I often get the question, “How can I become a music producer?”

The truth is that there isn’t a simple answer but first and foremost, you need talent in understanding music production. And then you need perseverance. Because the road to become a music producer is not without bumps.

It goes without saying that you gotta love audio production so make a step by step action plan. Most young up and coming producers today start out by learning the robes, usually by joining one of the online music production schools, like Berklee, or simple spend years working and improving their skills in their own home studios.

Start by learning one of the major audio programs. I suggest either Pro Tools, Cubase or Logic. Those are the 3 main programs. Learn how to make tracks with the program. Again I would suggest joining one of the schools to jump start ahead. The competition is fierce so you need every advantage you can have to make it through the field.

Team up with friends who are singers or musicians, and start recording their demos for free. This has several advantages. First of all, you will learn to record and produce different genres by teaming up with different people. The second advantage is that you set yourself up to a situation where you might find an undiscovered potential super-star. A big part of being a producer is finding and developing new talent. Finally, if you contribute to writing the music by adding your own ideas, you become a co-writer of the songs.

If the band end up releasing any of the songs, you have a very good chance of being offered a publishing deal. With a publisher working for you, suddenly there are more roads to get production work as a music producer, since quite often the composer of the music ends up being the producer as well. So because one of the major roads to become a successful music producer is to find and develop your own talent, the third skill you really need is networking skills.

To sum up, if you want to become a music producer today, you will need to learn to operate one of the major audio programs. You need to master music production and audio production and learning the proper way to record different instruments and vocals. And you have to find collaborators and talent you can develop. Finally, if you have the skills to make your own music using the audio programs, you will have another way into the business by collaboration and co-writing with local talent and get recognition as a hot “Track Producer”. But start by checking out the online schools and learn one of the audio programs.

Click here to get started right now with exciting videos showing you every aspect in audio production needed to become a music producer.

Have a great day,

Johnny

Technorati Tags: audio production, become a music producer, hip hop producer, how to become a music producer, learn music production, Music production, Record producer

To finish my little introduction to vocal production, I will today give you a couple of tips.

1. Here is a cool little tip on how to add monitor reverb when recording vocals. Since we blend the music coming from the computer directly with the voice in the interface, the vocal will sound dry in the headphones. Some singers prefer to monitor with reverb added to their voice while singing. Here is how you can do that. Normally you mute the recording voice in the audio recording program, because we are alreay monitoring direct from the interface to avoid latency. If we instead unmute the recording voice but turn the fader all the way down, we can add a send in PRE fader mode to a reverb plugin. The reverb will be present but not the dry sound. Since reverb typically has a predelay anyway is does not matter that we will hear the reverb with a small latency from going through the converters and plugins.

2. Adding special effects. It can be cool to add a speaker effect to the vocals in certain parts of the song, like the bridge or in a tag after the chorus. If you insert a guitar amp simulater plugin on the vocal track you will get that effect. Only problem is that it might be too much effect. To give me more control, I copy the vocal onto two seperate tracks and just place the guitar amp plugin into one of them. Then I can blend as much or little I want of the effect into the vocal. You can do the same trick with a compressor set to compress heavy. By adding a bit of that compressed vocal with the uncompressed vocal you can get a very cool sound. You should be aware that not all audio programs compensate for the latency the plugin adds. If that’s the case you will have to compensate manually.

3. Delay in certain parts. Often in songs you will hear a long panning delay in spaces between the vocal, typical in the end of the chorus or verse. You can automate a send to the delay to get it sounding only in these certain places. But it can be differcult to get it precise, so instead of automation, I simply move the vocal parts that need the delay onto another track that sends to the delay. Just remember to also copy any EQ and compression you are using.

That’s it for the introduction to vocal recording. Next time I will start my introduction to mixing, my favorite part of music production.

See you soon…

Technorati Tags: audio, Delay, Effect, Monitoring, Record producer, vocal recording

Great, you got your interface and mic and are ready to record your vocals. First you need to install the interface drivers and connect your interface with your computer using a usb cable. Also connect an XLR cable from the mic to the XLR input on the interface, a pair of headphones and you are ready to go. You can mix the balance of the music with your voice on the frontpanel. Most newer interfaces have a direct monitoring system, so you can record without having to hear your voice in your headphones with a delay.

On the frontpanel, you will find the level control for your mic input. You need to set it, so it does not clip the input when you sing the loudest. A good tip to find the sweet spot, is shouting into the mic, while adjusting the level higher and higher, until the red light indicates cliping. When just turn the knob a tad back and you are all set.

Enable a new track in your recording software and hit record. Adjust the level of the music to your voice and find a nice blend. Remember that the blend is just for monitoring the sound. You can change the blend later in the mix.

Once you have a good lead vocal down, it’s time for overdubs and backing vocals. Just keep adding tracks for as many dubs you need. I usually make from 4 to 30 voices depending on the style of song.

One thing you will notice when listening back, is that the vocal level is a bit uneven compared to a commercial record. It might even sometimes be hard to hear the lyrics and other times the vocal is too loud compared with the music. That’s where a compressor comes in handy. A compressor will even out the dynamics in the voice, so it will fit better with the music. Most recording software comes with a bundle of plugins, among them one or more compressors. Just add a compressor plugin to your vocal tracks and set it up so it respond great to the vocal. I like to have an attack of about 20-30 ms and a release of about 100 ms. I set the compression ratio to 3 to 1 and the treshold, so the average gain reduction is around 5 db.

Next thing would be to EQ your vocal. It is hard to give a preset setting because of the variance between microphones and voices, but almost every time you would want to filter out the very low end. I usually set a lowcut filter at 100 Hz to get rid of the low rumble. If the voice sounds a bit dull compared to other recordings, I would boost the 1.5 KHz area 1-2 db as well as adding a bit of air in the sound by boosting 12 KHz a couple of db. If your vocal sound a bit thin, you can boost the area around 200-500 Hz. In that case you might have to set the lowcut filter a bit higher around 150Hz.

All for this time. There is still so much more to cover regarding vocal recording, so check back soon.   

Technorati Tags: audio, Record producer, vocal recording