Music Production

Music production (different from " production music") is a term which encompasses a large area of musical and sound skills but essentially it covers the whole process of recording a piece of music. This may include song arranging, instrumentation, audio manipulation, mixing and mastering. In modern recording terminology the term "arranging" can mean something quite different from the real musical meaning of arranging and has come to mean essentially, moving parts of a song around or simple instrumentation skills.

Over the past decade professional digital production techniques have become very accessible with the reduced cost of software and powerful computers. No matter how good your composition, musicians or arrangement are, everything can fail because of bad mixing, mastering or any one of the myriad of modern production effects.
A t SMARTassMusic a gadget that we use all the time is the Focusrite Liquid mix. This great box of tricks emulates vintage compressors and eq boards from big studios around the world and apart from being fun to use, it's proven to be an invaluable (and inexpensive) piece of equipment\.

SMARTassMusic specialise in the use of Virtual instruments and use the best available software instruments in conjunction with years of experience transcribing music and arranging for live musicians . Because of this expertise we can really get "inside" a style and understand what makes it work, in order to recreate it.

We've worked hard at achieving the crystal clear broadcast quality audio that you can hear in our library. We know that you need great sounding music from professional musicians that compose, arrange, record and produce your track and get it to you, in time for your deadline (we know how soon that is!) in WAV, Mp3 and AIIF format.

We use today's highly sophisticated and powerful music production software tools but we also work consistently with live musicians both as performers as arrangers.

A short list of musicians we have used recently will give you an idea of just how good they are:

Graham Russell - trumpet ( Paul McCartney, Jamiroquai, Shirley Bassey)
Scott Garland - saxes/ woodwind ( Barry Manilow Jamiroquai, Spice Girls)
Mike Casswell - Guitar ( Brian May , Cozy Powell, We will Rock You)
Emer McParland - Vocals ( Bjork and Peter Gabriel, Lesley Garrett, Russell Watson, and movies "Sleepy Hollow' 'Gangs of New York' and 'Tomb Raider 11'.....)
Louise Clare Marshall (Robbie Williams, Van Morrison, Ruby Turner, Jools Holland, Sam Brown, Bryan Adams, Paul Young, Solomon Burke.....)

We've produced many recordings for customers using a combination of Virtual instruments and live musicians, depending upon your budget.

For a general guide to Music Production costs please visit our pricing page.