Does anyone have any deep information on record producers?

I was wondering if anybody here has any links to websites that explain what music/record producers do in their career field. I'd like to have reliable sources (links), that explain career objectives, job duties, salary, musicianship, schooling needed to become producer, and current economic status of the job field. Thanks.

with broad questions like that you're going to get some very vague and very broad answers.

I have no links to provide you, but I can tell you what I know, since I'm working on becoming a record producer currently.

In the classical sense, the record producer basically decides everything and calls the shots. They decide who the sound engineer will be, where the songs will be recorded, how they'll be recorded, etc. They talk and dictate more than they touch buttons and turn knobs. When you are recording they'll stop you every ten seconds and tell you to articulate a word differently if you're a singer. They may decide what effects to put in a song. They decide the final artwork for the cd. In the big time, you can hear as much of the producer when you are listening to a cd as you can the band. As you trickle down and get smaller, you'll most likely have less capabilities as a producer and the bands will call most of the shots.

Salary: If you've just produced the latest Britney Spears album then you're going to be doing pretty damn good. If you just produced the newest garage band's demo cd from your town at your mom and pop recording studio,.......i think you can see where I'm going with this.

Musicianship.....this is all really dependent on what you want to do. In my opinion, I think the better the musician you are, the bigger the sense you have for music, and thus you'll be a better producer. More important than a musical sense you want a very creative sense, since this is where all the ideas come from.

Schooling.....There are recording schools ALL OVER the country. You learn technicalities at those schools, but you don't learn creativity. That comes within, and that's what it's really all about. And then a lot of people like me have had music classes where they learn what producers do, they read up and do research on what producers, they talk to producers, and basically teach themself and learn everything themself and get a start by producing small albums for small bands.

and just going back over your post, it seems as if you want that information for some sort of a school project, in which i have now just been no help to you.

if it's just for personal gain, however, hopefully you can get something out of the aforementioned.

yes it was for a school project, but what you said is a good enough general perspective of what producers do. I just need some reliable links as sources that I can use for my research essay.

aint i reliable?

i work at a recording studio.....i've produced records before....i've been a musician for 14 years, been in bands for 7.....recorded my own stuff before, do a lot of stuff in the music biz.

I must suck.

well technically you are reliable but i need like a broad link or something that *counts* reliable according to *schools*...

i know, i'm just giving you {censored}.

True, but many producers are/were engineers themselves and "turn knobs" as often as an engineer in many cases.

Unless they are also the artist, or are a part of the record company, the producer has NOTHING to do with CD artwork.

but that's not necessarily true either. When you're in a commercial rock situation as I was talking about, sometimes the producer does have a large say in what the direction of the album should be, and this is influential and directly related to artwork.

Having worked for a Sony-distributed label, as well as a management company that manages producers Jack Douglas (Aerosmith, John Lennon, Cheap Trick, etc) and Paul O'Neill (Aerosmith, Trans-siberian Orchestra, Savatage, etc.) among others, I will reiterate:

Unless the producer is also the artist, or a part of the label, HE/SHE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE CD ARTWORK. Period.

Disagree? Name one. You'll be hard-pressed to give me an example that doesn't fall into the artist-as-producer category.

Before you get too excited, I'm already assuming a producer is with the label if they have any say in the cd beyond the music.

I don't know why the fact that an artist being their own producer should be ruled out as different.

dang calm down guys, lol you dont need to get all uptight...lol

If you want a homoginized sound just like all the other "original" sounds, get a big name producer and become an forgettable cog in the sludge machine.

If you want to make a CD that shows your band as it is; get a book or two that show you what the knobs do while playing as much as you can to get your chops together. Then either rent a DAT recoder, plug it into the sound board and learn how to record something you like or save up some bucks and go to a small studio with good people in charge and record a few sets "live" - take the CD and sell it at the door of your gigs and do it again better and bigger each time.

Stay in charge of yourself.

Let me preface by saying that my writing tends to come off as kinda harsh, but that's not my intention, really!

Most producers are independent and are not affiliated with a label in an official capacity. Even if they are employed directly by the record label, they STILL wouldn't have anything to do with the artwork, simply because the marketing department (along with others such as A&R) is firmly entrenched in that process and has more control over that than any producer does. And, jeez, even if the artist is the producer, too -- very often the artist doesn't have much control over the packaging!

A producer is tasked with delivering a finished musical product. Nothing more.

Some artists produce their own stuff, but not too many, especially if they're a new act. Even most veterans are smart enough to realize that an objective ear is beneficial to their project.