as their on. |
Its not "as if they are", they are. Welcome to hip-hop. Most rappers don't produce any of their beats. And some of them don't even write the lyrics, they are just a persona picked to form a product. |
|
|
| DjStephenWiley |
I unfortunately live in Country Music headquarters and they actually have song writer awards for the writers who make the lyrics and sometimes more for the "big names"
I said in the original post to not be a middle man, so I'm going to say I lean towards #3 and this is the main reason why. First, I am not saying this is what I would do. I'm saying I think it is ok because ultimately that person, whomever it may be, has to write their name on that track. The "producer" in every case will always "approve" the work by writing their name on it. If they believe the music is worthy enough to have their name and they have negotiated terms with an engineer or writer, then so be it. It's nothing more than a service in my mind.
Here is somewhat of an analogy.....First pretend your a woman (I know this is hard) and pretend your rich and moving into a home in Hollywood with no furniture and you decide to hire somebody to come in and design everything. You pay that person, and it's done. Then you invite your friends over and show it off and who are they giving compliments to? (This isn't the perfect analogy because they would ask who physically did the work, but they probably wouldn't ask who DESIGNED the work because they would assume that you did) - Now let's say your designer completely screws your house up.....Are you going to be so quick to move in, pay the person, and invite all the friends over? Hell no. Not until it's met your standards.
I could really sit here and write up analogies all day. It is not far from a typical service industry gig. It just irritates us a little more because it's our specialty.
I'm not saying I agree with it all, but I can honestly say I do not look at artists who use or don't use ghost writers any differently. That is their business. I actually have more respect for artists that ghost write and in particular ones that I associate with. It's quite fascinating. It reveals so much more about EDM and how business is conducted. If you don't know much about it, and you got a heap of information regarding it, I guarantee it would not only blow your mind but make you look at dance music in ways you never thought of.
I've actually seen a remix submitted to (now that MJ has died) the worlds biggest pop artist. She quickly sent it back and demanded changes to be done. They were done and everything was A-OK. The catch is the person writing their name on the remix was on the other sise of the world while all of this happened. |
|
|
| mfitterer1 |
| quote: | Originally posted by sixofour.604
Its not "as if they are", they are. Welcome to hip-hop. Most rappers don't produce any of their beats. And some of them don't even write the lyrics, they are just a persona picked to form a product. |
Most rappers are rappers, not producers. They deliver the vocals. It's always been that way and it's fine because you'll usually see (Produced By Dr. Dre) in the song title. The problem is you don't see that in EDM. There are some people that don't even give proper credit in the title to vocalists.
It comes down to this. EDM is based on volume for some ridiculous reason. It doesn't make sense but it is. When this is the case and there are some artists putting out 50 tracks a year, there's always something new to listen to. Thus good tracks go by the wayside into the oblivion of the past far easier than they do in other genres. look at rap/hip hop. A good club banger will be playing in the clubs prominently for 6-8 months usually. There are maybe 3-4 songs a year in trance that get that type of recognition and play. There are reasons for this.
1 - Most DJ's are technically lacking and think that a song is outplayed when it's not. I.E if you use it in different ways every time you use it; it retains more of it's value and doesn't get overplayed as quickly. Also the more sporadically that someone plays it the longer it can get played for without being "overplayed".
2 - Money. In rap and hip hop you are drawing from 10-100x the audience with your work. Therefore you can make 2 big tracks a year or an album every 2-3 years and be financially well off enough to not have to push out works that haven't matured fully yet. In an environment where everyone is putting out tons of tracks (most not fully developed, where there are 6 million labels, it makes people think they need to push out things more often to stay competitive and keep their name in peoples mouths. In actuality this is the single worst thing about edm. it is ruining creativity. The effect of this is the guys who tour constantly don't have time to develop their tracks to the point they would if they weren't touring. So they hire a team to make/finish their projects for them. I understand it's a necessary evil for the people with schedules like that but I will never respect the people like that, even if their work is good.
There is a system for a reason. To be broken. The people that break it will reap the rewards while the rest of the people sit confused as their 50 tracks a year sell less than someone who has their mind in this game correctly putting out 5 awesome fully developed tracks a year.
The whole industry won't turn around until a good portion of the producers do this. Seeing how easy it is to put music out these days I doubt it will ever happen. Which makes the field all the more lucrative for the people who do "get it"
My 2 cents. |
|
|
| MrJiveBoJingles |
I just like to know who is actually doing what. I don't care if producers have help along the way, but it would be nice if they could admit it. If it says "[insert big DJ name]" on the track, but was written and engineered by someone else, I feel like I've been lied to.
:p |
|
|
| DjStephenWiley |
| Well, with everything going digital, you really are not getting much from a download unless the tags are properly filled out. even if they were, i'd bet 95% of the people would never look at them. Not being informed really doesn't bother me. Binding your engineers with NDA's does. |
|
|
| BshidoHEAT |
I guess it depends on where your at, and what your able to get away with.
Most people are at #1, referring to those bedroom producers/dj's that just want to make some music for fun and maybe get a release or two. People here don't want/can't afford engineers and/or don't want them. This is where I stand, production wise. Not to say that I wouldn't mind them, it'd be nice to have to just worry about the creative process lol.
I'm not going to judge any producers that choose #3 though, if someone said "I'll pay you a million dollars to put your name on this track". I can't say I won't turn down a million dollars for such little effort. Hence, I wouldn't want anyone to judge me. |
|
|
| CLICK_RAREVINYL |
Hiring ghost producers and getting credit for their work is not the way to call yourself a producer you must produce everything yourself but with so much talent available I don't see why anybody should be afraid of collaborating with another producer or hiring session musicians to come up with melodies and then getting the credit for their work provided of course that they too get some credit. Everything in a project must be your work and you should be judged based on that because a producer is somebody who produces the music but a producer is also somebody in charge of a project so I don't see why everything in that project should be your own work. :tongue3
 |
|
|
| EgosXII |
I've written about this a lot in a few forums, but i'll have a little rage about it here as well just for funsies...
it annoys me how closely tied djing and production are. the truth is djing and production are extremely different. i get annoyed when djs think that production is so easy, something that can just be done over night... the amount of times i get a dj coming up to me and saying "man, i gotta get into production, i have so many ideas..." like just because they can mix 2 songs together they think they can create masterpieces... anyway, i just think this kind of thing is really annoying... and when they realise they can't produce, they hire someone to do it for them for the fame!
if you can't make the song yourself, then you should not get the credit for it. it's true that it happens in a lot of scenes (obviously in pop music the pop stars have (usually) nothing to do with anything creative etc), but edm is edm... it carries the intrinsic assumption that the "dj" behind the tune is the creator of it.
of course there's no way to stop it, it's unbelievable how many djs are doing it these days, even really small-time ones who you would never have guessed would be paying someone for their tunes... and yet they are...
i just hope every time someone tells them how much they like x tune, and every time they play the tunes and they go off at a club that they die a little inside... :p |
|
|
|
|
