Hip Hop Producer Standards - Part 2

The Art of Working With Others - A Primer on Individual Tracking Standards

In the first article in this series I talked about Pro Tools being the industry standard software used for recording audio. In this article I will discuss the importance of hearing your music as it is and trusting the engineers, project producers, or others around you that may be hearing your music/beat from a different perspective than you.

More often than not, an artist will come into my studio with an audio CD containing a stereo track of a beat/song they want to record vocals over, or worse, they want to use my computer to download an mp3 that a beat producer sent them via email. Either one of these formats only offer a stereo version of all the tracks mixed together. As an engineer I can tell you that this really is not good. It only allows me the ability to mix the entire music volume up or down, eq the entire track, or compress the full song. What this leads to is a karaoke version of the song no matter how hard I try meaning; the vocals will always either be too loud - sitting on top of the music, or too quick - sitting below the music.

A two track music mix does not allow an engineer the ability to really mix a song once vocals are recorded. To properly get vocals to “sit” in a mix individual tracks need to eq’ed in a manor that allows the vocal track to “own” the frequency range around 1k. An example would be a track that contains horns. Horns basically sit in the 1k frequency range and will fight a vocal - since their fundamental frequency is 1k as well. What happens in this “fight” is that neither the vocal or horns ever sound like they are at the right volume to blend with the rest of the track. Now, if the engineer has the ability to notch out, or lower, the 1k frequency and maybe boost the 800htz a bit on the horns while lowering the 800htz and boosting the 1k of the vocals he/she can make these two sounds appear like they are “playing nice” together. Really what the engineer did was “carve out” frequency space so each sound may own that space and blend within the frequency range of the entire song instead of fighting with other sounds to sit in one frequency space.

This example is a very, very basic explanation of how eq is applied to tracks during the mix process to achieve proper sound isolation and separation to give you that “major label record” sound during the mix phase of production, but it does illustrate why delivering a stereo audio track in any form including CD track or mp3 track simply will not do for any client, engineer, or project producer that knows what is what. In future articles I will discuss mixing techniques, eq, compression, etc. that will help your mixes!

What I have found is that most producers do not want to give an artist or engineer the ability to change his or her music to suite the vocals being recorded. Why, I really do not know or understand. The only thing I have been able to come up with over my career is this; beat or music producers start creating a song and over the life of the creation they get so emotionally attached to the way they are hearing the music that hearing it any other way simply sounds wrong. The biggest problem with this type of thought is that it is driven by emotions not ears.

If you have been following my blog or have read many of my articles over at www.IamMusicNetwork.com then you most likely already know what I am about to say, but for those who are new.... Why do most people not like the way they sound when they hear them selves on an answering machine or voice mail? It is because you think you sound one way, when in reality you sound exactly like what you hear on a recording. Your brain is very powerful. Your emotions tell you that you sound a certain way and that is what you really think you sound like. In reality you may sound totally different from what your emotions are telling you as can be heard when you listen back to your recorded voice. Being a music producer, musician, or vocalist is no different from listening to a recording of your voice. No matter how much you want to believe your emotions, they can not be trusted. How you interpret what your emotions tell you can be developed over time as most “mix” engineers develop with the first 5 years of their career. (More on that in future articles about mixing)

A second set of ears on a project or song is a great thing. It is the reason most mix engineers will not master their own mixes. It allows for a second set of ears, that are not emotionally attached to the creation, the ability to catch flaws that may other wise be “emotionally” over looked. As a producer, working with recording engineers is how you can develop a better understanding of how your songs/beats really sound. By working with them you will find that you will develop faster as a music/beat producer, start to really hear what your music sounds like -vs- what your emotions are telling you it sounds like, and you will start to develop the ability to separate yourself from your music and look at it from a totally different perspective that will allow you to create faster, better, and with more creativity that ever before.

Let’s take it a bit further. Once you create a song/beat and deliver it to an artist, they are going to write words to go with the music. If you only give the artist a stereo track of your music they do not have the ability to drop certain sounds for emphasis on verses or hooks, they can’t drop the drums at the beginning of a verse for effect, and they will have difficulty creating a bridge that is a bit different from the rest of the track if they desire. All these things only add to the over all quality of a finished song. Let’s face it, most up and coming producers really only create an eight or sixteen bar loop and drop a sound or two in the verses and call it a complete song/beat and expect it to compete with national artists. It doesn’t! Yes, there are many eight or sixteen bar songs/beats on the radio from national artists right now, but really listen. They all have mutes, drops, and instrument variations throughout the entire song that allow the final song to sound like more than a loop. If you let your ego or emotions dictate that what you have created is a “platinum hit” without ever hearing how the vocals interact with your music, you are cutting yourself and your creations ability to be GREAT before it even has a chance.

As a song/beat producer your job is to create the music. You are not the project producer or the artist who needs to have the ability to do what a song needs to make it great. If you want to be a project producer or artist so be it. Find yourself an artist that wants you to produce everything, make the final decisions on how the over all song should sound, and go for it. But, as a song/beat producer, your job is to deliver outstanding tracks that when combined equal an outstanding musical creation that can be be molded, with vocals or other elements, to become a “platinum hit!” Nothing can be molded from a two track stereo version of your music. You severely limit the artist or project producer’s ability to “produce” a finished song.

In the next article I will discuss actual tracking/recording techniques that allow you to deliver individual tracks to clients, engineers, and producers that give them the freedom to help your creation become a “platinum hit.”

Previous Articles in this Series:
Hip Hop Producer Standards - Part 1 - Music Industry Standard Software