Tim Ferriss asked Rick Rubin, one of the most
successful producers in the world, a question some people might wonder about:
"What does a producer really do?"
He said he didn't know, and that he could only tell really Tim what he did and what's worked for him. Every producer does things differently.
I can relate to that because I don't know if I understand the first thing about
being a producer. I've hardly got the engineering thing down, but here I am, talking about mixing like somebody who knows what he's doing.
(Pssst....here's a secret: nobody knows what they're doing).
However, I can share how I'm producing this cool indie-folk EP right now. Instead of watching carefully over the entire project and making sure some arbitrary "rules of production" were followed, I just
recorded the foundation of drums, bass, acoustic guitar, and vocals and then left the musician on his own while I went on vacation!
And did the client get pissed off because I went to Bonnaroo to record bands in the middle of our sessions?
Hell no, he loved it!
Here's our conversation via
text: