A new breed of home studio producer: Agency and cultural space in contemporary home studio music production

Learning the ‘tracker’ process: A case study into popular music pedagogy

“…The tracker is a type of music producer (Seabrook, 2015;Auvinen 2016;Hiltunen 2016) and their central role is to:…”

“…The role of the 'tracker' is interrelated with digital technological practices, which creates an ambiguous distinction between production and composition because of the: 'increasingly important role of technology in the process of music making' [Hiltunen, translation from the original Finnish by Tuomas Auvinen] (2016: 6). Auvinen (2017) further adds that: the term programmer as an attribute of the producer's agency comes up in interviews and conversations much more often than the more traditional term musician. The constant renegotiations, overlaps, blurred lines, and switches between the different agencies might reflect a flexible production culture, in which anyone can do anything depending on the situation.…”

“…The tracker producer can operate in musical styles where the majority of music making is done within the DAW, such as Pop, Hip-hop, or more broadly 'urban pop' (Auvinen 2016(Auvinen , 2017Burgess, 2008). This newly defined role of the 'tracker' then is simply a continuation of the developing typologies of the producer as the economic, social, musical and technical expectations of contemporary popular music continue to change.…”

“…The production process of popular music genres such as Hip-hop and electronic dance music (EDM) too involve a particular focus on the use of digital tools within songwriting and arranging and Seabrook notes that: By the mid-2000s the track-and-hook approach to songwriting-in which a track maker/producer, who is responsible for the beats, the chord progression, and the instrumentation, collaborates with a hook writer/topliner, who writes the melodies-had become the standard method by which popular songs are written. (2005: 200) Seabrook (2015) further notes that 'tracking' (as described above) encompasses the acts of making backing tracks within the DAW and developing these into songs with the addition of a topline melody (see also Auvinen, 2017). This music production process therefore differs from the more traditional practice of writing a song and then recording the instrumental parts in a recording studio prior to mixing (Zak, 2001).…”

“…The 'tracker producer' (Auvinen 2016;Hiltunen 2016) can be classified as a type of bedroom producer (Hepworth- Sawyer and Golding, 2010) that utilises professionallevel yet affordable digital music production tools such as the DAW, and the virtual music collaborative environments that the Internet provides. However, this adaption to songwriting and music production agency shapes the form of the musical output (Koszolko, 2017) and so the producer requires foresight to understand how this style of creative practice can be used to meet the artist's intentions and the expectations of the listening audience (Anthony & Lefford, 2019).…”