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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? |
Well from the standpoint of a
producer/engineer (which is what I stated in the first place) it has a lot to do with passion. As a producer, great sound is everything to me. I want whatever it takes done to end up with the best possible sounding end product. As an engineer, I have the tools and knowledge necessary to make that happen. If it means doing something as annoying and tedious as having to comp vocals to get a great sounding verse, I'm willing to do it.
Comping is not necessary to complete a good song.... a 99.9% perfect verse is not necessary either... But I push to get that anyway. Why? Because I'm a fan of hearing great sounding music. Great sounding music is a passion of mine as a listener, which has lead to another passion of mine which is making what I think is great sounding music.
IMO, making great music means you gave it your all and did everything you could do at that time to make it the best you could. Whether the majority of people think your song is great or not you wont actually know until more people have a chance to listen to it. For the time being it's up to those involved in the project to make that judgement. As a producer, if vocal comping will help the artist's message sound more attractive to listeners, I'm making that call. As an engineer also, I'm the one who actually has to put together the vocal comp. If I was a lazy f*, I would just say screw it and maybe punch in vocals where the verse sounds it's weakest. As the producer of the song, whatever I do as an engineer is still me making music. If you think differently fine, but there is nothing wrong with my opinion.
Legends don't become legends because they can nail a verse in 1 or 2 takes. That might make someone a recording legend one day amoungst others who work within the industry, but not a legend amoungst the general public... amoungst the average person. So that being said, who cares if you can or cannot get a verse down in 1 or 2 takes; who cares if you are a legend amoungst your peers in the industry if that's not the reason you are creating music. There are more important factors than that of which you mentioned. It's flattering yes, but at the end of the day I'm pretty sure an artist has more interest in influencing the whole world with their music.
Our thoughts on the "meaning" of passion are definitely different.