Posts Tagged music
Careers in Music, Film, and Digital Media: Music Producer.
Digital Media Academy News + Events | April 12th, 2010 by Seamus Harte
Let’s look at the role and responsibilities of the Music Producer within the music industry. A music producer can wear many hats. I will try to cover them all here, but do know that depending on the project a producer may wear all of the hats or perhaps just one.
Let’s check out some of the hats the music producer wears:
1) The Idea Hat
It can be the music producer’s job to gather ideas for the project. This may seem vague, and it is, that is why artist hire a music producer. When all is said and done with the production of an album you essentially have a CD that has on record 12 – 15 “ideas”. It is the music producer’s job to steer this idea harvesting.
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is an example of a “concept” album. On this album the Beatles worked with their producer George Martin to collect and shape their ideas of an album recorded by “Sgt. Pepper” and his band.
2) The Golden Ear Hat
Once the idea of the album is agreed upon the music producer can put on his Golden Ear Hat. While wearing this hat the producer will be responsible for making the decisions of song selection and musician selection. Lot’s of times a band will go into the studio with the general idea of an album and perhaps more songs than can fit on one album.
The producer will help select which songs should be put on the album by determining which songs best support the overall concept and idea of the album.
Often to bring the songs to their full potential additional musicians need to be brought in. Perhaps, the chorus of a song would benefit from a horn section, but none of the band members play any horn instruments. Or sometimes, the band members themselves need to be replaced for the best sound on record. The producer is responsible for making these tough decisions that can ultimately make or break the album.
3) The Coaching Hat
Once the musicians and songs are selected the producer then becomes the coach in the studio. The producer is now responsible to coach the artist and the studio musicians to come together and create the most accurate record of their ideas at hand. Perhaps this is helping the drummer find the groove or discuss different approaches with the guitarist for the solo. Sometimes it can also be much more psychological than musical. Maybe it’s making the vocalist feel confident so they give the best vocal performance.
4) The Schedule Hat
It is very important to not only have a schedule but have one that allows for your artist to provide their best performances. It is the producers responsibility to keep the production on schedule in terms of finances and release date, but also in terms of morale and fatigue. What is the point of having the record released on time if you exerted your vocalist too much during the production and his vocals are the best? This balance of schedule is very important and requires the producer to juggle the demands of many different people in the process.
5) The Follow Through Hat
Once the production involving the artist is done they are able to go back on tour or go home and relax, but the record itself is still far from being done. The producer is responsible to oversee the Mixing and Mastering process. The mixing process is where a mixing engineer mixes together all of the audio files gathered in the recording process into one sonically beautiful stereo track. The mastering process involves a mastering engineer that ensures that each individual track on the album matches the sonic qualities of the other tracks on the album. Again it is the music producer’s responsibility to oversee these processes and ensure quality control.
These are examples of the hats that a music producer would wear in the record making process. The term “Producer” in some genres such as hip-hop, pop, dance, and electronica, is the actual producer of the music. These producers are the ones responsible for the production of the music track, or the “beat”.
Hopefully this shows you a little into the many hats of the music producer.
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Digital Audio & Music Production for Teens @ Digital Media Academy Summercamp 2010!
Digital Media Academy News + Events | April 1st, 2010 by Tyler Winick
That’s right, this summer The Digital Media Academy is holding digital audio & music production courses for teens! The class covers all you need to know about digital music production. Learn to record, use loops, sample, mix, master and output to make professional music right on you desktop computer or laptop! You’ll get a sense of how to work with a variety of techniques to produce outstanding digital audio under the supervision of an industry pro who will help you bring your audio ideas to life. In addition, you’ll get your hands on the latest digital audio production equipment and musical instruments. Each student will be provided their own top of the line computer equipped Logic Pro 9 and will be guided step by step in the creation of their own music and audio productions.
This summer course is tailored for all skill levels and is 5 days of non-stop fun and learning. If you are new to creating music, have some experience, or want to know how to make music that sounds like your favorite artists, this summercamp is for you!
Sign up today for a great summer computer camp experience @ prestigious Universities across the United States.
http://bit.ly/9rZi7Q
Music-Making with Logic Pro
Digital Media Academy News + Events | April 1st, 2009 by Ben
Hi, I’m Ben Jaffe, one of DMA’s instructors. In our Music & Video Production course, we’ll be composing and recording an original song, mixing and mastering it, and creating a music video and dvd to accompany the music. We’ll be using the best software tools for the job. I’d like to talk a bit about mixing music in “Logic Studio,” the audio software we’ll be using.
Logic Studio is one of the industry standard audio software packages used in recording studios. I believe Logic is easier to learn than many of the others, but it is just as versatile and powerful.
There are several steps to recording a song. First, you write the song, and decide what instruments play which parts. Then, you record the parts, and input the parts for the software instruments. After that, you mix and master the song. I’ll be talking about those last steps in this blog entry.
Mixing is mainly just setting the volume levels of different instruments so they sound good together. When you go to a concert, the engineer standing in front of that huge board somewhere in the back-center of the audience is the sound mixer. In that case, the mixer only gets one shot at mixing it right, since they are mixing a live show. Recording studios are great because we have plenty of time to get the song to sound exactly the way we want it to sound. And if something sounds entirely wrong, we can just re-record it!
We can also use automation to simulate live mixing. If we have a guitar solo, we can push the guitar’s volume slider up to make it louder, and pull it back down after the solo is over. Automation lets us do this automatically exactly the same every time we play our song.
There are other tricks we can use. When we record an artist playing or singing a part, we call that a take. We usually record several takes so we can get the best one. If none of them are perfect, we can actually stitch multiple takes together and use the best parts from each take. For example, if the guitarist botched one chord, but the rest of the take was perfect, we can substitute in a chord from another take to fix it. Logic makes splicing clips together very easy. In the project pictured below, I had two substandard takes, so I used different parts of each take to create a better one. (You can hear the song at the bottom of this post).
We can also add “Equalization” to a track. “EQ” lets us change the volume of specific ranges of frequencies. In other words, if the vocalist’s track sounds muddy, we can boost the higher frequencies and take down the lower ones to increase the clarity of their voice. If we have a high-pitched whine in the background, we can take out just the offending frequency.
Here are some examples of the kinds of problems we can fix by mixing the song. I recorded this song with my friend Misha Byrne a few months ago. For all three examples, I’ll play the unmixed version before the mixed version, so you can compare them.
In the first clip, listen to the volume levels. The vocals get a bit quiet on “Maybe I’ll never see…”
In the second clip, you may notice the high pitched noise in the background. Also, the ‘t’ in “heart” gets lost in the unmixed clip.
In the third clip, notice the error in the guitar on the last chord. In the mixed version, I spliced in another recording of Misha playing that chord correctly to make it sound better.
I’ve only mentioned a few of the tools recording engineers and mixers use to arrange and mix songs. We cover them all in our Music and Video Production Class, plus we cover the video side of things as well. We’re all very excited for this class. There is so much to learn, and this class will give every student the knowledge they need to get started in both audio and video.
Here’s the full song. Misha Byrne is a singer, guitarist, and songwriter in Queensland, Australia.
I hope to see you all this summer. This course will be a blast!
-Ben
How to Make a Music Video : Learn the skills at a DMA Course
Digital Media Academy News + Events | February 26th, 2009 by Philip Harding
Have you ever wanted to know how to make a music video like professionals in the music industry?
Digital Media Academy is offering a week-long Music Video Production training course at many prestigious universities across the U.S. Get involved with the multi-billion dollar music industry. Get a jump start in your career! Mix beats, record samples, and create a sweet video production in just one week. This 5 day class will teach you the techniques of making music and making videos – then mixing the two skills together.
Learn the skills to make music videos like you’ll see on MTV and VH1. Work on the latest computer equipment, video equipment, audio recording equipment, production software and cameras. The only limit is your creativity at DMA summer camps!
Check out the Music and Video Production Course.
Digital Media Academy offers teen film camp experiences, film camps for kids, and professional level video production and digital filmmaking courses for adults.
Computer Camp for Teens
Computer Camp for Kids
Make Music Videos like the Pros
Digital Media Academy News + Events | February 19th, 2009 by Philip Harding
Written by Tyler Winick of the John Lennon Tour Bus
If you know anything about the John Lennon bus you’ll know that we travel the country 10 months out of the year making music and video projects with students around the country. We’ve recently teamed up with the Digital Media Academy to bring week long, hands on music video production courses to campuses across the nation this summer. The course is called “Come Together” and will offer in depth instruction on the creation of music videos all the way from droppin’ beats like a clumsy farmer to editing like Spielberg, that’s Mr. Spielberg to you buddy.
I’ll be co-instructing the Music Video course with an experienced member of the DMA team, Travis Schlaffman, who has led teen summer camps from DMA now for six years and has a lot to teach and some pretty cool tattoos!! I’m looking forward to it and It should be a great collision of Bus style projects fused with DMA’s critical hands on learning. For more info visit:digitalmediaacademy.org. See you this summer!
View the Music Video Course page here.
