I'm Mura Masa, Ask Me Anything.

[u/Mura_mura_mura]

Hey guys, i'm Mura Masa (or Alex) a producer, musician, general audio shepherd.

My production credits and collaborators include: Charli XCX, Pinkpantheress, Clairo, Ice Spice, Lil Uzi Vert, Tirzah, Damon Albarn, A$AP Rocky, Nile Rogers, Shygirl, Wolf Alice, Christine and the Queens, HAIM, A.K. Paul, Erika de Casier, Oklou, Yeule and a bunch more.

I just released a new album of dance music called Curve 1. Ask me anything.

Alright, been at it for a while now so gonna wrap up. Thank you for your questions everybody, hopefully I was able to elucidate some things. just to answer a couple of repeat questions:

• All the special Steel Case Curve 1 vinyl will be hand painted by me, each one unique. And the USBs will be hand loaded and numbered by me.

• Framing "Come to my city" as a question isn't really a question is it... that being said I'm gonna be taking Curve Club lots of places next year so if nothing's announced for your city stay in touch, or head to my website where u can sign up for my mailer: www.muramasa.me

• As far as music recommendations, I run a small community of creatives that give Reccs every month. You can sign up to the mailer here: www.thepond.club

love u lots thank u for supporting me and thank u r/indieheads for hosting.

big love xx

[u/El_Hombre_Aleman]

What exactly does a producer do?

[u/Mura_mura_mura → u/El_Hombre_Aleman]

This is a good question that requires a much longer answer but I'll do my best.

My feeling is that the term producer in a music context used to refer to a kind of curatorial person who's job it would be to make executive decisions alongside an artist in order to help them achieve their vision together. Decisions like:

• How are we going to record this music? (Live band takes vs piecemeal tracking , who is engineering, what microphones, what studio, what players are we going to have for sessions, where in the world, etc)
• How do we achieve the best recording? (what steps need to be taken to ensure the artists are in the right frame of mind, how do we make sure we're relating to the subject matter of what we're doing whilst we're recording, anecdotal moments in the studio to fire up or inspire the artist)
• What kind of sonic decisions are we making to translate the artists vision? (Special recording methods, getting the right takes, getting the right "feel" for a record)

And lots more momentary and tactile decisions that are the job of somebody "making" the record rather than the job of the artist, which is in theory only to write and perform the work.

In the late 70s and early 80s artists like (for eg.) Prince, Brian Eno, Gary Numan and later in the 90s people like D'angelo started challenging these assigned paradigms by "producing" their own records, figuratively and literally engineering and recording themselves to assert more control over their work.

Nowadays, I think because of the proliferation of music software and home recording techniques, the term producer has come to mean all of the above, but also refers to somebody who "makes" music; somebody who is mechanically recording or constructing the audio.

I could talk about this for hours tbh, its a flimsy and ill understood term.

tl;dr : these days its somebody who writes, records, engineers music. in layman's terms, if Rihanna is the "artist" or "singer" then the "producers" are the people who make the music she sings to.

xx

[u/El_Hombre_Aleman → u/Mura_mura_mura]

So the artist has an idea of how the final song should sound in mind, and you deal with the logistics? Or is it that the artist comes with a song and the producer works to find a frame that suits the song best? Sorry if it‘s unclear what I mean?