“It’s very important to be self-contained. The lockdown has taught us that,” Grammy-winning producer Rodney Jerkins, who has worked with Beyoncé, Jennifer Lopez and Michael Jackson, tells. In COVID lockdown, Jerkins has held FaceTime and Zoom sessions with artists like Emeli Sandé and sent files back and forth for weeks to remotely produce songs.
“I used to intern at a recording studio, Blast Off, in New York when I was 17 or 18,” Charles says. “I’d just sit and watch the engineer, who was the owner of the studio, and take notes. Then when I went to the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at NYU, I learned more about compression and EQ, about being hands-on — it was all trial and error.
Lauryen adds that, in light of the police killing of George Floyd and the subsequent protests against racism, remote and self-directed recording sessions allow her to address the subject of race with her white producers in a way that she never felt able before.
Interesting, so below is the definition of toplining. I could have been doing this shit in the '80s when I was struggling to make a MIDI setup work and trying to learn piano and write songs. Now I'm old and tired.