Working with a producer is a sought after position in a studio whether you are and artist or an engineer you most likely have a favorite producer. Now a producer can be a lot of things, they are most likely an engineer themselves but that doesn’t mean they are going to be tweaking knobs. They are mostly there to get the pest performance out of the artist and also the engineers.
Best ways to Work with a Producer
If you are an engineer for a producer he or she most likely knows and respects what you do, but he is still in charge. There are definitely situations where the producer will also be engineering some and in this case you really need to work well beside him. It will be important to know whether he wants to be the main engineer, something of an assistant while keeping his hands more in the producing side or if he is not going to touch the engineering side at all. Now a lot of artist are going to be saying things about the color they want the guitar to sound like or that they don’t like how there kick drum sounds like a basketball, a good producer/engineer duo should be able to take these comments into a more technical realm, so if you find a producer you work well with it is gonna be great if you can get on a lot of there projects.
As an artist working with a producer, you should know that you can expect very different things from two producers. One may be an engineer who will also be recording you. Another may be more of a cheer leader/motivator who is really just there to make sure you perform up to par and show up to the session. While others may be very hands on helping write and arrange and maybe even playing on the record in places. In hip hop this really comes into play as the person who made the music is often considered the producer. The key here is to know which of these you want and will be the best fit for you. Look into as many as you can and find out how they like to work and the sounds they are known for.
Working with a producer can be a very different thing depending completely on your
experience (with a very tight and driven band they may be more hands off) and what you are looking for. If you want the best producer for the job think about what type of personality and mind is going to most push you creatively and start looking and listening.
