How to become a “Professional Producer/Engineer”?
The producer is pretty much the creative director. He usually doesn’t operate the equipment or anything like that. He’s the one who helps guide the artists and tries to get the best performance possible from them. He may also make suggestions about song arrangements and overall sound, and will try to convey to the engineer the type of sound he wants.
Producers don’t necessarily need any formal background in audio engineering, although many of them are very capable audio engineers as well. They also don’t necessarily have to have any musical training either, but they certainly need to have a good ear for music and be able to communicate with all the musicians, and so those with a good understanding of music and music theory tend to do a little bit better in general.
On the other hand, the engineer is usually just the technical guy who sets up and operates all the recording equipment, and is responsible for getting the best possible sound to tape. His job is to focus on things like proper signal level to make sure nothing is distorting or being recorded at too low of levels, make sure the gear is operating correctly, and to try to get the type of sound that the producer and artists want. He is the technical guy, although a musical background is also very helpful.
Now days, the line between producer and engineer has blurred quite a bit, and you’ll often find one person doing both roles at the same time. It can be tough to try to do both, to listen for the technical aspects as well as to concentrate on the performance and try to coach the artists, but many people do both jobs at the same time.
Also, in many styles of music these days (especially rap/hiphop,and electronic music) the “producer” is the person who also comes up with the music and/or beats. Even with your standard pop/rock bands, many producers will still contribute to the music on the albums and may play several parts themselves.
So…. after that long introduction, lets get to your question! The short answer is that there is no set path to becoming a producer or an engineer. However, one common path into the career goes something like this:
You go to a school and take audio engineering and music production courses.
You finish school with some kind of bogus degree that really doesn’t mean much to anyone.
You beg and plead with all the major studios in your area to getan “internship”
You get lucky and land an internship and work your ass off for quite a while cleaning bathrooms, making coffee, being a gofer,and assisting the real engineers, all without getting paid anything at all.
If you show a LOT of ambition and talent, and are able to round up some clients of your own to bring into the studio (so that the studio makes some money off of you), then you might be lucky enough to be able to hang around for a while after the normal internship term is over (most big studios rotate their interns on a regular basis to make room for new interns fresh out of the music schools)
If you are able to bring in enough clients and the studio really likes you, maybe they will consider you an “employee” or an independent that they will work with on a regular basis.
Keep in mind that you will only get paid a measly hourly wage ONLY for time that you actually bill to clients. You won’t get any other benefits in most cases. So, unless you can bring in a lot of clients on a regular basis, you still aren’t going to earn enough to make a living. That seems to be the most common path into the business.Very few people who go down that path ever get to the point where they can actually earn a living from it (no matter what the music schools try to tell you).
This is particularly true in the music recording business. You have a better chance of making a living if you become very GOOD at digital editing on the popular DAW systems (Pro Tools, Sonic Solutions, etc.) and try to land a job at a studio that does mostly production work for corporate clients.
Corporate clients (TV, Radio, Film, Multimedia) will pay much more per hour than most music clients will. there is usually plenty of corporate type of work, so those types of studios tend to do much better and can actually afford to hire skilled digital audio editors on occasion (if they expand, or one of their other editors breaks out on his own). If you want to actually make a living / working in someone else’s studio, then getting into one of these types of studios has a much better chance of doing it for you.
Another way to do it, especially in the music business, is to just doit on your own! Find some bands and artists in your area to produce. Offer them your services for free when you start out to build up your demo reel and a bit of a reputation (you’d be working for free at a major studio as an intern anyway, so you might as well start for free in this pathway as well). If you don’t have the gear to do it on your own, then just have the band cover the studio time at a bigger studio, but still give them your services for free.
Getting started on your own takes a lot of hustling, even though I absolutely hate the word “Hustling”. It’s more sales than it is engineering/producing. You’ve got to build up a good client list,and do a really great job for them so that they will come back to you in the future as paying clients, and so that they will also spread the word around about you. Word of mouth is very important in this business!
Don’t let anybody go away unhappy because BAD word of mouth carries much more power and spreads faster than good word of mouth! You will also want to try to build up relationships with record labels, and agents and managers as well. If these people like your work, they may send more work your way.
If you have a great ear for finding and producing talent, then these people will be interested in hearing your latest productions and so you will be in the position to “shop” bands/artists to these people and earn some sort of commission or royalty if they get signed to a big deal.
You may want to see a lawyer and have him draw up a standard production deal contract that you can use for these artists that you work with,or you can order one from us.
Typically it’s better to just get paid up front and not bother with contracts, but when you are starting out and doing a lot of work for free, a contract might pay off if one of those bands happens to get some sort of deal. But, be aware that if you sign a contract with them, it might actually hurt their chances of getting a deal with a bigger company since many bigger companies don’t want to hassle with the extra expense and time needed to buy out your contract with the artists.
So…. there are a few ideas for you. The best thing to do is to just get out there and do it! Get a real job to support yourself, and then in your free time start producing and recording as many bands and artists as you can until you become good enough and have a good enough demo reel to start getting some paying clients. Even when you start getting paying clients, it will probably still be quite a while before you are able to actually make a living from it and quit your day job!
