Artists… YOU Are Your Producer

You can learn to think, write, and perform with a producer's ear by changing the way you listen to music.

As a mix engineer, artists send me their files and will sometimes ask me to add certain effects or to make their vocals sound a certain way. When I hear the song, I realize that it’ll be hard to do effectively because of the way it's been written and/or performed. This is why I believe that, as a recording artist/songwriter, you should understand that the person who sold or leased the beat to you is the beatmaker while you, the artist, are your producer. You have to write with a producer’s mindset by always thinking of how you want your finished product to sound, and by writing and performing your song to achieve that end.

I think a lot of times artists will hear elements that they like in a song and want to incorporate them into their own music without understanding why those elements work. This is why, as an artist, it’s important to listen to music with a producer’s ear as well as, of course, for enjoyment.

The most common request I get is an artist asking if I can add the stutter effect to their vocals. Stutters, glitches, and other vocal and track effects are a great way to add excitement to your songs and make the listener take notice, but they work best when the spacing of the vocal leaves room for it. Most times when a song calls for it, I, or other creative engineers, will add them without being instructed to and present it to the artist in the mix for their approval. The fact that it’s your job to approve or instruct the engineer to change the mix and/or master of your song is the clearest proof that it’s you that’s the producer.

One of the songs that made stutters popular in the modern era was “Did It On'em” by Nicki Minaj. If you ignore the stutter effect and listen only to the lyrics, you'll hear that there's a large amount of space between the line “But I'm a eat them rap b*** when the chef come” (at 1:41) and the next line “Those some fresh ones” [example below]. Almost as if (or most likely) it was written with the effect in mind. That large space allows for the long panning stutter to be placed there, just like the smaller spaces throughout the song allow for the placement of stutters of shorter lengths.

Another common request is to make the artist's vocal sound like another artist's, but again, so much of an artist's vocal sound is tied to their style, spacing, syncopation, and the song itself. For example, think of The Weeknd's 80s vocal sound from the song “Blinding Lights” being used on Jay-Z's “Dirt Off Your Shoulder” [examples below]. Sure, there’s a chance it could sound fly, but it's more likely to sound clumsy and out of place. Listen to how the 80s styled “Blinding Lights” vocals match the 80s styled track/beat, and notice how the song is written and performed in a way that lets the lush reverbs and delays work their magic.

Of course, it's ideal to have a 100% original sound of your own, but most every artist's sound and style are “borrowed” from their musical influences. Also, it's much easier to use elements from other records to effectively communicate with your engineer… even if only as a starting point to build from.

For one more example [below] of how the writing and performance go hand in hand with the effects, we'll listen to the Spider-Verse song, a.k.a. “Sunflower” by Post Malone and Swae Lee. You can hear from the outset that this is a reverb-heavy song, but also listen to how the performance affects the intensity of the dynamic reverb/delay. The last “ay” of the opening “Ay-ay-ay-AY” phrase in the intro makes the resulting reverb louder than the last “ooh” of the “ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh” phrase that follows, just before the reverb-drenched background “ooh” comes in.

This could, of course, be because of automation in the mix, but reverb naturally responds to louder sounds more than it does to softer sounds, just like in a tiled bathroom or inside a large hall or tunnel. The backgrounds are given much more reverb so they can sound far away (in the background). These are all things to keep in mind when writing and performing your song, and makes it much easier for the mix engineer to execute your ideas. The song will scream out to us what it needs and what you intended. It also helps to practice while hearing a heavy reverb on your vocal, especially for ad libs. I wouldn’t suggest recording while hearing heavy reverb on your vocal because it can mask any imperfections.

Remember that it's much more important to hear why an effect or element of a song works than to only hear that it works. This also goes for other effects and ideas you hear in your head as you're writing or performing your future hit, as well as track drops and filters, but that's another article for another day.