Enter production assistant
nother musical persona has recently joined my one man musical production army. I call him the production assistant.
In short, my inner production assistant takes care of all the unglamorous, mundane stuff that goes in a software session, so that my inner creative guys, the inner musician and the inner producer, in that order of preference, can focus all their energy in experimenting and making the right decissions. Like the sound engineer, whom I discussed in a previous post, his role is taking out of the way everything that is repetitive and boring, so the creative "sectors" can dedicate themselves to create at ease.
The difference with the sound engineer is that the production assistant is more software focused, and enters only once the process has been started. For example: I'll tell the sound engineer that I have a new song, and he will create the DAW session, a script to get there quickly (opening also other colateral stuff required, like lyrics docs, etc), and we'll "discuss" briefly which tracks he will provide and in which order we intend to proceed.
Then the musician records a track, voice let's say, and generallly we do several takes. When we're (I'm) done, it is the production assistant who will arrange those takes, give them name conventions, make them easy to move around... so that the musician+producer can decide which part of each take will make it to the final track, (a creative decission not always clear, cases for example like "this take has more errors, but its general vibe is the best so we'll use it as the foundation), etc.
This system works very well for my mind, it feels swift like changing gears, and even for small one minute contingencies, I have got myself in the habit of noticing it ("I'm going to need a new voice track here for some harmonies... time to call the sound engineer").
I guess I'm not the first to discover this, I remember listening to a podcast interview with a guy who, for his musician and producer caps, he had actual physical caps, which he changed depending on which role he was in; so I'm not alone in this. Whatever works, man :P .
In short, my inner production assistant takes care of all the unglamorous, mundane stuff that goes in a software session, so that my inner creative guys, the inner musician and the inner producer, in that order of preference, can focus all their energy in experimenting and making the right decissions. Like the sound engineer, whom I discussed in a previous post, his role is taking out of the way everything that is repetitive and boring, so the creative "sectors" can dedicate themselves to create at ease.
The difference with the sound engineer is that the production assistant is more software focused, and enters only once the process has been started. For example: I'll tell the sound engineer that I have a new song, and he will create the DAW session, a script to get there quickly (opening also other colateral stuff required, like lyrics docs, etc), and we'll "discuss" briefly which tracks he will provide and in which order we intend to proceed.
Then the musician records a track, voice let's say, and generallly we do several takes. When we're (I'm) done, it is the production assistant who will arrange those takes, give them name conventions, make them easy to move around... so that the musician+producer can decide which part of each take will make it to the final track, (a creative decission not always clear, cases for example like "this take has more errors, but its general vibe is the best so we'll use it as the foundation), etc.
This system works very well for my mind, it feels swift like changing gears, and even for small one minute contingencies, I have got myself in the habit of noticing it ("I'm going to need a new voice track here for some harmonies... time to call the sound engineer").
I guess I'm not the first to discover this, I remember listening to a podcast interview with a guy who, for his musician and producer caps, he had actual physical caps, which he changed depending on which role he was in; so I'm not alone in this. Whatever works, man :P .
