Tech Sessions #14
Real Producers Vs. Beat-makers
Check it out, I was on a conference call the other day and an interested label party straight up asked if we were real producers or just beat-makers. Now at first I was semi-taken back. My answer was quickly ‘we are producers. We see the record from start to finish.” After a second thought I came around and understood why dude answered the question.
And not to come at anybody too hard here but the truth is: there is a divide going down in the production scene. There really are a lot of cats who are coming up who really believe that their work is done when they get a beat picked off their beat CD.
In my mind, that doesn’t make you a producer that makes you a songwriter, collaborator, musical partner or whatever… pick a term. But dropping a hot beat by itself excludes you from being a serious producer.
Why? Well, look at cats like Dr. Dre, Quincy Jones, Timbaland, Roni Size, Rick James ( r.i.p.) and more recently (to name a few) Just Blaze, The Neptunes and Kanye West. Their work is or was not limited to executing the musical end of shit nor in a lot cases was limited to what came off their MPC.
Even from the musical side of things, these gentlemen all at one time or another have coached studio/session cats into giving them whatever musical element they are looking for onto their tracks.
Now before somebody says ‘well I can’t afford to go and get a session guy,’ understand that this is not my point. My point is that more times than not production is vision and the execution of it.
Yes, a song may technically take birth with your dope ass beat but what happens when it comes time to lay those final layers on the joint? Or what happens when somebody cuts a vocal that’s half-assed for whatever reason? Who is the person that is responsible for seeing the vision all the way down the line? Not the engineer, it’s the producer.
Honestly, the smartest thing we ever did I believe was throwing ourselves into the vision mix as early into this thing as we did. I don’t even think we had more than 10 beats that we liked before we were on the street looking for rappers and singers to turn them shits into songs.
That forced us, whether we realized it at the time or not, to figure out the real dynamics of a great song. That forced us to be our own engineers in a way that we knew how to make the beats sound hot, the vocals sound hot and most importantly how to make it all sound hot together. That forced us to learn more shit about people even because when you walk with somebody through the ups and downs of their life, you not only learn about them you learn a lot about yourself and what you are capable of.
Pardon a brother if this sounds like it’s on some I’ve been to the mountain shit. It’s not even like that. But as we enter into a phase of where things are falling into place, I personally am in that zone where I am kind of reflecting a bit.
And if there is one thing that I am proud of is the fact is that I can say with confidence that my boy and I are producers….
Glover is one half of the Atlanta, GA based production squad The Audio Assassins which are founding members of The Elements. You can find them both at Audioassassins.com and theelementsinc.com
Message Glover and hip him on real producers and beat-makers and how you differentiate between them!
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The 2-Way
Replies: 7
posted by: kounslor @ 09/02/04: 12:12 PM EST
Nice read Audio. I'm really loving this column. I have a quick question for you or anyone else who cares to answer:
How prevalent in urban music are "producers" who aren't beatmakers?
posted by: Audio Assassin @ 09/02/04: 12:12 PM EST
depends... everybody has a different level of involvement in what they do. Even five years ago I would have said in r&b it's less about making just the beat but that's changed a lot. Which is fine w/ me I think it opens more doors for hip-hop on the real.
posted by: big family @ 09/02/04: 04:04 PM EST
Excellent read.
Kouslor- Just look at the credits. There's more bold-faced names than you can imagine.
posted by: Greg Soundz @ 09/03/04: 09:09 AM EST
I've been saying this for years. Most of the cats that "we" celebrate are not producers. When you study how records used to be made then you can have an appreciation for what a producer really does. My mentor Skip Scarborough (R.I.P.) always stressed the responsibility of a producer on a project. Not only is he/she dealing with the creative side but also dealing with business end...making sure musicians get paid, staying within the budget allotted for the song(s), working with the studio and the label (A&R).
It may sound elitist to some, but there is a major difference between producers and beatmakers.
posted by: Greg (Afreex, London) @ 09/08/04: 10:10 AM EST
Glover, this is a great read and a much needed post. As you know with carrying out the vision of a joint it is often necessary to make sure that the other aspects of the "production" such as the business end are tight and taken care of.
My production partner Kelv and myself work very well together by covering the creative and the business end.
Often times even once you make a hot joint you then realize that promoting it begins with YOU too. Both the industry and the fans need to hear what you've done in order to get the momentum moving on it. Production teams now are becoming more self-contained in the sense that the vision is being realized from start to finish and even post-finish these days since many investors(fans and labels) need to hear a "story" on a joint before they take to it. Before it was easier to depend on label infrastructures to do the post-finish side however now we all have probably seen many cases where you can take it to a label and they may not entirely understand what you have created. It is our job as producers to also make sure that our work is understood too.
Good post, G. What's up Audio. Holla soon.
posted by: Audio Assassin @ 09/08/04: 12:12 PM EST
very good points Greg... yeah... when we come across the pond I know you know the spots right?
posted by: Greg (Afreex, London) @ 09/08/04: 05:05 PM EST
Audio,
Get your ticket and bring your good shoes. We've got some runnin' to do over here. :-)
Paz,
G
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