This is a great letter. My favorite piece of writing from Albini is "The Problem with Music" [https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-problem-with-music] in which he explains how record companies were screwing artists in vivid detail, numbers included. The first two paragraphs alone are worth reading.
That's interesting. "Producers who aren’t also engineers, and as such, don’t have the slightest fucking idea what they’re doing in a studio, besides talking all the time. Historically, the progression of effort required to become a producer went like this: Go to college, get an EE degree. Get a job as an assistant at a studio. Eventually become a second engineer. Learn the job and become an engineer. Do that for a few years, then you can try your hand at producing. Now, all that’s required to be a full-fledged “producer” is the gall it takes to claim to be one."
Why does a record producer or recording engineer need an EE degree? They might need to repair a console, I guess, but they aren't going to design one from scratch.
I assume this was before the career path was formalized enough to have its own recognition in school. You would take an EE degree and specialize in the things that are relevant to recording. Similar to how Computer Science was originally taught to and by people doing math degrees (or sometimes also EE).
You needed engineers to maintain, calibrate, tune, and operate the equipment which was retro ee components, instruments that are used for decades. But as thingbs got more reliable, solid state, software emulation, hard drives instead of magnetic tape, you don’t need that ee knowledge to get a song made.
Yeah, he goes on to partially answer the question with respect to the engineers' role, but I still don't see what any of that has to do with production.
That might have been true in the bygone era of "bands", rock music and guitar-heavy genres that Albini seemed immersed in, but in contemporary pop a producer (or team of producers) is literally all there is, plus maybe singers/songwriters.
And even if you look closer at rock, the most groundbreaking and successful acts have always been at the forefront of innovation in the sound / production department (from the Beatles to U2 or Radiohead)
This is still one of my favorite pieces of writing about the music industry, and still illuminating about how it evolved since. Even so, I think Albini’s best contribution is his own music. He was and probably still is a good curmudgeon, but he stands out to me for just harrumphing it and making music that he wanted to make.
