Record-Producer.

com 2002
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What you need to know...

Firstly, you need to know where the market exists for songs, and how you can set
about satisfying that market. There are certain clearly identifiable market areas for
songs:

Country
Country/crossover (where a Country-based artist like Faith Hill seeks to
broaden her fan-base without losing her original fans)
AOR
Latin
R&B
Pop (there is more of a market for Pop songs in the US than in the UK, where it
is standard practice for writing/production teams to produce a finished master
recording from scratch)

There are some genres where it is almost impossible to sell a song, such as Rock and
Hip-Hop. Rock bands almost universally write their own songs. In Hip-Hop, there is
no distinct songwriting phase - it is all done in the production.

Assuming you are already dedicated to the art of songwriting, you need to choose
your genre. It is so difficult to understand just one genre well enough to be a
successful songwriter that it would be impossible to attempt to cross genres. When
you do achieve success, crossovers might happen for you, but that is something that
your publisher will seek on your behalf.

Once you have chosen your genre, you need to know everything about it and its
related sub-genres. Take a look at the Billboard (US) or Music Week (UK) chart and
buy every single and album, but not compilations or re-releases. Don't bother about
anything but the latest material. Your songs need to be comparable with what is
selling now, not what sold in the past. The distinction between sub-genres is
important. For example, Country music splits up into several sub-genres:

Traditional
Retro
New
Rockin'
Crossover

Even within Traditional Country, there is 'traditional traditional', which sounds like it
was recorded thirty years ago, and plain 'traditional' which means 'modern, but
following on from the long-standing Country music tradition'. To try and explain the
difference between Retro and Traditional would take all day, but there is a difference
and it is important. Same with other genres and sub-genres.

In coming to know your genre, you will come to know the requirements of the main
artists. You have to write for the artist. Don't just write a good song. Write
specifically for a certain artist - as you compose the song, try to hear it in his or her
voice. It doesn't necessarily mean that you can only sell the song to that artist, but it
allows you to say, "It's in the style of...", which makes promotion that much easier.

Learning how to write a hit song is the difficult part. Select three songs from the
singles chart of your chosen genre and analyze them in every way you can - structure,
lyrical content, melody, range of pitch. Everything. Then try to write a song yourself.
At first, don't worry if it is lacking in originality. That will come. Take a day and
finish the song, right down to the last line. Make a rough demo. Take a couple of days
break, then come back to the song. Don't waste time asking yourself whether it is
good or bad (and in particular, don't kid yourself that your first song is great). Analyze
how it differs from your chosen models. Any feature that differs is bad. Assume that
the people who wrote those hit songs know what they are doing, and you do not.
Soon, you will. Now... write another song.

In recording a demo of the song, one thing is important - the singer must be able to
sell the song. Good singers are hard to find anyway, but finding a singer who really
can sell the song is a must. If there are any deficiencies in any other part of the
recording, it won't really matter if the vocal line is top notch. It is also a must to
record male songs with a male singer and female songs with a female singer.
Whoever listens to the song has to hear a hit. That can't happen if the singer is the
wrong gender for the song.

When you have a great song, well recorded, you need to promote it to:

Publishers
Artist management

In the UK, you can send a song direct to a publisher and they will listen (or at least
get a junior employee to listen, and maybe pass it on up through the chain if it's any
good). In the US, few publishers will accept unsolicited material. If you send a fax
first (faxes get read, letters get trashed, e-mails simply get ignored) and seem
professional, your chances of getting an invitation are worthwhile. Promoting a song
to artist management will be tougher, but still worth a try.

There are also referral services such as Taxi. Taxi is expensive, but it can work (for
the talented and lucky few). If it didn't there would be such shit at a taxisucks.com or
similar site that they would go out of business pretty quickly. Taxi will also
constructively criticize your songs, and your work will improve immeasurably very
quickly. There may be other good referral and plugging services, but it pays to be
careful since some are only in business to get your money. Beware flatterers asking
for your money.

Regarding copyright. Many aspiring writers tend to think that they will automatically
be ripped off. You should wish that your songs will be that good!! OK, there's always
a chance that someone will steal your title or hook idea, but you have to get heard.
Better not to worry about it. Copyright automatically exists as soon as your song is
embodied in physical form. If there ever was an infringement, you would have to be
able to prove authorship. A common way to do this is to send the song to yourself via
signed-for mail, and then keep the unopened package against the day it may be
required in court. In the US, you have to register copyright before you can bring a
court action. However it is very rare that these cases come to court. You would be
better off spending your energy on less worrying and more writing.

How many songs do you have to write? How long should it take to write a song? It is
probably fair to say that until you have written your hundredth song, you songs won't
be good enough. It's best to write every day if you can, or a least one song a week at
the minimum. You can spend up to a day writing a song. Any more than this and you
are not concentrating. At the end of the day, there might be the odd missing line of
lyrics that might come to you over the next week or so. Or you might go back to a
song several weeks later and spend a day restructuring or rewriting the lyrics - that's
often useful if the song shows promise.
Pop Music Production

This is Pop music in the sense of the Spice Girls and Britney Spears. Pop music is
made in factories and sells in massive quantities mainly to young teenage girls. Many
older music enthusiasts look down on Pop music and consider it to be an inferior
style. In fact, Pop music is probably the most carefully and cleverly crafted of all
musical genres. The market is totally brutal and unforgiving. A potential buyer wants
to hear the first ten seconds of a song and say, "I like it". Nothing else matters. If the
artist is already well known, then maybe the song will get twenty seconds to achieve
the desired result. If not, the artist is history, at least as far as that buyer is concerned.

There is no 'art' in Pop music. It is pure craft. There is nothing that will convince
someone to buy other than, "Do they like it?". Pop music writers and producers have
to understand the needs of their audience, which change rapidly, and satisfy those
needs. Successful Pop music writers and producers can be considered to be the top
people in the business. They could probably turn their hand to any other style of
music if they wanted. What do you call a failed Pop producer? A Rock musician.

Production Line

In modern Pop music there is very little differentiation between writer and producer.
You can't be a Pop song writer without being able to come up with the production too.
The concept of the demo doesn't really exist in Pop music any more. Yes, a demo
might be produced. But it will have to sound like a record to stand a chance of
impressing anyone. Note that it has to "sound like a record", not "sound like a
master". Even better - it has to sound like a hit!.

It seems virtually impossible for a Pop writer/producer to work alone. All Pop music
production is a collaborative process. It wouldn't be unusual for as many as ten people
to collaborate, not necessarily simultaneously but sequentially, in the writing and
production process, and that isn't counting performers and musicians. Usually writing
and production teams consist of two people. Perhaps one is the key writer and the
other the key producer, or maybe both can cover writing and production with
complementary ranges of skills.

A key member of the team is the record label's A&R manager. A&R managers are
often seen as gatekeepers. They either keep the gate firmly closed, bolted and locked,
or they open it for the favored few. This is not the correct view. Yes A&R managers
do close the gate to people who they don't see as offering anything worthwhile to
them. But if you are close to a hit, then they will offer massive help and often money.
A hit record doesn't spring spontaneously into existence. It has to be nurtured,
developed, developed some more, and then developed some more again - maybe by
some other people. When it is finished it will sound like a hit and the label will give it
the promotion it needs to ensure that it becomes a hit.

Writing a Pop Hit

The important thing to realize once your songwriting skills are in place, or you have
teamed up with a songwriting partner, is that production and writing are bound
together in Pop music. It isn't a case of write a song, then wonder how it is going to be
produced. The writing/production process starts with a song idea - as all songwriting
does - but the production process starts immediately, before the song is even finished.
If the song idea is good, then it needs a good production idea. Remember that the
potential buyer has to say, "I like it". In a typical song, the 'hook' doesn't happen until
the chorus, maybe some thirty seconds in. That means that the production has to be
enough to make the buyer say, "I think I like it - I'll wait and hear the chorus and then
decide". The opening notes of Britney Spears's "Baby One More Time" do that.

Most songs use the traditional verse/chorus structure where the verse is the teaser and
the chorus the substance. It is sometimes thought that the function of the verse is
simply to separate the chorus repetitions, and if the verse is boring then the chorus
seems more interesting in comparison. There is probably some truth in this, but
remember that in Pop music, the attention span is short. The function of the verse is
therefore to tease the listener to hang around and experience the chorus. Meanwhile
the production is encouraging the listener towards the desired "I like it" goal. In other
genres of songwriting, if the chorus is great then that is all that is matters. In Pop
music, the verse is very important and it isn't uncommon for the verse and chorus to
be written by separate writers, or separate teams of writers. It wouldn't be planned this
way, but the A&R manager would certainly consider bringing other people on board
where necessary. This of course dilutes the royalties, but a half share of a hit is better
than a full share of failure!

It is interesting to note people's opinions on the importance of lyrics. Some writers

and producers will say that all that matters is that the lyrics have the right sort of feel
to them and sound good. This is certainly important. If the lyrics don't make sense
musically then the track will not succeed. However, the meaning of the lyric also has
to resonate with the mind-set of the buyer. What is it that this typical early-teenage
girl is thinking about? What are her concerns, her wants, her ambitions? She probably
wants to be considered 'cool' by her friends. Will listening to the lyric make her feel
more cool, perhaps more grown-up?
Your Hit Factory

Premises

More than any other genre of music, the place to record Pop music is in a home
studio. If not a home studio, a project studio owned by the writing/production team. It
is increasingly rare that a Pop song would be recorded at a traditional commercial
studio, although elements of the production may be - strings for instance.

Here's a tip if you plan on setting up a home studio - make it

professional enough that a top artist could come and record in it.
This does happen - top artists go to someone's house to record.
(An apartment is less likely due to sound insulation reasons).
Another tip - if you intend building a space to record in rather
than converting an existing room, make sure that it is attached to
the house and is architected as part of the house. An outbuilding
might seem better for sound insulation purposes, and simply to
get away from the home environment while you're working. But
an outbuilding adds hardly anything to the value of your property
when the time eventually comes for you to sell up and move on.
An extra room in the house will pay back its building costs,
which would be several tens of thousands of pounds/dollars, and
perhaps even give you some profit. Loft conversions are generally
not a good idea as they are expensive for what you get (if done
properly), are difficult to soundproof and don't add as much value
to the house as they cost. You also lose a lot of storage space.

Your recording will be centered around synthesized, sampled and sequenced sounds,
with the addition of vocals and guitars. Conventional drum kits haven't disappeared,
but a drum kit implies a band and now, as well as writing and production skills, you
need serious engineering skills as well, and the studio accommodation for a band (and
their vehicles outside). Whether or not you use a vocal booth is a personal choice. If
you have one, it is there to be used as necessary, and can double up as a booth for the
guitarist (or maybe just the amplifier). But many producers would say that it's better
to have the singer in the room with you. Face to face communication can result in a
better performance.

Equipment

Most important is one really good vocal mic. In contrast to earlier times when a
Neumann U87 was all that was required, and one of few suitable choices, there is now
a burgeoning range of even better vocal mics to choose from. There are two key
features of a good vocal mic - a large diaphragm (over 25 mm) and a tube (valve)
internal amplifier. Both of these features add subjective warmth to the sound.
Whereas small diaphragm transistor mics produce an accurate representation of the
acoustic sound (and therefore all tend to sound rather similar), large-diaphragm tube
mics all sound different. It is often advised that you should select a mic to suit the
voice, by trial and error, but that pre-supposes that you have several mics from which
to choose, as would be the case at a commercial studio. Pop music producers often
have one favorite mic and simply use that, until a new favorite comes along. For
anyone buying their first high quality vocal mic, the best advice is to choose one that
a top producer has mentioned in a magazine interview. If you like the sound of their
records, it seems sensible to make similar equipment choices.

Next in the signal chain from the microphone is the microphone preamp. Once again,
in an earlier era one would plug the mic into the console and be happy with that. In
fact, accurate mic preamps are not rocket science, but we want something that sounds
subjectively better than merely accurate. There is little point in choosing a transistor
mic preamp as this almost certainly will not be any better than the console's preamp.
A tube preamp will not be as accurate, but will offer subjective warmth. Choice of
preamp is subjective, as with microphones.

The choice of mixing console and multitrack recorder is interesting. There is no

problem with sound quality these days, so you need to consider other factors of
importance:

Can you easily operate the console and multitrack while discussing the finer
points of a vocal with the singer?

Will the recording be compatible with other systems (remembering that it's
common for many people to collaborate on a track), and if not will it be
easily transferable?

Can a mix be stored and easily recalled if necessary?

When considering ease of operation, think of eye contact. To communicate

effectively, you need to maintain good eye contact. If a system has a tactile interface,
a momentary glance will remind you where a particular control is, then you can just
reach out an adjust it. With transport controls, if they are real buttons then you can
keep your hand in position and just press them when you need to without looking.
Doing all of this via a mouse and keyboard is a totally different situation. No matter
how familiar you are with the system, you always have to look at the screen. This
doesn't mean that you can't use a computer-based system. You just have to
compensate for the certain fact that the singer will think your attention is divided.
When you have finished the track, or at least think you have, the A&R manager might
say that he wants to give the track to another team to work on the groove, or
whatever, some more. In what format are you going to deliver the multitrack
recording? The easiest choice would be as a Pro Tools session on a data CD or CDs
since everyone who has made any reasonable money out of music gets a Pro Tools
system almost by default, even if they have other equipment on which they prefer to
work. No other system (other than 24-track analog tape) has achieved anywhere near
the same level of ubiquity. If you record onto a hard disk workstation, then the
recording will probably have to be transferred to the other team's system. This only
works if your workstation has as many outputs as tracks. Otherwise, the recording
would have to be transferred in several passes, and then the tracks would have to be
resynchronized. Difficult.

When you have finished the track, or at least think you have (we've heard that
somewhere before), the A&R manager might say that he would like the vocal a little
louder. You are going to have to set the entire mix up again just to change this one
thing. In the old days of recording, only top mixing consoles could store a mix, and
the mix had to be reset manually. This was such a time-consuming process that
attempts were made to preempt A&R quibbles by recording several alternate mixes -
vocal up, vocal down, bass up, bass down, drums up, drums down etc. All of them
would be basically the same, but with one of the most important elements varied. That
way if the A&R manager wanted the vocal up, hopefully you had made a mix pass
with the vocal up by the right amount. These days, a digital mixing console can both
store and recall a mix in a fraction of a second, including automation. With a system
like Pro Tools, plug-in parameters can be stored too.

How Many Mixes?

When a song is finished and ready for mixing, there is more than
one mix to be made. These alternative versions will keep you
busy:
Single mix
Radio mix
PA (public appearance) mix, without lead vocal
Extended mix
Instrumental version
Album mix
And then the record label will probably commission an outside
team to produce a remix too!
Other equipment such as sound sources, processors and effects, and monitors tend to
operate on a 'flavor of the month' basis. When you are established as a production
studio, equipment manufacturers, distributors and dealers will beat a path to your door
to get you to try out their latest products. They benefit by getting their products talked
about. If a buzz develops then soon everyone with a bedroom studio will want one.
You benefit by getting to use the new stuff before virtually anyone else. Don't expect
to be given anything for free, but it wouldn't be unreasonable to ask for a deal. Once a
piece of equipment's novelty value has worn off and the next new toy has come along,
it may be kept for the one thing that it does best - for example a sound module could
be kept just because it has one great bass program.

One category of outboard however does deserve to be singled out. Earlier, it was
stated that your recordings have to sound like hit records. Traditionally, master stereo
recordings have gone to specialist mastering studios where liberal amounts of fairy
dust are sprinkled to turn a great sounding mix into a hit. Pop music producers have to
do this in-house because the A&R manager wants to hear the hit straight away,
without having to imagine what it will sound like after mastering. The centerpiece of
the mastering process is the multiple band compressor. Briefly, this splits the signal
into several bands of frequencies and compresses each one separately, thus
maximizing the level in each band. All radio stations have one just before their final
station output.

Music By The Yard (Or Meter)

In the writing and production of a Pop song, there is no straight-line path from idea to
hit. Many roads must be travelled and abandoned before a hit can take shape. When
you have travelled as far down a particular road as you can, the project might need
outside input if it is to progress further.

However, once a production team has a reputation for crafting hits, then there is a lot
of other work to be done. The real money in music these days isn't made from singles,
it is made from albums (and touring). Whereas a single is a massive effort often
involving considerable collaboration, the production of album tracks is like 'music by
the yard'. That's why they call it material. The production team will busy themselves
churning out track after track to fill up the album. Every track that makes it through to
the album, in competition with other producers of course, means money in the bank
and, given the talent and skills, this is very much easier work than creating the hit
single. The key here is to keep on target for the artist - it is easy to write a good song,
but much more difficult to write a good song that is exactly what the artist needs to
satisfy their market.

-
Check Your Knowledge Questions

What is the main market for Pop music?

Comment on the integration of writing and production

Why is there little point in recording a demo?

Comment on the function of production in Pop music

Comment on the requirements for Pop music lyrics

Where is Pop music typically recorded?

Comment on the value of working without a vocal booth

What are the requirements for microphone and mic preamplifier?

What are the requirements for a mixing console?

What are the requirements for a multitrack recorder?

What might the A&R manager ask for when hearing the 'finished' mix?

What is 'mastering'?