Getcha Some Productions Podcast Episode 40

Buy the Book here: Unlocking Creativity by Michael Beinhorn https://amzn.to/3B9f458

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A podcast covering all things related to music production: from the first note to the last fan and everything in between.  We create music and inspire others to do the same.  Every episode is a live business meeting between me and Dan (me and Keith) as we build this media empire right before your very eyes/ears.

In this episode we discuss:

Getcha Some Productions Book Club

Buy the Book here: Unlocking Creativity by Michael Beinhorn https://amzn.to/3B9f458

Per our usual process, we read some selected excerpts and discuss.

This is episode 40 so we are, as a podcast, entering our midlife crisis now.

Justin is a real go-getter and he’s read far ahead in the book. He’s already up to chapter 5 and we’re only discussed in chapter 1 on this episode.

Justin talks a little bit about his impression of the book and in doing so he also mentions that he went to college for Music. He was a studio composition major.  Justin is describing the fact that when he was in school he selected a lot of classes from a lot of different disciplines within music composition, studio and record production. When he was sitting down with his college advisor, his advisor looked at his course-load and said that he thought he would become a music producer because of the courses that he selected. I think the point was that, even though they were all within music composition/production/engineering obviously They were across a wide range of disciplines within music production.  Justin was and is into song writing and creative engineering.

We reminisce a bit about the demo we made in high school for our band Oliver‘s musical genius and about how one of the engineers that was on the session had a lot of creative ideas about how to make the songs come alive by suggesting different sounds, different auxiliary instruments  and making sure we had good performances.  And, in a sense, producing the record (more or less) for us. And we knew Very little back then so I think we were going to just waltz in and play our parts and that’s it.

One of the things that comes up as we address the first excerpt is the fact that producers are required to wear many hats and have many skills in the studio. Everything from managing the talent to the more technical aspects of engineering and elements of composition and arrangement. It’s a tough job. It’s probably something that you would arrive at at the end of a career in music. This is a job for the wise elders of music.

Justin highlights the next excerpt regarding a producers role and influence on the artist.  He compares the experience of working with a producer almost like a Boot Camp for the artist. He describes the fact that Beinhorn says that the artist should come away from the experience having grown (perhaps substantially) from it. So Beinhorn is always trying to elevate the role of a producer beyond that of just producing the music and the end result of a record but rather having more of a mentor and perhaps even spiritual role (beyond just making sure the end product is good).  Justin says, and perhaps rightfully so, that the producer/artist relationship is almost of the master and the apprentice. It sort of sounds like that from this chapter of the book.

We get to the meat of the chapter which describes his six-stage process of working with an artist to get ready to produce the record (prior to actually going into the recording studio). Six steps are:

1. Introduction and interview
2. A flyover of the artists work
3. Creative visualization
4. Preliminary pre-production
5. Pre-production
6. The next Vista awaits

We discuss each stage and our interpretation (and our feedback) on each one. It’s important to note upfront that the sixth stage is very confusing. Justin refers to it as the marinating stage which I think is probably very good characterization but I also think it’s a little more complicated than that because he adds a few other details to it in the book which I think we’ll get to eventually.

Some of these are self-explanatory and some of them or not. I think number two seems self-explanatory on the face of it in that you have to familiarize yourself with the artist work. However, Justin and I discuss and Justin points out, that it’s really incumbent upon the producer to do research and investigation into the artist’s work and their true artistry. What this entails is not just taking from them their press kit or a demo but doing independent research and digging into the things that they haven’t shared that may be of use.

We discuss Beinhorn’s characterization of artists as creative entities and we discuss the differences between bands like the Grateful Dead and Phish and individual artists like Bob Dylan.

Oh these are highly unscripted and unplanned conversations which are turning out to be very valuable. When allowed to discuss these ideas in a free-form way, we are uncovering many important concepts that we’re not apparent when reading the book.  Yay book club!

The most interesting stage to me was preliminary preproduction. It’s like, before you can do production, you have to do pre-production. But, before you can do pre-production, you have to do preliminary pre-production.

I make a comment about liking the process of writing the tunes, working on them in the studio but letting them become crystallized live. Justin rightfully points out the fact that there’s a potential downfall there because you can end up crystallizing bad habits which, in the heat of the moment live, you don’t realize (cementing bad habits). Very true.  Justin goes on to say that you could use this process after the pre-production phase when the arrangements have already been very carefully and thoughtfully composed.  To further the point, it is valuable to add a stress element in the performance because when you get to the studio there is a stress element there. You have to be able to perform under stress.

Justin was quite “hot-to-trot” for a long time. He and I were both in a band called Oliver’s Musical Genius (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6iRajenI2SUKsiRtxMzlHQ). Then he was in a phenomenal band called Trademark. After that he was in Cheryl’s Magnetic Aura (http://www.pukekos.org/2009/04/sheryls-magnetic-aura.html) and then after that he was in Maneguar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meneguar). All fantastic bands and they got better over time so the worst of them was probably Oliver’s Musical Genius.

Ever since his last band, Justin hasn’t put a lot of music out. The last thing he really put out there was Blank Baby (https://blankbaby.bandcamp.com). Which we will link to. But it’s actually a lot of instrumental type stuff and not really the full songwriting experience that he’s really getting into right now.

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