Hui Huanliang, the ace producer of Chinese pop music, has produced more than 200 albums, and has collaborated with stars in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Chinese mainland and North America, discovering and winning the stars such as Chen Jieyi, Adu, Lin Junjie, By2, and Southeast.
Yang Haisong, the most prestigious producer in China's rock circle, is currently the CEO of Terracotta Records, the most independent music label in China, and he is also the lead singer of the band P.K.14. Founded in 1997, P.K. 14 moved to Beijing in 1999 and was known as the best post-punk band in China after releasing their first album, Turn Left Upstairs.
One of them is a "naughty boy" who follows the trend of the times and plays digital music with the post-90s, and the other is a strong advocate of the DIY concept, who likes vinyl and hates MP3. When two heavyweight music producers meet, what kind of sparks will they have? "Music Finance" brought some discussions between the two at the Dongdong Industry Forum.
Xu Huanliang: A music producer is a director of a record, and a singer must be able to tell a story
"Most of the Chinese songs are not made, and a relatively large gap is the problem of music technology."
Music producers are a bit like film directors and generally have their own creations. As a record label, the first thing to consider is positioning, then it is to collect, and after collecting songs, you start testing. Generally, after selecting the song in the early stage, the music is arranged first, and after getting a complete sample of the song, it is necessary to go to the recording studio. The parts of the other instruments can be removed, the harmony is recorded, and finally it has to be turned into a finished product, which is the whole process of song production.
After two to three years of performance, you can do very well. When musicians have some uncertain questions to ask me, I will give some advice, which is actually to do some screening or collation work.
I think most producers and songwriters generally don't do very well in math. My first time as a producer was in 1983, when the recording equipment was very backward, and many producers chose to be artists. I happened to meet an old senior who gave me a method - because it was very poor at the time, the traditional tape recorder was very backward, and when the recording was jet lag with playback, we would put part of it on another machine to adjust the speed.
Later, we also witnessed the progress of science and technology! At that time, the recording was to be recorded at the beginning of five songs, and the challenge to the singer was still relatively large, the requirements for the producer were also very high, and the requirements for the singer were higher. In the past, it used to take 5 or 6 hours for a singer to record a song, but now it may only take 1 hour for a singer to record a song, and the producer has to cut it for 10 hours.
We grew up in so-called Western culture, which has a technical content, and you can't think about it.
First of all, the accompaniment, background music should be selected; secondly, the producer's way of dealing with some problems, in the entertainment you have to think, because now there is the Internet, there is Facebook, so we have to look at the data and reports, each song is a separate individual, the producer must invest in the early stage.
Third, the singer should be able to tell stories and sing the plot. We made a song called "Gangnam", which was released in Lin Junjie's second album. Lin Junjie saw the real version of China and wrote this song, what I want to do is actually a young man's resonance with ancient culture.
There's chemistry between producers and artists — they need to work together. In my career, there have been cases where I don't want to do it, or can't do it. In this case, I think it is necessary to be professional, because every artist may be in a different situation every day.
Adu is a natural singer, but sometimes the state is not very good, and the flat tongue bites the tongue is not clear. When he enters the studio, he will first chat and smoke for half an hour, and then try to record songs, and the songs recorded are basically available.
Every singer I meet is different, I feel that there is a passion for music, and there are many people with ideals. There are some artists who like to perform, who like to record, and some who like to make money. It depends on what everyone thinks.
Every day I receive private messages from Weibo saying, "Teacher, I think you can cultivate me, I think I am the best." Classmates and my parents both said I was a cow", of course I would contact him when I met good music.
I feel that over the years, many problems can be overcome. The biggest difficulty for me with pop music is the lyrics, and what I want most is that a song is composed completely, but usually the luck is not so good. Many times people have a misunderstanding about what an artist should do, but this is not the case. Sometimes if you can do it well, that's luck, and most of the time it needs to be modified. The song "A Thousand Years Later" that everyone hears is the 27th version, and the first 26 versions have been killed by me.
How to make your music achieve the same effect in the smallest sound hall and the largest sound hall? It's a challenge for a producer. During the production process, is the musician important, the mix, or something else?
Imagine in your own home space, do you think furniture is important, lighting is important, or carpet is more important? I think it's the feeling that matters most. When there is a lot of furniture in the home and when there is little furniture, it is not the same, if the furniture is good-looking, it will feel very comfortable at home, the space is very large; if the furniture is very bad, it will feel that the home is very broken. When you've laid out the furniture, all you need is lighting.
The same is true of production: if there are many instruments, you will feel full; if there are not many instruments, you will feel empty.
The song may come from the singer's voice or the rhythm of the song, so you have to grasp the core point, you have to subtract, not add.
Technically, I think the technical aspect applies to all the rules. Whether it's rock music, folk songs or dance music, even a very bad sound is very good, which is a good production.
Most of the Chinese songs are not produced, and a relatively large gap is the problem of music technology. With the development of technology in the Internet age, many people edit on the computer, but the mastery of technology is very general. So I think the age of technology is also full of a lot of market things.
Like eating, if you eat garbage since you were a child, you feel that garbage is also fragrant, and you will not feel how garbage is. But when your life improves, it's completely different. Now after the 90s or 00s, they have listened to a lot of foreign songs since they were young, and listened to a lot of European and American songs. I think this process is an educational process, so there are some things after the 90s that they don't want to hear, which is a kind of progress.
My personal opinion is that we should not despise bad music, that music will also exist. But the musical literacy of young people will affect the future of Chinese music, and I think everyone should work hard to develop from this perspective.
I think the draft is neutral, you can't say it's good or bad, the key is how we choose, how to choose. Now many young people become singers because they want to pursue their dreams. We now see that China's draft is very different from that of the United States and other countries. In the West, many young people also participate in the draft, but we karaoke generation, coupled with the amplification of the talent show, feel that the draft is to become famous. So many drafts actually caused a lot of negative effects.
The development of the U.S. talent show from the beginning to the present is very slow, and the current policy is in the form of encouragement. This naturally creates a commercial effect, and the Olympic champions are produced. In many countries in Asia, athletes start training from a young age in order to win gold medals, and we have won a lot of championships, but most people don't like sports. So I think the draft itself is not bad, but a product of the musical karaoke base, but we don't really understand the price behind the draft boom.
Yang Haisong: After listening to the tingling song in my back, I wanted it
"The biggest problem and obstacle I had was that I was done with the whole mix, only to find out that the sound wasn't what I wanted, and it was a crushing thing for me."
I made my first record a long time ago, when I had a teacher, and it was the first time for me to settle down, and I knew there were still many flaws, and if I were to do it again now, it would be one hundred percent better than it was then. We started making music from the digital level, and we didn't go through the traditional way of making, which I think is a particularly big pity.
Our own band has been through many recordings. But I personally feel that technology is the most critical. Because as a producer, the most important thing is to carry the music.
During the recording process, I didn't come into contact with music for the first time, and I didn't go live or watch them choreograph. But after recording a song, I have a rough idea of what the music should be like, and I think that's important.
I just did a song this summer, and when I first listened to it, I wasn't impressed, it was a very general feeling. The second time I listened to this song, it was completely different, so that after listening to it, I had a feeling of tingling in my back, and I knew that this song was my favorite! I was wondering how to find that feeling of tingling in my back? I need a strong impact, and I want to convey it to an audience that wasn't there, and that feeling will be felt by listening to the record.
The quality of the musician directly determines the quality of the record. In China in the 1990s, the industry has had this misunderstanding: "If the record is not done well, everyone will think that the producer is not very good, and the sound recordist is not very good." ”
My experience is this: the drummer's skill and percussion intensity are directly related to the song. The audience's aesthetic also determines that the production angle in China and abroad is different. Because most listeners don't pay much attention to how good the recording is, they actually can't hear it clearly. Some people think that the real difference is that the volume is different, but it is not like this.
For foreign musical works, we are still learning more. When we were in Sweden in 2005, I stayed there with the drummer and heard that one of our friends made tapes and then released them during the production process, and everyone knew that this would be cool.
In the process of music production, the biggest problem and obstacle I encountered was that after the whole mixing part was done, I found that the sound was not what I wanted, which was a relatively collapsible thing for me. For a producer, everyone has their own characteristics, everyone's aesthetic and ideas about music are different, and the producer's way of making music is also different. The way the producers do it, the way they handle it, and the way they communicate, I think it's all very important.