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Post subject: Phil Ramone
Posted: Mon Apr 01, 2013 2:30 pm
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Heard on NPR today that producer Phil Ramone died this past Saturday at age 79. We mostly pay respect to players who have passed here, but to me he was as much an artist as any player. Mr. Ramone's contributions to the production process and what an illustrious career he had speak volumes. 14 Grammy Awards, 33 Grammy noms, including a Technical Grammy for his lifetime of innovative contributions to the recording industry plus 1 Emmy, among other honors. What becomes most startling when you look down his list of credits is that we most often heard his skill and vision at work without even knowing it. The catalog of recorded popular music in almost every genre is so frequently dotted with Phil Ramone's name in the footnotes as producer that one can easily say he was just given the best artists to work with, when in fact it was because he was so gifted that he so often worked with the best of the best.

Instead of the "master of disaster" method of many producers who try to fix everything in post production, he viewed the music production process more as a film director would. He thought it was better to have a vision for a new project, then plan and prepare to capture that vision in the moment in the studio. Even if capturing that vision in the moment meant developing a new technology or adapting previously used technology to a new application for which it was never intended. He usually got it right the first time, so his post production work was frequently minimal.

In addition to his career as a producer he gave back to the art serving in volunteer capacities you'd never know unless you read his bio. None of this important work done behind the scenes out of the studio got him much if any glory. What you can take from that is Mr. Ramone's life wasn't all about him or his career, and instead part of what should be remembered when you see his name in a credit is that he furthered the art of music and the technology of recording not just in the studio in the now, but also for the future of music and the artists who make it.

Any number of producers could make Sinatra or Streisand sound good. That really doesn't take a miracle. The Phil Ramone miracle is the extremely diverse catalog of artists he produced bringing them all a unique and successful sound and no two projects ever sounded alike. More often than not music producers, like musicians, tend to get pigeon-holed as a rock producer or a jazz producer or a this producer or a that producer. More often than not, it is their own dang fault. Phil Ramone worked in any genre of music you care to name with results that were almost always on target. He could and did jump genres, seemingly on purpose. He did everything from Sinatra to U2 & Alice Cooper to BB King to Brian Setzer to The Band to Madonna to Eddie Rabbitt to The Rolling Stones to Shelby Lynne.

I consider him as much an artist as the players and voices behind the microphones. Phil Ramone had a vision of a sound design and a feel for giving each project a uniqueness in the recording process that many up and coming music professionals would be well served to develop instead of depending on using the same exact formula that worked last time and reusing that same formula until it is ran into the ground.

Music is an art. Players and vocalists of course know this, but the producer who approaches each project with an eye to creating new art have always been quite rare and seem to be getting scarcer. Some producers actually have a signature sound. The genius of Phil Ramone was giving each artist their own signature sound without imprinting his own. You can hear a dozen Phil Ramone projects and never actually hear much similarity in space or scope or technique or treatment. There literally is no Phil Ramone fingerprint on the work. We need more Phil Ramones in music production today and less of the "hit making formula" crammed down our ears incessantly. The art is in the music, Phil Ramone knew, better than almost any other producer ever, how to best let people hear the uniqueness in each piece of art.


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Post subject: Re: Phil Ramone
Posted: Mon Apr 01, 2013 2:55 pm
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that right there is some artwork brother, a for effort and thanks for remembering Phil Ramone R.I.P.

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