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one person doing it all, they could reduce their
licensing fees. He quickly became as
well known for the hit songs he produced, as for
the hit songs he wrote.
In the early 1990s, Farren divided his time
between Los Angeles and Nashville and
was soon producing records for country artists
Boy Howdy (three albums; two Top
Ten hits), Kevin Sharp (platinum album; three
number one hit singles), and Deana
Carter (quintuple-platinum album; three number
one hit singles; CMA Single of the
Year). Along the way he also picked
up
American Songwriter's 1997 Country
Producer of the Year Award and was
named
Billboard's number three Top
Producer
in Country Music.
Farren was instrumental in opening the
Windswept Pacific Publishing office
in Nashville, serving as creative consultant.
In 2001, Farren and Ken Levitan, presi-
dent of Vector Management, teamed to open
Combustion Music, a publishing and
production company, a joint venture with
Windswept Pacific. The company has
scored several No. 1 singles, including 2006
Grammy and ASCAP Song of the Year
"Jesus Take the Wheel," recorded by American
Idol winner Carrie Underwood.
www.combustionmusic.com
RECORDING ENGINEER AND MIXER
JOB OVERVIEW
The recording engineer retrieves and stores
musical data, essentially everything
that comes through the microphones. These
engineers select and place microphones,
record the music onto analog or digital tape,
and work the console. The job of the
engineer/mixer is to sort out the information
that has been recorded and over-
dubbed, and mix it down to two or four tracks,
or whatever format is needed, so that
people can understand the musical statement of
the producer and artist.
SPECIAL SKILLS
In addition to technical abilities and people
skills, Jimmy Douglass adds,
"Knowing music is important for success. When I
record a live band or a live orches-
tra, they give me a chart. I have to be able to
read that chart as I'm doing the
recording."
A DAY IN THE LIFE
"On our first day of tracking," explains Tom
Harding, "We'll come in and get the
musicians all set up. On sessions where I'm
acting as producer and engineer, I'll get
everybody's sounds and then get the artist set
up. Before we start tracking, we'll prob-
ably sit around an acoustic guitar, play the
song, double-check keys, and allow every-
one to bounce ideas off each other. Then, we'll
go out into the studio and start
running down the song. Once all the tracking is
completed, the musicians pack up
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