Music Production By Remote: Too detached to create?

[Phil]

Here's a portion of a roundtable discussion sponsored by Rhapsody.com featuring some of today's producers talking about how the business has changed for producers along with the creative process of actually "producing" records vs. "beatmaking":

Rhapsody’s Producer Round Table Discussion

The people involved are JR Rotem, DJ Toomp, Danjahandz, Don Cannon, the J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League, Sean C and LV (Grind Music), and Tricky Stewart.


"Every producer that has gotten any type of shine in the past couple years, from the multi-platinum guys to the cats who just place a beat and you never hear from the again, they all talk this “I’m a producer, not a beatmaker” shit. Not to say they don’t know how to produce, I’m sure they do, but it’s about actually getting the chance to do that. How many producers really get in the studio with the artist anymore? Not a lot. Even producers with hits are emailing tracks out left and right. There’s not enough money floating around for them to act like they are too big to do that. And sure vocals may get cut to the track, and if the artist wants it maybe they’ll send a rough mix over to you and ask you to add some things or change the arrangement… there’s a way for the technology to be used tastefully. But that one on one interaction that goes down when the magic is happening in the studio between artist and beatmaker, which is the core basis for actually producing a record, that never going to happen in those instances. And sometimes when the beats already have hooks on them, for the rapper it’s just like “Add lyrics.” Kind of paint-by-numbers when you really think about it."

Here's the link to the whole discussion:

http://blog.rhapsody.com/2008/07/state-of-the-un.html