Differences and Similarities in the Role and Creative Agency of Producers in Pop, Rock and Classical

Differences and similarities in the creative agency of the producerin the production process of urban pop music produced in a home studio,rock music produced in a conventional studio facility and classical concerthall music produced in a concert hall setting is explore in this paper. Startingfrom the premise of record production being a collaborative effort, I approachagency as the capacity to make and effect decisions within a structure or evento alter it to some extent, and creativity as contributing to the domain of existingworks through exercising aesthetic decision-making. Based on theseunderstandings of agency and creativity, I will examine how different culturesin different production settings and different studios conceived as culturalspaces affect the construction of the producer’s agency within creativecommunities in the production process. Furthermore, I will discuss how differencesin understandings of the ontology of the music contribute to the levelof creativity, i.e. the contribution to the domain of existing works, that aproducer agent can possess. I base my presentation on extensive ethnographicfieldwork of three case studies on production processes, which took place inthe course of 2015-2017