Training, Practice and Communication

Section Headings:

2. Modes of Professional Practice

3. Consuming and Utilizing Technology

5. Relationships and Power Structures

What is a Record Producer?

Different models – not just historical but also different types of approach. Some related to stylistic developments and others are about the needs of the artist etc. Executive and musical production. Artistic, psychological and technical knowledge. Producer as artist, producer as servant to the artist, producer as svengali.

Modes of Professional Practice

Edward Kealy’s article ‘From Craft to Art: the Case of Sound Mixers and Popular Music’, which concerns the development of the role of the sound engineer through the period from the 1950s to the 1970s, still seems to form the basis of academic study in the sound recording field. Kealy identified three modes of professional practice:
1    The Craft/Union Mode, in which sound recording was considered to be a craft, and training and organization were formulated and controlled by trade union bodies which functioned within the large corporations that owned the majority of recording studios.
2    The Entrepreneurial Mode, which saw the development of more adventurous techniques and less formal, though still ‘on the job’, training procedures. This mode was associated with the establishment of small, ‘independent’ studios in which the engineers were often the owners and were also, at least to some extent, self-taught and/or more prepared to experiment.
3    The Art Mode, developed out of the work of a few exceptional producers, such as Phil Spector and Joe Meek, who inspired both artists and engineers/producers to consider the application of technology as a creative act.
Kealy provides a good basic model, especially for the USA and the UK, but there are significant differences between even these two countries. The Entrepreneurial Mode was much less significant in the UK until after the establishment of the Art Mode; and there may also be good reason for arguing that large record companies awash with money from pop record sales in the late 1960s and early 70s contributed to the development of Art Mode techniques through the amount of freedom they gave musicians in the studio. As far as other parts of the world are concerned, many countries bypassed these models almost entirely and remained with the Craft/Union Mode until the introduction of cheap digital technology enabled them to move beyond Kealy’s model.
The removal of barriers to entry by making equipment cheaper and simpler to use has also created another new mode of learning: the practical use of PC-based systems in conjunction with a plethora of semi-professional and amateur books, magazines, and, more recently, websites and internet discussion groups. These changes in the cost of entry have manifested themselves globally, albeit not equally, in different geographical and stylistic markets. Paul Greene and Thomas Porcello’s collection of articles Wired for Sound, concerning the use of music technology around the world, shows that this PC-based change has affected working methods, accessibility, and stylistic development across the whole range of musical cultures. Andy East has observed that Africa was often used as a ‘dumping ground’ for music technology products that weren’t selling in the developed markets in the 1980s. As we saw above, four-track portastudio tape recorder models that failed to sell in the UK ended up in Nigeria, and it would make an interesting ethnographic study to investigate whether specific items of technology influenced the sound of records produced in local markets. One distinctive difference in the development of record production outside popular music in North America and Europe (particularly the UK) is the relative absence of an Art Mode until the spread of PC-based systems and the dance-music-led cult of the producer. This seems to be true even of South Africa in the 1970s and 80s, when there was a small, powerful group of producers in the black music sector. Their power was not related to a particular ‘sound’ or to their artistic manipulation of recording technology, but was based on their ability as talent scouts and promoters.

Consuming and Utilizing Technology

On a more general level, Timothy Taylor espouses a practice-based theory of technology. The design of the technology creates a structure that limits the influence of the recordist’s agency and will mostly determine the primary form of usage. However, the agents are also involved in ‘consuming’ or utilizing the technology. They ‘undermine, add to and modify those uses in a never-ending process’. Keep, approaching the subject from a background of contemporary electroacoustic composition, refers to the same phenomenon, which he describes as ‘creative abuse’. He provides a theoretical grounding for the extensive published work that relates to creative practice in the sound engineering and record production sphere. Authors like Bobby Owsinski offer privileged access to the ‘hints and tips’ of respected professionals. Indeed, this type of ’creative abuse’, in my experience, carries more professional or cultural capital than the technical knowledge that was previously more valued. Thus engineers would seem to set more store by the innovative use of technology (for example, misusing noise reduction technology to get a ‘warmer’ string sound, or using a speaker as large diaphragm transducer (microphone) to get a ‘fatter’ bass response) than by detailed technical knowledge (for example, an understanding of the history and physics of different stereo microphone placement techniques, or a knowledge of room acoustics). The engineers, perhaps unsurprisingly, will be assigning value to practice that favours agency on behalf of the user rather than determinism on behalf of the technology.

Training and Learning

Thomas Porcello has identified a significant change that began in the 1980s, namely the shift from apprentice- and practice-based learning to formalized post-secondary education. Although he is referring to the USA and Canada, the same trend can be seen in the UK and elsewhere in the proliferation of institutions such as the School of Audio Engineering around the world (some forty schools in over twenty countries) and the development of distance-learning schemes such as those offered by the Audio Institute of America. The Audio Engineering Society website also lists courses in thirty countries outside of North America and the EEC, and the number of degree-level courses with titles such as ‘Sound Engineering’, ‘Music Technology’, and ‘Sonic Arts’ has expanded exponentially since the mid-1990s.
The improved quality of ‘semi-pro’ equipment has prompted universities and other organizations offering recording courses to attempt to make a clear demarcation between what they teach and ‘bedroom’ recording, despite the fact that a significant proportion of commercial product is produced in cheap, PC-based project studios – the ‘bedrooms’ in question.

Relationships and Power Structures

Porcello has also referred to the way in which engineers seek to retain exclusivity in their profession through the development and use of specialized language. The vocabulary and correct use of technical language has the dual function of making communication between experts more accurate and efficient, as well as identifying the user as an expert and acting as a defining characteristic of the members of the expert community. He has also pointed to a sharp divide within industry professionals who trained via the ‘apprentice’ system and those who have progressed through formalized post-secondary education, an observation I am sure that anyone involved in the recording industry since about the mid-1990s would corroborate. I think that it is generally perceived on both sides of this divide that the ‘old school’ of work-based/experiential learning is a more ‘authentic’ method of acquiring knowledge. However, this may be the result of record companies selecting engineers and producers on the basis of track record rather than qualifications or other measures of perceived technical/artistic knowledge.

Communication and Language

Talking about sound – different types of language
Producers as intermediary between technician and musician?

the musicology of record production