Production Insights – Quincy Jones, Rick Rubin, Sylvia Massy, Daniel Lanois & More

10 legendary producers perspectives on production and working with recording artists. From Quincy Jones on intuition, to Rick Rubin’s focus on creating the right setting to Sylvia Massey’s out of the box techniques to Mark Ronson’s commitment to the song. There’s lots of wisdom, techniques and practical knowledge here for any one who creates music.

This video was created for inspirational and educational purposes.

1) Quincy Jones

Jones points out how you can never know if something is going to be a hit or not, and about the importance of making music that you love. He dives into the making of Michael Jackson’s Thriller album.

2) Daniel Lanois

Daniel recommends working on songs with a visual layout. Once you lay things out visually, you can split the song into sections and make detailed notes about each aspect of the song, and look for ways to improve it.

3) Syliva Massy

Sylvia discusses her transition from out of the box to in the box mixing. She also explains how she makes mics and equipment to give her recordings a unique sound.

4) Timbaland

Timbaland discusses the importance of evolving as you get older, and how you can’t just continue doing the same thing in the music business.

5) Tokimonsta

Tokimonsta says that its important to master unique aspects of the DAW and plugins that other producers are not focused on.

6) Don Was

Was says that no matter how much you learn, you can’t control music – sometimes lightning strikes and you have a great song, and sometimes it doesn’t.

7) T Bone Burnett

Burnett says that he prefers live tracking to piecing the instruments together one by one.

8) Mark Ronson

Sometimes it takes him 6 months in front of a computer to finish a song. He talks about working on a song with Yebba where they tried dozens of different drum beats before they found the right one.

9) Steve Jordan

Being a producer takes lots of skills other than just being a musician. Producing is something you are always working on; you should never feel like you’ve arrived.

10) Rick Rubin

Rubin says that producing is about figuring out how to make artists comfortable, and not feeling like they have to preform – you can’t control it, you just have to create a great environment for the artist to be themselves.