The role of a music producer is hard to define, and any definition given will most certainly have outliers unless extremely vague. The spectrum is wide with some producers handling almost everything outside of the initial idea of the song, such as Steve Albini on Nirvana’s ‘In Utero’ producing, mixing, engineering and even helping out to some degree with arrangement and songwriting, evident through the use of cello on the album. Some producers take a significantly more laid back approach to making records such as Rick Rubin who under his own admission has ‘no technical ability’ and rather works as a music producer through giving the band suggestions and drawing the best performances out of a musician that he can. Similarly there are producers who are highly technical, such as Trent Reznor working with synths, samples and creative & odd artistic choices when recording live instruments, such as recording guitars through amp heads but then bypassing speaker cones and going straight to the desk.
This got me thinking about what sort of producer I would want to be, and where I want to specifically hone my skills as a music producer. While the production style of Rick Rubin has proven itself to be massively successful such as when working with Johnny Cash or System Of A Down, I feel that it only works when an artist is open to suggestion or unsure about their direction. For example, it worked for Johnny Cash as he was unsure about his place in the modern music industry and wanted to revitalise his career, however Black Sabbath and Slipknot have both been critical of his approach to records, as both bands already appeared to know what they wanted and seemingly found his input (or lack of in Slipknot’s case) very unhelpful. On the other side, there are highly technical producers such as Steve Albini who allowed Nirvana to pick their own takes when mixing in the studio, as he saw they clearly had a vision fully formed already and instead worked technically by engineering and mixing the album. This is the example I would like to follow, honing my skills in a way that makes the producers role more technical, offering guidance in the form of songwriting or arrangement when required, however able to work with appropriate mixing and production tools with little input into the creative vision when needed.