Music careers

Dave Chang is a freelance music producer who is well known for his work in Metal circles. This year he took Youth Music coached teenage ska punk band Six.Pont.Five into The Beatles’ famous Abbey Road studios to record their first professional demo…

 YM: How did you become a producer – did you study music tech or similar?
DC: I got involved in the PA (live sound) department and the campus radio station at university, as well as messing around with tape recorders and 4-tracks. A friend had bought a desk and an 8-track recorder for recording his touring band, so after helping out with that, we decided to set it up as a business offering recording services. So I basically learnt by doing, as well as lots of reading. After that I joined a large commercial studio in Nottingham as house engineer, and learnt even more by working with established and experienced producers.

I think music tech courses can be very useful, and certainly give a shortcut to knowledge on a lot of technical issues. There’s a lot more to recording than the technical side though, and experience working with musicians, producers and engineers is a vital step along the way.

YM: What exactly does a producer do?
DC: different producers have very different roles, often dependent on music genre. The overall responsibility is that the project is a success. As such, it is my job to help the band be prepared when they enter the studio, and to project manage the session in terms of making sure the artists and technical members of the team are all working together effectively. At the same time the producer must choose the most appropriate recording methods, procedures and choice of equipment. The producer acts as quality control over the musical performances and sound engineering. The producer’s role also encompasses resolving artistic differences within the band, and has a strong say in song structure and arrangement, and spotting any mistakes (out of key notes that had not been noticed in rehearsals for example!)

YM: Does it help to be a good producer if you’ve actually been in bands yourself?
DC: I have dabbled in bands as a guitarist and songwriter, and the insights into touring, performing, writing and working with other musicians is useful. But most of my experience is from working with bands from an engineering and producing perspective. The skills needed – musical, technical and person skills – can be gained from a lot of different routes,

YM: You’re most widely known for your ‘Metal’ work – is it a good idea to specialise in one genre?
DC: I think specialising too soon would be a definite drawback. As house engineer, I worked with a lot of different styles from R&B through dance, rock, folk, brass band, choirs, country, you name it! You get to be involved with different techniques, and see different attitudes to music.
I consider my field now to be rock metal and punk. The specialisation sort of evolved – I became a producer rather than house engineer when more and more bands started asking me specifically to work with them because they liked what I had done before. It is good to become specialised at some point, because then you are able to refine techniques appropriate to the genre, which results in better sounding music, and reduced time to make it.

YM: Do you need expensive studio equipment to come up with a good sound?
DC: Expensive is a relative term! Equipment cost for sound quality follows the law of diminishing returns, at a certain point, you start having to spend 100% more money to get 1% more sonic quality!
In low to medium budget projects, and assuming a certain level of quality of equipment, I think the people behind the machines make a bigger difference than the equipment actually used. There are a lot of charting records made with semi-pro gear.
This happens more in the dance/sampled area of music though, to record real sounds there is no substitute for good microphones and good rooms. Whilst you can get satisfactory results on a budget, to achieve really great sounding records, you do need good gear.

YM: Was it difficult to get paid work when you started out?
DC: Yes and no. I started out self employed, the business also covered rehearsal rooms and cassette duplication (before the days of CD-Rs!!!) However, money was always very tight. The rates as house engineer were far from opulent too!

YM: Tell us about some of the bands that you have produced?
DC: I worked with ‘Orange Goblin’ over 2 albums and a couple of EPs, and was pleased when Kerrang magazine put one of the albums in their ‘Top 100 British Rock Albums Ever’ list! I am also very proud of my work with Hardcore Punk crew ‘Stampin’ Ground’, a hard-touring band fusing ideas from metal and punk, the album was recorded on adat (a recording machine), in a relatively low budget studio, but we all worked hard and the album ‘Carved From Empty Words’ received huge acclaim across UK and Europe. It was great working with the massive Italian rock band Linear 77, who sell out stadiums there, but are having a hard time breaking over to the UK and US. Apologies to the bands I didn’t mention – I have had the honour of working with a great many talented bands and musicians, certainly too many to mention here!

YM: How did you come to work with Six.Point.Five at their Abbey Road studio session?
DC: A lot of my work comes from word-of-mouth, and from people finding my name on the back of CDs they like the sound of. I also make sure my website is easily accessible and has all the information people need to understand what I can bring to a project. As I understand it, as well as a week in Abbey Road, the prize was to include the producer of their choice. At the band’s request, I was approached by First Up and asked if I would be interested in the project. After seeing some live performances of Six.Point.Five from the show, I was very enthusiastic to work with them.

YM: What did you think of the band?
DC: Six.Point.Five have a great energy about them, both on stage and just as a group of people when they are not performing! They have total commitment to the band and the music combined with tremendous musical talent drawing from a diverse range of musical inspiration. They are interested in honing their songwriting technique to make songs which are accessible while maintaining their integrity and musical ideas, I think they have all the elements they need to succeed.

YM: What are the positives and negatives of working as a freelance producer as opposed to working for one studio?
DC: In my experience, producers generally don’t work for studios, although they may be affiliated with and have favourite studios. Some run production companies, where they offer production services as an advance and make bigger profits out of the sales of the artiste’s release.
Being freelance means I am my own boss, so I don’t have someone telling me what to do! But that doesn’t mean loads of control over my working life, since each project has its own constraints of when and where and how it can happen! Also you can find months go by without a day off, and then suddenly there’s a cancellation and you don’t have any work! (Fortunately when you are really busy, there’s not much time to spend the money). As the boss, you have to remember you are running a business, and that means doing the book-keeping, marketing and all the other things that go with running a small business as well as actually producing.
Not being tied to a studio allows me to be more flexible on constructing a way to conduct a project to meet a budget or quality – I can choose appropriate studios to suit each project.

YM: What are the best perks of your job?
DC: I get some free T-shirts! The main thing I get out of it is doing the best job I can, and have people enjoy the albums which I have worked on.

YM: What are the downsides?
DC: for a while it was kind of frustrating that people who are not actually part of the session do not understand what it is the producer has contributed to the project, but fortunately I studied philosophy at university so I got over it. Other than that, long hours, varying degrees of travel and living out of suitcases, and taking lots of years to build up to a good level of income. Nothing too much though, and far outweighed by enjoying my work.

YM: What production are you most proud of?
DC: Usually the latest production – in this case Six.Point.Five. I always strive to learn all the time and improve what I can contribute to a production. I was pleased that my pre-production nudges have yielded changes which both the band and myself think are greatly beneficial to the song structures, it was a massive thrill to work at Abbey Road (outside the budget of most of my projects!), and to lead a talented and committed technical team. It came out sounding quite good too!

YM: What advice would you give to budding music producer?
DC: I have no advice on how to get work – sorry! Assuming you are getting the opportunity to work in recording, try to absorb as much as you can at all times! Try to understand everything! Is there a reason why the producer asked the tea-boy to make the tea at that precise moment? Probably yes, and probably not because he was thirsty! A session usually has a lot of personal dynamics, politics and diplomacy, management of energy levels and all that going on at the same time as worrying about the passage of time, and getting good sounds and good performances. (Also learn about microphones and so on while you are at it!)

www.davechang.co.uk

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