Blog
We hit the stage at 8:45 sharp to 3 people (Shaun and Liz from 4 ohm, and my friend Ned.) By the end of our set there was a very respectable crowd. Throughout the night we were asked "Hey, when are you guys going on?" Those nights are always kind of silly. Our set went great. We were crammed onto the stage in awkward fashion, yet it was kind of cool to be in such close quarters with these people who have all worked so hard to bring this to life. It was, dare I say, fun.
Bittersweet was, short of going on a rant about how tired it is to run into people who think music makes them important, they were really great. Would have been cool if they'd said hello or possibly thanked us for bringing 90% of the crowd. But whatever. The new me, plus the beard, I don't say those kinds of things. I've got music to write, beats to make, and children to rear.
The phenomena of weird weather before or during an Atomica Project show continues. Last night Chicago was absolutely flooded with severe thunderstorms, and there was a tornado spotted in the suburbs, headed towards the city.
It was crazy. We managed to make it to rehearsal about an hour late but much to my relief, we're still relatively tight. Credit that to Dean and Corey - as Lauren and I already have these songs affixed to our being, i.e. we know them. I was pretty scatterbrained, I'd spent the weekend working with Sensuous Enemy rather than doing my usual routine getting ready for rehearsals so I forgot some things, equipment wise, but we recovered well and we'll be ready come Wednesday night
I was at a party this weekend and Dean was there.
As he was leaving he was like "I'll see you at rehearsal on Monday." And I was like "Oh fuck, we have a show on Wednesday!" Indeed we do. And we're pretty excited about it. I'm very excited to be playing with Bittersweet, especially.
Here are the details! Please come out see us, say Hello, and enjoy yourself!
I'm getting ready to start production on an album for Sensuous Enemy, an electronic/dance/little bit of goth project from the Madison, WI area. We'll be doing the vocals and guitars here in my studio over the next 3 weekends.
It got me asking myself, as others have asked me, what the fuck does a producer do? Why in the world would someone pay me if they can use what is essentially the same type of equipment.
As far as what a producer does - whatever necessary. Whatever the hell it takes to put together a solid release. With Cylab, all I really did was mix tracks that Percy was too close to. He's a solid engineer/producer in his own right, as proven by the tracks I didn't work on. I'd defined a very distinct sound for Severina's voice on their previous release and I think that bled over. With iScintilla, I concentrated on the clarity of the music mixes and the precision of the vocals. With Bounte, I simply executed some really good ideas Dean already had put together. With SMP, I made it bump. Most of what I do is engineering related with an ear for being preventative to obvious mistakes.
So that's what I do. Kind of. I've always known, long before I had the technical know-how to do much more than produce horrible mixes, what makes a track work. Or more importantly, what prevents it from working. Add 5+ years of my fundamental crash course in EQ and compression and I'm much better equipped to be doing this. But it still all comes down to instincts, and the ability to be a voice of authority in some sense. I'd go as far as saying it's a gift in the sense that having a great voice is a gift. It's certainly not sitting around doing beats and smoking discount weed, as the hip hop world may have you believe.
So there you go. For all intents and purposes - there's no real reason I exist other than the simple fact that some people want their records to sound really good. Other people could give a fuck and just do it themselves. Other people are really good at doing it themselves. It depends. Even after 4+ paragraphs of my rambling, you probably still don't really understand what a producer does. I guess that's the nature of my role in these projects.
