ABSTRACT
The role and practice of the record producer in popular music has shifted significantly since the 1960s when no hit records were written by their producers. Today, most tracks in the top ten are written, at least in part, by the producer.
The roles of producer, engineer, arranger, songwriter, and artist used to be performed by separate people. Today it is common for the same person or group to write, perform, arrange, engineer, and produce. However, today’s production roles often split into specific skill centers such as vocal producer, string producer, mixer, remixer, and more.
This chapter addresses this merging of roles and skills along with the reallocation of previously integrated functions that led to today’s disrupted creative studio practice in popular music. This analysis is based on the making of Landscape’s album From the Tea-rooms of Mars ... To the Hell-holes of Uranus, which featured the hit single “Einstein A Go-Go” and was self-produced but for one track. The creative transition from major-label-appointed producer to self-production by the band is instructive, as are the technologies and methodologies we used, which foreshadowed studio techniques now considered the norm.
