© 2012 Vinny Ribas
These days every other musician owns a home recording studio of one form or another. This makes it easy to seriously consider cutting costs by producing yourself and recording your demos at home or in a friend’s studio. There are certainly times when that is all you really need, such as when you are recording work tapes or generating pre-production ideas. It might be fine for you if you are just producing a product to sell to your local fans at gigs. However, hiring a talented, established producer might be your wiser move if you are looking to release a commercial product or a competitive songwriter demo.
Here are some of the advantages of hiring a great producer for your project:
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- A good producer can help you develop a unique sound that sets you apart from the hundreds of thousands of artists competing for the same fans.
- You have an objective, outside professional opinoion on everything you do and everthing that is important to putting out the best recording possible.
- He will help you stay within your budget by picking the best studio, musicians and engineers that you can afford.
- He knows, has access to and carefully chooses the best players and vocalists for your project. Just because someone is a great musician or singer doesn’t mean that they are right for the sound you’re trying to capture.
- He can get a great deal at a higher-end studio because he brings projects there often.
- He can pick the most appropriate studio to record in. He knows the sound you want to capture, and knows which studios have the right equipment, the right overall vibe and the most appropriate physical configuration to capture it.
- He can help develop the sound you are looking for. You and he will spend time in pre-production, tossing around arrangement ideas, instrumentation ideas, vocal ideas etc. This saves you valuable time (and money) in the recording session itself.
- He will help you develop the overall concept for your project. This provides a sense of continuity and reinforces your branding.
- He will assist in choosing the very best songs for the project. If he is a good songwriter himself, he will help to strengthen your original songs (with your permission). He may also have original songs that you want to record. He may co-write with you. Or, he may have a relationship with publishers or other great writers who will let you listen to their catalog to find the perfect songs.
- He most likely has valuable connections to help before, during and after the recording is finished. This can include everything from guest singers to contacts at record labels. He might even call in favors that people owe him to help in some way.
- He knows which equipment to use to get the sound that you want, such as the best vocal microphone for your voice, the right effects to use on the vocals and instruments etc.
- If your agreement with him includes ‘points’ on the back end (a small percentage of the sales), he has a vested interest in helping you sell a lot of CDs and downloads! This is not uncommon when hiring an experienced producer.
- He can help you save time and money by picking musicians, and vocalists who won’t need 20 takes to get a song down.
- He can help to eliminate limitations that you or your smaller studio may have. For example, he can access musicians that can play better than you or your friends can. He will choose a studio that has all of the effects, processors and microphones that you need to get the sound you want.
- If you hire a cutting edge producer, you will have a very contemporary sound.
- He will help you and the other vocalists get the absolute best sound possible as well as give the absolute best performances you are capable of. If that is not his genius, he will bring in an experienced vocal producer.
- He may have knowledge of or access to marketing and distribution channels that you don’t have.
- He will help you put out a radio quality recording. This is important for getting terrestrial and internet airplay worldwide, getting great reviews, getting press coverage, selling more music, getting gigs and much more.
- Your high-quality recording will be good enough to pitch to film, TV and commercials.
- Your songwriting demos will be produced well enough to compete with the demos being produced by hit writers, giving you a fighting chance at getting cuts,
- Your music-only (no lead vocals) master recording will be good enough to license to other artists to record their vocals over, or to be used as karaoke tracks. It can also be used in films and TV.
- Your producer will pick the very best engineer, mix engineer and mastering engineer for your project, insuring that your final project is of the highest possible quality.
In order to be competitive it today’s market, your music and recordings need to be as good as, if not better than, the other artists vying for the same fans, aiplay slots, gigs etc. Be honest with yourself because your career depends on it. Do you have the talent, skill, production knowledge, equipment, contacts and resources to record a high-quality project that will help you get where you want to go? If you do, that is wonderful! If not, I highly recommend you interview a number of producers, listen to their work, and then choose the one that both ‘gets you’ and has what it takes to produce a killer project for you![/private_member]
