If this video doesn’t make you want to own your own analogue synthesiser, nothing will !
David Vorhaus will forever be part of my own musical history for creating the album “An Electric Storm” as part of legendary band The White Noise – along with Delia Derbyshire, of “Doctor Who Theme” fame. This mad, tuneful collage of tape loops, analogue synths and sound effects was released in 1969, and provides proof, if you needed it, that the Beatles weren’t nearly as cutting edge as they thought they were.
Taken from the fantastic DVD “Classic Albums: The Making of The Dark Side of the Moon“, this clip has loads of great things for audio geeks like us to enjoy, including (probably) the first time a band ever played to a tape loop (and how the loop was made), another great example of double-tracking (this time on a guitar solo) and a superb illustration of how quite extreme-sounding delay and reverb (on Gilmour’s vocal) sound great in the context of the whole mix.
The DVD has been in the Production Advice Bookstore since I first set up the site, and is strongly recommended viewing for anyone interested in writing, recording and mixing.
The term ‘music producer’ means different things to different people. Some are musicians, some are engineers, some are remixers.
So what does a music producer actually do ?
In very pragmatic terms, the producer is a ‘project manager’ for the recording, mixing and mastering process.
She has an overall vision for the music, the sound and the goals of the project, and brings a unique perspective to inspire, assist and sometimes provoke the artists.
The producer should make the record more than the sum of it’s parts – you could almost say she is trying to create musical alchemy.
Every producer brings different skills and a different approach, and this can make what they do difficult to summarise. In this post I’ve identified seven distinct types of record producer to try and make this clearer.
1. The Engineer
This is probably most people’s stereotypical idea of the “classic” record producer – hunched over a mixing desk, obsessing about compression settings, reverb tails and drum sounds. The studio is an instrument, and the producer “plays” it like a virtuoso, working late into the night to create a mysterious sonic masterpiece.
In fact this is often far from the norm though, as we’ll see.
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“, this clip has loads of great things for audio geeks like us to enjoy, including (probably) the first time a band ever played to a tape loop (and how the loop was made), another great example of 
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