How to Become a Record Producer
The Music Business
Think of the music business as a spider’s web. All around are dotted the carcasses of unwary flies, some formerly fat and juicy, others so small that they were eaten up and spat out in an instant. The flies in my metaphorical web are musicians, songwriters, arrangers, producers, managers, A&R people, record company executives, music publishers, record, cassette and CD manufacturers, pluggers and marketers, DJs, radio stations, record shops, royalty collection agencies and others. That pretty well covers the whole of the music industry (except the music journalists who are far too agile ever to get trapped!). So what kind of beast is it that sits at the centre of the web, growing fat at the expense of all the other poor creatures who have no option but to succumb to his deadly embrace - the music business lawyer of course!
You may have realised this already, but nothing happens in the music business without a lawyer being the go-between in the transaction. A few enlightened souls have discovered that it really is possible to do business on a handshake between honourable people, but for the vast majority, the only way is the legal way. A record producer will definitely need to have a music business lawyer to examine his contract with a record company. The consequences of not doing so could be dire, from a potential loss of all royalties (royalties are often known as ‘points’ in the business, points being a percentage of sales revenue) through to responsibility for budget overruns and possibly even worse. The emphasis here has to be on a getting advice from a specialist music business lawyer. In the past, record companies have dreamed up all kinds of schemes for protecting their own interests against the interests of the creative people who actually earn the money. Although there seems to be a much more responsible attitude developing in the record companies these days, all the old clauses are pre-loaded into their word processors ready to be dropped into a contract. One old favourite trick is known as cross collateralisation. This typically would allow a record company to offset profits earned on one album against losses made on another. Suppose as a producer you made two albums with a band. The first sold well but the other bombed. If cross collateralisation is allowed there will be no overall profit so your points will add up to zero. If your contract however specifically disallows cross collateralisation, as it should, then you will receive all the royalties you are entitled to on the first album while receiving nothing for the second (because you didn’t do your job properly, did you?). The funniest thing is that, despite my opening paragraph, the lawyers aren’t the bad guys - it’s all the people who have tried to screw each other (financially I mean) throughout the entire history of the music business since year zero. Despite many people’s current best intentions, this tradition of distrust means that almost every word has to be inscribed on parchment, signed and sealed, and whether a project should succeed or fail, the lawyer always benefits.
Where does the money come from?
Money, in the music industry, is made from the exploitation of copyrights. ‘Exploit’ in this context is a good word, it means that your work is being promoted well and it is generating revenues. There are three basic types of copyright involved here. In a musical work of any kind there is a performing right and a mechanical right. The performing right means that the owner of the copyright can allow performances, whether live or recorded, of the music to take place in return for a fee. The mechanical right means that the owner of the copyright can allow the music to be recorded, and allow copies of that recording to be made and sold, once again for a fee. The third copyright is one that exists in the actual recording of the music rather than the music itself, and once again, owners of this copyright can allow the recording to be performed or broadcast in return for a fee. There are other copyrights involved in music, such as a musician’s right in his or her own performance, but we’ll stick to basics.
As a producer, you will not be entitled to any of these copyrights. The performing and mechanical rights will belong to the writer or his publisher, the rights in the recording will belong to the record company. (Of course, if you helped to write a song, then you will be entitled to a share of the performing and mechanical royalties). It is important however that you understand these methods of generating income because your livelihood will be very closely linked to them. At the moment it is virtually certain that your income as a producer will come from a combination of a flat fee combined with points. (Some producers, particularly remixers, only get a fee with no points). The points will be a percentage of actual sales of records, cassettes and CDs. The more the record company sells, the more you will earn. If you consider that a top producer may be on something like three points, and a top act can sell millions of copies worldwide, you can estimate for yourself how much you are going to make when your production career really takes off!
The only snag with this arrangement is that sales are only one way in which recordings can be exploited. Performance royalties are a major component of any songwriter’s or composer’s income, in some cases making mechanicals look meagre in comparison. But do producers get points on performances of their work? They do not. This is a major issue in the music world since despite a recent upturn in sales, many people think that performance royalties are going to become the number one income generator for the entire record industry. Although you may be very keen to buy the latest CD by your favourite act right now, how will you feel about going to the trouble of buying a physical object when you can have the music delivered to you directly via the information superhighway at the cost of maybe a few pence a play? Actually, that’s still very much a debatable point, but producers certainly do have to debate it now rather than wait until their sales have declined into oblivion before they do anything about it.
The other side of the copyright coin is of relevance to producers of artists who do cover versions of other people’s songs, and to producers who use samples from other recordings in their work. It used to be the case that once a song had been recorded, then anyone could make their own recording of it as long as the statutory royalty rate was paid. This no longer applies and if you want to cover a song, you must apply to the copyright holder for permission. This permission is almost certain to be granted since cover versions are how songwriters and publishers make much of their income, but it would be unwise to record the song first and assume that permission would be forthcoming. If you think that any of the lyrics of a song need to be altered, to change the song from a male version to a female version for example, then you must be very careful to get permission to do this. In the case of samples, it has been common in the past simply to use samples and hope to get away with it. Once again this is unwise. (One major artist recently used a sample on an album without getting permission. Hundreds of thousands of copies had to be withdrawn from sale, the song re-recorded and the CD repressed, because of this one expensive mistake). The only exception to this is where a CD or CD-ROM is specifically produced for sampling purposes where once you have bought the product you are entitled to virtually unrestricted use.
Management
You may be a brilliant musician, writer, engineer or producer, but are you a brilliant self publicist too, able to charm your way into A&R departments and get to work with the top acts?
Can you be bothered to attend lengthy meetings with your lawyer making sure that every last comma in the contract with the record company is the place most favourable to your interests?
Do you want to break off work every time the phone rings in case it’s someone really important that you have to talk to?
Do you think you could check a record company’s books to make sure that your points have been correctly calculated and that funds haven’t been siphoned off in a manner not allowed by your contract?
Do you think it is worth paying 20% of your income to make sure all these things are properly and professionally handled, leaving you free to get on and produce?
Any sensible person will recognise the correct answer to the first four questions. The answer to the fifth is yes, because even though giving up 20% of your hard earned production fees and points seems like a high percentage, at least it’s a percentage of something. Without a good manager you may be able to console yourself that you are keeping 100% of your income for yourself, but it may just be 100% of no income at all! Your manager may even, through his music business aware accountant, be able to recoup much of that 20% by making savings on your tax bill!
To get to be a record producer, you are going to have to be able to promote yourself in the early stages before you have established a track record of any kind. You won’t find it difficult to find a band to produce, or a singer to work with, because natural -born producers have the ability to get on well with musicians and they are the kind of people that musicians instinctively trust. I have to say that if you don’t think you are this kind of person, you are going to find it difficult to become a record producer - although domineering, autocratic producers are not entirely unknown in the industry! Selling yourself to a record company isn’t going to be quite so easy, but if you are doing good work, then the opportunities are there. Once you have produced a few records that have sold reasonably well, then you are in a position to approach a manager.
Once you have made an agreement with a manager, whether it is a handshake deal or a formal contract, the manager will make sure that A&R departments are aware of you and the type of music you work with. Your manager will keep his finger on the pulse of the business far more firmly than you would have time to do, and he’ll know which acts are planning new recording projects, and whether they are shopping around for a new producer. If an A&R manager becomes interested in you, then he will enter into a lengthy three way discussion between himself, your manager and the artist’s manager. You will be relieved of all the nit-picking business details so that you only have to discuss the strictly musical aspects of the forthcoming recording. If the record company thinks you are the right man or woman for the job, then your manager will negotiate your remuneration. Your manager will have a good idea of your current market value, and of how much the record company is likely to be willing to pay. You will get a better deal by going through a manager simply because he knows the business. If you think you might consider doing the negotiating yourself, pause for a moment to imagine how good a record producer the manager would be!
When the project gets under way, you will need to devote your entire attention to it during virtually all of your waking hours for a period of possibly two months or more for an album. Without a manager, how would you find time to line up your next job? It just isn’t possible. Everyone in the industry has their own schedule - the record company has a certain number of releases to make, certain types of music sell better according to the time of year, the band has touring commitments and you have booked two weeks in Bognor in the middle of August! Juggling all of these is a full time occupation - your manager will let you get on and produce great music, which is probably all you ever wanted to do.
When the recording is finished, in the shops and at the top of the charts, you will be able to sit back and count the money flowing in. Or will you? Collection agencies like the Performing Right Society, the Mechanical Copyright Protection Society and Phonographic Performance Limited look after virtually everyone’s interest apart from the producer. The producer is paid according to what is received by the record company, after whatever deductions are specified in the contract. No reputable record company would intentionally pay a producer even a penny less than he was entitled to in the contract (although they might haggle over even these tiny amounts during the negotiation), but the complexity of the music retail industry means that opportunities for making large accounting errors exist in abundance. Any music business contract should include a clause stating that an independent accountant can be appointed to inspect the record company’s relevant books and paperwork to make absolutely sure that no errors are made. This keeps the record company on their toes to make sure that every last penny goes to its intended recipient.
Manager’s View: Stephen Budd
Stephen Budd is a manager specialising in producers, engineers and remixers. His roster features Mike Hedges, Gus Dudgeon, Martyn Ware, the Rapino Brothers and many others. Their collective credits are far too many to mention!
Why a producer needs a manager
”Producers are not necessarily the best people to go after gigs themselves. They tend to be a little shy about pushing themselves forward. On a marketing level, there needs to be someone on the ground who can go and find out who’s doing what and where, which bands have signed to which labels, which bands are hot, which bands are not. Then I try to market that producer to A&R people or artist managers so that their name is on the top of the pile.
”Reason number two is that producers find it difficult to negotiate deals. It’s very difficult to have someone estimating your own value - it’s a very personal issue. Producers are not always as clued in as they could be as to what their value is in the marketplace. Sometimes they overvalue themselves. More often than not they undervalue themselves. My job is to create maximum income for producers, playing a delicate role without undermining them or losing the gig for the sake of it.
”The third thing is that a good producer should be working a lot of the time. If they are not, and they are good, they are probably not being represented properly. If they are in the studio all the time, the last thing they want to do is answer the phone every ten minutes to sort out scheduling and budgeting for the next project. Scheduling for somebody like Mike Hedges who has just had a massive hit record is horrendous. Every five minutes someone comes on the line with a great act that you would love to work with. It’s very difficult to say no, but you’re having to juggle with so many different elements: artist’s time, producer’s time, studio availability, engineer’s time, the next artist the producer is going to work with.
”Lastly, somebody needs to be there to liaise on the money front, working out how much the record company can afford, setting a budget that works for both parties and making sure the record comes in on budget. That is a job that requires diplomatic skills. All of these elements come into play: marketing, negotiation and project management, these are the key reasons why a producer needs a manager.”
RePro - The Guild of Recording Producers, Directors and Engineers
RePro has grown out of The British Record Producers Guild which was established to give producers a unified voice in the music and recording industries. Current full members include Gus Dudgeon, Steve Lipson, Steve Levine, Rupert Hine, Chris Kimsey, Gary Langan, High Padgham, Phil Wainman, Muff Winwood and Alan Winstanley. The President of RePro is George Martin and the Chairman is Robin Millar.
RePro’s View, courtesy of Vice Chairman, Peter Filleul
RePro Activities
“RePro is a trade association which represents the profession of recording producers, sound directors and engineers. We provide them with a quarterly newsletter and usually about five forum meetings a year. We produce an annual A&R guide, a budget guide, and we are about to provide a legal guide which will advise them about producer contracts. We have three hotlines to professionals who provide free advice, usually up to about an hours worth, ranging from legal advice to accounting and financial advice. We can provide various discounts on equipment which are very useful for people starting up. And of course we provide representation of the profession within bodies that are discussing the development of the music industry. Also, our members become associate members of APRS (Association of Professional Recording Services) so they can attend meetings arranged by the APRS, which are usually more technically biased.”
Membership
“There are two main categories of membership: Full Membership and Associate Membership. Full Members must be recommended by other Full Members and would probably be those who have been around in the industry for a while and have a CV. We would stop people becoming Full Members if they were only part time producers for example. But if you are involved in the industry at almost any level, straight out of college even, or if you are going in as a tape op, you can become an Associate Member. We believe it is important for people starting off in the industry to have access to those who have been in it longer. Then there are Overseas Associate memberships, which have exactly the same benefits as Associate membership except that you can’t become a Full Member of RePro. There is another special category of APRS Engineer membership for engineers who work for APRS studios. Freelance engineers can join as Associate Members. The only real differences between the categories is that Full Members have a vote and are entitled to take part in certain events, such as when a prestigious console manufacturer wants to talk to people who are likely to be working on an SSL or (Neve) Capricorn rather than those that are working in home studios.”
Key Issues
“Income is always a prime concern. We are currently working to acquire performance income through various routes. We are also always concerned with technology and how that is developing. We are the people who are at the sharp end of the new recording technologies. The way that technology is moving so quickly means that very often problems are foisted on the recording producer which should not be his problems at all. As far as the profession is concerned, we are becoming more and more involved in all kinds of areas throughout the industry because we believe that the producer is the most pivotal person in the whole process of making the products that make this industry survive. We have a very important role to play in the way the industry develops in this extraordinary transitional period during the digitisation of the industry. The implications for revenue streams when sales are made by transmission are profound, and the way that the entire industry is financed may change. We want to make sure producers will be involved in this change and properly compensated for the increasing role they will be plan
How to Become a Record Producer
The Knowledge
As I said earlier, you can’t become a record producer without having a deep understanding of your chosen style of music. It has to be up to you to gain this understanding and to invent ways in which you can extend the boundaries of this style, perhaps further than anyone could have imagined. You will however also need a knowledge of the mechanics of record production, and skills in using the resources at your disposal to best advantage. With these matters I can help, at least enough to put you on the right track. In this chapter, I am going to list many of the technical details you need to know to become a record producer, but it’s up to you to do the leg work and actually acquire the knowledge, just as a would-be taxi driver is issued with an A to Z map but has to go out and drive the streets until all the possible routes have become second nature. Let’s start withƒ
Music
Record producers don’t need to know anything about written music. There are plenty of people who would probably tell you otherwise, but they are probably classically trained musicians who are merely dabbling in the real business of music and not actual record producers themselves. As a classically trained musician, I realised a long time ago that the dots are only a means to an end, but so many so-called musicians really do believe that a musical score actually is music. Music of course doesn’t exist until it is played, or a recording of that music is played. A printed sheet can only ever be a rough guide to what the music is supposed to sound like. If you do read music, beware that it is all too easy to get bogged down in the notes and not really listen to the music - you can’t see the wood for the trees, to quote an old saying with a similar meaning. If you don’t read music, don’t ever let yourself think that you are at a disadvantage - quite the reverse in fact since you are totally free to listen and create. You can always hire an arranger as and when you need to.
Having said this, some of the terminology of music notation is commonly used among non-reading musicians. If one member of a band said, “I think we should throw in a 5/4 bar and change the hihat to a triplet rhythm”, and you didn’t understand what he was on about then you might feel inclined to worry just a little. Don’t waste your time on worrying about what you don’t know yet - just ask them to try it, and if it sounds good to you then store that phrase in your memory for future reference! I would say that you are much better off picking up this type of knowledge as and when you need it and be driven by the needs of the music, rather than having your head stuffed full of the technicalities on which formal tuition tends to concentrate. The main thing is to be around musicians and learn the vocabulary of your chosen style of music. And if you don’t know the proper term for the idea you want to communicate to a musician - just sing it! That will get the message across in a much more direct way.
If you are working with samplers and sequencers, then you will need to understand the letter names of musical notes and also time signatures. Unfortunately, no-one has yet invented a computer that you can sing to and say you want it to sound like this! So, as well as having to be technically knowledgeable about the equipment, you have to know a lot of musical technicalities too - or work with a programmer who knows it all.
Beside the notes and rhythms of music, there is another aspect which is much more difficult to master - the sound of music. It’s difficult enough to imagine notes in your head, and you can always play them on a keyboard or guitar if need be, but if you are going to be a truly creative producer then you will have to be able to ‘hear’ the sounds of different combinations of instruments before even a note has been played (and before the session musicians have been booked!). What’s more, you are going to have to be able to do this with all the sonic manipulation and trickery the recording studio has to offer. Trial and error, and sometimes sheer luck, play an important part in studio recording, but they will only get you so far. The best producers can do a lot of the creative work in their imagination, and then set about making it happen for real on tape.
To develop your musical imagination you should start with whatever knowledge of music and recording you have already, then listen to a favourite CD and try to work out exactly how every sound was created. At first you will say, “Ah yes, that’s a bass guitar”, and you will probably think that is all there is to it. An experienced producer on the other hand will probably hear much deeper into the sound and say that it’s a Fender Precision bass with flat wound strings, played with a plectrum into a valve amplifier, miked with a dynamic mic at a distance of a couple of metres and mixed with the DI (direct inject) feed into the console. Similarly, you may hear a scratchy vocal effect set deep in the mix recurring every verse, while the producer will be able to say exactly which James Brown record it was sampled from, and probably make a pretty good guess at how much it cost to get copyright clearance! In fact, the more producing you do, the more detail you will hear in your records. To give an example, I have recently been exploring what variations in sound I can get with reverb on low frequency instruments such as bass drum, bass guitar and bass synth. And now that my ears are tuned into this sound I am amazed at how much low frequency reverb I can hear on CDs in my collection that I never even noticed was there before. The more deeply you can listen into recordings, the more you will develop your musical imagination.
Instruments
As I have previously mentioned, you don’t have to be able to play an instrument or program a computer to be a producer as long as you can get hold of people who can do these things for you. If fact, you are probably much better off just sitting back and listening rather than getting too involved with the nuts and bolts. But you do have to know what sounds are available from all the different instruments in common - and not so common - use.
Staples in the popular music world of course include acoustic and electric guitars, bass guitar, keyboards, drums, samplers and turntables. But you need to know about the subtleties on offer within each group of instruments. Even a non-guitarist knows that there are electric and acoustic guitars, for example, but a producer should have a mental list of all the different types available, and mental sonic images of the sounds they produce:
Nylon strung acoustic (classical guitar)
Steel strung acoustic
12 string acoustic
Electric (non-humbucking pickups)
Electric (humbucking pickups)
12 string electric
Electro-acoustic
Bass guitar (electric and acoustic)
Mandolin and Mandola
Banjo
Resonator (Dobro)
Pedal steel and Hawaiian
So you wouldn’t just be thinking, “Let’s try a guitar on this track”, you would be consulting your mental database of sounds, and almost certainly subdividing this list further. For example, among electro-acoustic guitars, an Ovation has a very different sound to a Takamine or Washburn. Among electric guitars, the Fender Stratocaster and Gibson Les Paul (to name two classic models) are quite unlike each other sonically. The way the instrument is played makes a big difference too. Plectrum and fingerpicking styles are obviously different techniques - but even the thickness of a plectrum can change the guitar’s sound enormously.
With orchestral instruments, there is a vast range of sounds on offer and the way you will get to understand what they can do, individually and in combination, is by listening to CDs, or by getting hold of a CD-ROM about musical instruments which will give you at least an introduction to what they sound like. As I said earlier about the way a producer listens to a recording, there is very much more to any instrument, or any group of instruments, than would be immediately obvious to anyone listening to them seriously for the first time. And however much you feel you understand an instrument already, there is always more that can be learned, as any good player will tell you.
In the case of electronic keyboard instruments, the strange thing is that it is easy to be overwhelmed by the vast number of seemingly different sounds a synth can produce, and it is tempting to think that keyboards are all you would ever need to make a record. This is not the case however, since even the latest synths produce sounds that are insufficiently complex to satisfy the human ear for long, and it is very difficult to make an all-synth album and make it good enough to listen to over and over. The same applies to samplers, and as a producer you will find yourself working very much harder to get an interesting sound than if you had used conventional instruments. Note that I’m not saying that you shouldn’t use synths and samplers, just don’t fall into the trap of thinking that they are going to make your life easier. In reality, you are going to have to put your creativity into overdrive.
Equipment
Some studios have so much equipment that you might think it is impossible for one person to understand it all. Unless you have an aptitude for equipment, and you want to become a producer through the engineering route, I suggest you keep your hands off and leave it to the engineer! You should know what everything does however. I will leave any gaps in your existing knowledge to your own research, but you need to know about the following, and understand what implications they have on the sound of the recording:
Microphones
Mixing console
Multitrack recorder (analogue and digital)
Stereo recorder
Loudspeakers (often called monitors)
Compressor
Noise gate
Digital reverb unit
Pitch changer
Multi-effects unit
Effects
There are two types of effects: those which come in a rack mounting unit or as a guitarist’s stomp box, and those which are painstakingly created with the imaginative use of studio technology. ‘Instant’ effects are often part and parcel of a musician’s sound, particularly in the case of guitarists, and include wah-wah, phaser, flanger, chorus, delay and distortion. You will of course need to get to know what all of these effects sound like so that you know when to use them. (Sometimes you’ll have difficulty getting guitarists not to use them!). Certain styles of music require the recording to be pretty much an accurate representation of what would actually be heard on stage. An ‘honest’ recording if you like, where effects are used sparingly merely to enhance what is already there. Most recordings use artificial reverberation, and you will need to explore the capabilities of pro studio favourites such as the Lexicon 224X and 480L digital reverb units thoroughly. But often you will need to go beyond the obvious to create a new sound world in the studio, and you may not be able to find what you want prepackaged into a handy unit. To explain all the effects that are possible in the studio would require a whole shelf of books, not just part of one chapter, and you can only really learn from real life experience in the studio. Remember that as a producer, you don’t necessarily have to know how to create each effect, you only have to know what they sound like and have an imagination for what you could do with them. So each time you work with recording equipment or in a studio, try to find out a little more about EQ, reverb, compression, gating, delay, pitch changing and all the other effects. Learn by listening so that next time you need to thicken up a limp lead vocal, you know that it should be EQed, compressed and given some delay and reverb. And if it’s really weak you’ll know that adding a slightly pitched changed version to the original will bolster it up, at the expense of making it sound just a little less human. If it all sounds complex and difficult, that’s because it is. But you don’t have to know all about studio technicalities straight away, as long as you have good people working with you and you know what you want to achieve musically.
How to Become...
Since you are almost at the end of ‘How to Become a Record Producer’, I suppose I should actually tell you how to become one since you have been waiting so long! For your benefit I have distilled the information I have obtained from top producers into a few simple guidelines:
If you want to learn how to produce, just get in a studio and do it. You can learn a lot from books, quality home and project studio recording magazines such as ‘Sound on Sound’ and recording courses, but you can only really learn how to produce by working in a commercial studio.
To become a producer through the engineering route, get into a good recording studio by writing lots of letters to every studio you hear of. When you have written to them all with no success, wait three months and write again. You may have to write hundreds of letters to get one interview.
To become a producer through the musician route, get in with a band or other musicians who are regularly recording in good studios. Observe everything and learn.
Approach a band and offer them studio time at your expense, with an agreement to share in any profits of course. When you take the recordings to a record company, make sure the A&R manager knows that you are the producer and it is you that has made the band sound great. Liaise with the band’s management and try to get them to share to recording costs.
Find a singer and arrange and produce the instrumental backing, preferably in a professional studio. Take the tapes to a record company, or use them to get professional management for the artist. Record companies prefer acts who already have management.
Make a recording and release it yourself on your own label. If it sells a couple of thousand or more, it’s enough to make a record company take you seriously.
Once again, just do it!
So that’s it. How to become a record producer is no big secret. If you have talent and determination you can start to become one today by saving some money towards your first session in a pro studio with a pro engineer. At this very first session, you will indeed be a producer and you will be doing exactly the work that a successful record producer does. How far you get in the business is up to you - only a very few can carve out a successful, continuing career. But when you do achieve recognised producer status, make sure you write to me via the publisher of this book. You don’t have to thank me because I haven’t done anything except to point you in the right direction. Send me a copy of the record or CD and I will have the satisfaction that I played a very, very small part in its creation. You will have the satisfaction of achieving something that is the ambition of everyone, probably hundreds of thousands of people the world over, with an interest in recording music. You will have become a Record Producer!
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