Hello again ! signing in for a quick sunday morning post .
I will try and explain what it is that I do as a producer when I get my hands on a song , piece of music , or general musical content.
This is just scratching the surface, a little introduction , down the line I plan to get more into details with different production scenarios , sharing tracks , and step by step processes until the finished product .
So , What do I do as a producer? , well , ''producer'' is quite a big word for starters , and there are many types of producers , from executive producers, artist producers, sound producers , video producers , and the list goes on and on.
Basically , what we try to do as the word implies it : we try to make a product , meant to be sold.
My area of production resides strictly in the musical aspect of things , and more specifically in the arrangement of music .
Some of what i do would include : arranging the song , choosing instrumentation, choosing musicians, changing or editing melodies , chords , lyrics if necessary , recording instruments ( as i am a guitar player and occasional bass player myself ) , programming sounds, etc. All of this in order to bring a song to it's full potential and try to reach a certain audience.
I would like to give you an example of a particular independent artist . His name is Gabriel Garcia , a songwriter and musician based in my home city of Guayaquil , he is also one of the founding members of La Real Sociedad , an independent label based in the same city . Overall a great musician, person and also one of my dearest friends . Along with Sergio Vivar , also member of the label , and one of the main producers and sound engineer , we produced an EP for him .
So , Let's get to hear a little of his music , this is one live session of one of his songs :
Gabriel has a nice folky and pop style , a very good sense of melody, and good musical taste with simple elements.
This song already works very nicely as it is!
So what do i do??
Well this song in particular was produced by Sergio Vivar and me as a team , which happens very often , two heads think better than one , and he is more into the sound producing , recording and mixing elements , as I am more into the musical aspect of things.
So , what we did particularly in this song were a couple things, just to name a few of them:
-We added a band , we kept it simple as we didn't want to lose the folk element of the song , so , basic line-up :
Acoustic Guitar
Electric Guitar
Electric Bass
Drums
Keys
I played both acoustic and electric guitars and bass in this particular track.
-We took it more into a John Mayer direction , a little more pop and radio friendly , speeded up the tempo a little to make it a little livelier.
-We translated the song to spanish , as it is the native language of Ecuador , so more people would relate to the message of the song , this was actually Gabriel's idea , but i agreed to it immediately.
The song was edited , mixed and mastered by Sergio Vivar. Here it is how it came out :)
Can you spot the similarities and differences between the two versions?
I hope you liked this little introduction.
If there are certain topics on music and/or production you would like to know , let me know , I will be happy to share any experience and do my best in explaining any part of this process .
Thank you for reading !
Signing off
Pechiche Mena