As an indie artist, you need to agree with your music producer to make the best sounds that connect with your audience. Whether you produce your music or hire a music producer, there are still mistakes you have to be wary of.
Let’s track back a bit, never be one of those who believe that there are no mistakes when producing music electronically. Don’t subscribe to the theory of “so far it sounds good” with your music.
We should also be quick to point out the changing roles of music producers. Today, as a music producer, you can also assume the role of engineer, mixer, songwriter, or even hypeman. Regardless of the extent of your job description as a music producer, we’ve put together six mistakes you are making. These mistakes of music production could kill the potentials of the indie artist.
1. Disconnect With the Artist Vision
It’s not uncommon to see a wide gap between the artist’s vision and the delivery of the music producer. This is quite obvious right from the arrangement of the music and the sound.
Often, this divergent may not be noticed, but the artist’s talent will always suffer for it.
Ensure that your music producer is well at home with your vision as an artist. Before settling down to record and produce, take time to educate the music producer on your vision.
2. Overproducing
To be sincere, there is rarely any music producer that has not made this mistakes of music production in their career. As an artist, when your music producer overproduces, they are putting your music career in jeopardy.
In simple terms, overproduction is doing little to polish your music while selling theirs.
It’s your duty to call your music producer to order when they are seemingly overproducing. Take your time to ensure that production is not overshadowing your art.
3. Aiming For Perfection
There’s much art buried in flaws. However, you’ll see a lot of music producers aiming for textbook perfection. That’s when you’ll them auto-tuning every rough edge that it start sounding like alien music.
This is entirely related to overproduction, but this time the music producer is doing it unknowingly.
Instruct your music producer to stop being obsessed with flaws in every solo. If efforts are geared toward creating perfect music, you’ll end up with a track void of energy and excitement.
4. Treating Field Recording as Studio Recording Sessions
By way of introduction, field recording involves making music outside of the studio environment. As indie artists, you will be making a lot of music outside of the studio in the form of gigs at clubs, bars, and on tour.
In essence, it’s more like your natural environment. With this in mind, you may want to involve your music producer in recording in this environment.
While the music producer can make music no one has heard before, it comes with its challenges. The challenge is hinged on blending the natural sound during production.
5. Not Paying Attention to Sound Choice
As a music producer, you are just like an artist who has to rightly choose her palette, canvas, textures, and other tools based on the image she has in mind. Your music producer has all the frequency spectrum at their fingertip; they are often caught in a web of choice.
Depending on the indie artist’s vision, you may find yourself trying to create a mature sound. That’s when you find yourself aiming for warm, dark, and homely sound.
You may not realize that your sound choice has killed the song as the sound created may not sit well with the rest of the composition.
6. The Fear of Being Unique
As humans, we find ourselves learning most of what we know through imitation. That’s not to say there should not be a divergent when the need arises.
While you have musicians you want to be like as an indie artist, you should also know that your music producers have greats they look up to. This is where the issue lies, what if what you intend to sound like is different from the sound your music producer aspire to create?
This is one of the numerous mistakes of music production that can only be solved by standing out. It would help if you allowed yourself to create unique sounds, separating yourself from all forms of imitation.
