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Originally Posted by Franco  Hm, I respectfully disagree it has anything to do with passion for "making" music from the standpoint of an engineer. First off, I know this is the way the industry works these days and "comp'ing" is a typical process that happens with the biggest names out there today, what I find interesting is that at the end you talk about "passion for making music."
You're not the one making the music, you're doctoring it. I completely agree with your statement about being passionate with music, but only if it's coming from the artists who sing and play it. James Brown used to tax his players if they got their chops down slightly off, George Martin actually played on many Beatles records, but when you're talking about taking takes and re-arranging them, you're not making music; you're re-arranging the music to suit your vision, and sure, maybe you took a line here and there and made the verse sound better, and if you did your job well, the listener can't even tell.
But that's it - that's all you're doing with this. You're taking the "best" parts of a performance and stitching them together; you're hiding the artists' mistakes. As a producer however, what are you doing with the artist in the studio to get them to "legend" status, where they can nail it in one or two takes? |
Sorry, felt to pipe in here......I believe he meant it as in passion translated into working it however needed to get the best/strongest possible musical result out of the session. Whether comping or trying to find the context where the artist is most effective through whatever else, headphone balance, handheld mic, probably some of all of the above, whatever it takes to get the result. Arguably what the producer is there for. Get a record made that sounds confident and focused. Whether the artist is a flawless performer (lol....few) or not. Not really the producers job to worry about the longterm 'legend' status ......right here and now you're meant to see to a convincing record being the result, and it sometimes will take more passion to find the energy to do all that's necessary to achieve that.
The only difference between not so great performers and 'legend' would be that in one case you comp 'what works' to make it all 'work' and often quite hard comping/small chunks, in the other you choose from stuff that really all 'works', just differently, so you pick the direction of the dynamic development probably taking longer chunks from just a couple or few tracks.
And it's not just hiding the artists mistakes and 'making a verse sound better', as "sounds better' is about creating a focused flow/sense in the song as a whole from a to b, which the artist won't necessarily see from inside the performance bubble, hence you've been hired to produce.
Not making music, maybe, but still takes the same passion.