Who is the key artist in commercialized music: the songwriter or the producer?
In reply to @brodyjweld 's response to my previous article "Are artists even selling music?"
see http://captainmonday.tumblr.com/post/53937655218/you-dont-get-to-define-art-a-response for the article and response.
Thanks to the very well written response from @brodyjweld, I was able to expand and clear some things up within my own case. Let me start by quickly defining what art is.
Art- literally anything in the entire universe that somebody creatively makes and decides to call “Art”
By stating that art is not comparable, Brody, you are being ridiculous and saying nothing is comparable (art includes literally everything). You then contradicted yourself by saying that production requires more work than writing does. Which side are you on, Brody? Can you compare the effort required to create art, or not?
Read that definition again. Yes I came up with it, but it is not untrue. By throwing a rope on the ground out of inspiration, you have created art. By touching paint to literally anything, you have created art. By intentionally making noise for any reason, you have created art. The oxford definition is as follows, “Art- Works produced by human creative skill and imagination”. In other words, art is anything that is created. Who are you to compare the effort required to create one piece of art vs. another and yet criticize me for doing the same. Lets get real; any two things are comparable. So let us compare the art of music vs. the art of production.
Get this out of the way; I never questioned any music not falling under the category of art.
I deeply apologize to any reader for my use of the words real and fake. These terms do not apply to the term “art” and I was wrong in doing so. In the following points, allow me to clarify the art of Production vs. the art of writing music.
Ok, so let me get started by saying you missed a major point that I was getting at. The art of production is being overlooked. How can you be so ignorant to look at the commercialization of music and say that there is no downside? Everything in life has good things and bad things. The following are the things I would like to clarify.
1. The entire purpose of my article was to explain how majority of modern popular music art is production. Brody, you should be less blatantly confident that you know more about the creation of music than I do. By doing this, you missed the fact that I was trying to point out how much more money Taylor Swift makes in comparison to her producers. You said it yourself; the producers do more work. Can you not see the problem here?
2. I wasn’t complaining that Taylor isn’t being paid enough, in fact the opposite. I really laughed when you came to that conclusion. Any human is entitled to whatever money they happen to earn (this is how the business world works in case you weren’t aware), however the consumer often does not realize that they are paying the less involved artist more money then the producer (also an artist) who is doing most of the work. If people would rather spend their money on a minimally involved singer, then there is nothing anybody can do, and that is where the money goes. People should be aware of this.
3. You posted a list of the countless artists that have all used the same generic chord progression for their highly influential and very famous songs. In case you missed the point, the repetitive use of these chord progressions by all of these appealing artists is the reason why they are titled “generic”. You tried to say, “look! Michael Jackson used these chords and is put on a pedestal”. Exactly, the same goes for Taylor Swift. Artists have found a formula that listeners enjoy and they utilize it. If the structure of these songs is always the same, then the only differences between these songs are the lyrics and mostly the production.
4. Every chord progression being used today have practically been used for centuries. Because the chord progressions are already invented, then the artist simply writes a vocal melody and some lyrics. As for lyrics, they are not music themselves, but they are a form of art (as is a pasta dish)so the artist can be credited. In terms of musical art, these singers can be credited for their design in vocal melody. In my knowledge, all of this work is usually both reviewed and edited by the producers. This means that the singer is often receiving help with his or her own job from the producers.
5. Tempo and style. Choosing a tempo is neither innovative nor difficult, this deserves almost no credit. Style is in the production and often decided by the producer. Artists “sell out” all the time and it is often not their choice. The Producer decides what the artist should sound like in order to sell more records and this is why Taylor Swift went from being “country” to being what I call “Dub-Swift”. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that her sound is her producers decision and not her own. To recap, the sound of a song is part of production. This leads me to the next point.
6. What I see are two different stages of production
a) The ability to determine and envision the direction of style, timbre and sound of the song.
b) Capturing the sound/What is done in the studio- everything from mic placement to the mixing and mastering.
You and I know a lot about a, and almost nothing about b (thanks for the visual on this one).
As you mentioned, many artists do almost all of the production themselves, and this is great! Examples of this include pop-singers like Bruno Mars and Michael Jackson and rock artists like the Raconteurs. However, my article stated that majority of modern popular artists do not do this. But who am I to say which ones do and don’t, I wasn’t present during the creation process and I am simply speculating. Perhaps Taylor Swift is an electronic music producer behind the curtains. Perhaps she writes all the drum rhythms, bass lines and guitar tracks. Perhaps Taylor even mixes and masters her songs after she is done recording all the tracks herself. Was it possible that she was even the one deciding how the snare drum should sound? Honestly, I didn’t have to be there to know that none of this is true. Taylor Swift probably doesn’t even have a say in how her own hair is cut.
In conclusion, many modern and past artists who do not participate in the production of music are not credible for a large and very important part of their music. The non-musician listener should be inclined to know that production is an extremely important part of music, and that many artists do not take part in this process. As for many unsigned bands, they have nobody producing them and they are themselves the producers. This means when you go to see their show it is all their work being showcased because they created and produced their sound. Try supporting bands that produce everything themselves. A great example is Barrie’s own “Brett Caswell and the marquee rose”. This band has their own studio and they write and complete both production stages in the studio on their own. When you buy Brett’s album, you are paying for him and his own bands work, start to finish. When you buy Taylor Swift’s album, you are not. Everyone has their own entitlement to buy whichever album they want. Which type of music creation do you support?
