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0:00/4:47
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0:00/4:56
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0:00/5:37
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Break The Greys 3:010:00/3:01
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Cobalt Blue Inside 4:290:00/4:29
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Always Enough 4:290:00/4:29
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Angelic Voice 3:450:00/3:45
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0:00/4:06
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Messy Wonders 6:390:00/6:39
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Services
If you represent a band needing to improve recorded tracks or have songs mixed/remixed/mastered then let's talk in person.
If you're a songwriter with a tune that needs additional instrumental layers feel free to reach out.
If you're a publisher looking for a custom created piece of music or soundtrack cue let's discuss the requirements in detail.
Drop a line and tell me about your creative vision!
Contact
When working with other people my most valuable tool is an open mind. We're all trying to create music for personal expression, communication, connection, fun . . . and simultaneously a bit of fame and fortune. My ambition with clients is to find the right balance for YOU.
Contact Trevor at -
trevordutton@comcast.net
360.860.0629
Extra Bits
This is a repository for miscellaneous content - videos, writings, and rants.
WHAT IS THE ROLE OF A MODERN MUSIC PRODUCER?
I've been with my wife for 14 years, most of that time has been spent living together. She's of course well aware of my lifelong passion for making music and that I spend part of every day working on something music related. (My goal is to spend MOST of every day doing JUST that!) Yet as I was speaking with her about my involvement with music again tonight I realized she has no clue what it is that I do. She sees me bringing new instruments into the house on a regular basis - last week cello, the week before that a mandolin, two weeks before that a new synth module. She knows that right before we tuck the kids in at night I drink coffee as part of my daily routine so that as soon as she and the kids are asleep I'm awake enough to get started on a night's worth of effort in the studio. But she rarely hears me practicing an instrument. She's dead to the world while I'm tweaking guitar tones for hours on end. She really only hears my work as finished tunes after they've been uploaded to a streaming distribution site.
So it occurred to me: if the person that I'm most intimately involved with has no idea about the details of what it is that I do while laboring over songs, then ain't NOBODY in this world got the faintest idea. Which is kind of a lonely thought. But let's save the pity party for my essay Memoirs Of A Floundering Musician.
The thing is, for the last two decades or so even I've struggled to put into words what it is that I do musically. The short answer is I create songs. But when I tell other people that they immediately shove me into the category 'musician'. That's the adjective my wife uses for me as well. And while being a musician isn't necessarily a bad thing (though there are a plethora of amateurish music makers who refer to themselves as musicians) I have to cringe when that descriptor is applied to me. Not because it's offensive but more so because it's inaccurate. When my wife tells our friends that I'm a musician they assume that I play one instrument and have a repertoire of songs that I'm familiar with and that I practice those songs regularly. Then those same friends can't understand when I decline their invitations to perform at their parties. The thing is, I'm not prepared to perform because I'm NOT a musician. It's taken me years to figure out that the closest title to what it is that I do is Producer. Though even that job description has been evolving rapidly for the last 20 years.
When I started getting my proverbial feet wet with music in the '80s (yes, I am in fact that old) music making required a fairly well defined step-by-step process. A song was written, then it was arranged, then it was recorded, then it was produced, then it was mixed, then it was mastered, then it was duplicated, then it was distributed, then it was consumed. Each of those stages in the process required specialty training and equipment (other than the consumption of course) and people made careers for themselves in the music business as specialists in one of those areas.
Then a little thing called computers came along and within the blink of an eye everything changed. Computers upended almost every aspect of the music world to it's very foundations and continues to find new ways to do so even today (though as an aside, a friend of mine once astutely pointed out that "file management is NOT rock and roll").
Computers brought passably professional results in almost every step of the music creation process within reach of those musicians who were willing to learn at least rudimentary skills in each of the formerly distinct production phase disciplines. The role of music producer expanded and swallowed up all of the other roles. In 2019 a music producer by definition has to be fluent with song writing, arranging, performance (whether live or programmed), recording, mixing, PRODUCTION, mastering, and distribution. They must truly be a jack of all trades who wears more hats than the Mad Hatter himself.
I found myself doing all that stuff too out of necessity, a hunger to learn, and a slightly less-than-healthy propensity toward self reliance. I didn't understand that the role of producer was black-holing all the other job titles into itself. I just knew other people like me were figuring out how to do it all with their computers and therefore I could too.
And then it occurred to me: how to convey to my wife what it is that I do in the studio. How to help her understand that I'm not a musician per se but a producer, and what exactly the hell it is that's meant when I say that.
A producer is to modern music what a conductor is to classical music. Are they a musician? No. But they used to be. Are they a songwriter/composer? No. But they've likely done a lot of that before as well. Are they an arranger? Not exclusively but they've shuffled instrumental parts around on the written score and/or done the same with recorded audio tracks or midi in their digital audio workstation enough to be highly proficient with it. Can they bring their instrument to a party and entertain the guests with a little rocking out? Maybe and maybe not. The reason for that is because the instrument that they now wield as a conductor is the orchestra itself.
The instrument that a modern producer wields is the studio as a whole. Every hardware and software knob, every guitar/mandolin/dulcimer/bass/cello string, every real world and virtual drum, every key on the piano and every button on every bizarre-monizer. Every algorithm that slices, dices, filters, colors, cross modulates, reverse reverberates, squishes and explodes the waveform of digital audio. THAT in it's entirety is my instrument.
Can I wow an audience with a face melting Eddy Van Halen style solo? Nah. But then I'm pretty sure Eddy couldn't play a mean computer either.
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Custom Projects
These are a few of the carpentry and refinish items I've done for personal gratification over the years.
Walnut cabinet for a Roland Jazz Chorus 120 amp.
Guitar wedge speaker cabinets.
Purple violin.
Spalted maple Sequential Six Trak end cheeks.
Acoustic diffusors.
Roland JC77 amp head.
Hollow body bass guitar.