So for the past few months me and my friend who make music together have been working for a local entertainment business, specifically working with a DJ making remixes for him to play live (usually simple pop stuff, adding in slightly different drops, basically live edits that he wants to play). Honestly for most stuff we usually don't ask for payment since we're getting our stuff played live and get to go to the gigs and network and stuff. It's actually a pretty decent gig since the workload is pretty light and he's not like putting his name on our work or saying he made them or anything. But that's just the background.
Anyways, recently one of the guys that is apparently like the CEO's best friend (not sure of his exact role but doesn't really matter, supposedly he's with the company though) has been bringing up that someone in his family produces and that he'll be working with us. I was told that he has been messing around in a different DAW for about a 2 months and picked up Ableton about a week ago, which even for a prodigal learner just isn't enough time to get all the little ins and outs of production for the most part.
So he starts sending me project files, and as one would expect from a producer so new, they aren't exactly great. I think in one there wasn't a single reverb or compressor (or any effect plugin) in the whole song. I'm not going to fault him for it, since I'm sure at that point in time my stuff honestly wasn't much better, but considering that I'm being given these songs and being told to basically "fix them" is a bit frustrating.
One of the emails says verbatim: "On this one mix master and redo to make it a hit song as well as add kind of an afrojack type drop. Kind of a drop to get the girls up and dancing".
I figured that I'd just have to basically redo the whole song, however they also explicitly stated to make it recognizable as the other guy's song and don't significantly change it so it's still his song.
So now I'm kinda stuck here with this song expected to turn it into some top 40 EDM hit in like a couple weeks (they want to be able to play it live at a little show in August I think) and I'm not even sure how to, or if I can, do that.
Honestly like I said at the beginning, it's a pretty chill gig, and It's not like they're going to hammer me for a deadline or anything or "fire" us. This is more just me airing out my frustrations, since in a way I almost feel a tad bit insulted that they're throwing this on me and expecting me to wave my magic producer wand and shit out a grammy or something, and give the dude's brother/cousin/whatever credit. I'm not really angry at the other producer kid since it's always good to encourage people to practice and work on their hobby, but I just feel like throwing him in with us like this is a bit weird.
Has anyone been in a similar situation, or at least something where you've dealt with someone who vastly overestimates what a producer does and expects magic?
Thanks for listening to my rant lol, happy knob turning friends
Submitted July 31, 2017 at 09:44PM by Orangenbluefish https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/comments/6qsrmu/forced_to_work_with_a_lower_skilled_producer/?utm_source=ifttt