As an engineer/producer myself, I get leery about doing to much for the client. With bands, they have the songs already writen (hopefully) and usually just need a place to play and get the tracks down. With some of the Hip-Hop clients and a few other clients, I noticed that since they did not have any real talent themselves, they where trying to get me to write/create the music portion of "their song". In a few cases I did do this for them. Since they where paying clients and I wrote it off as prepaid. When situations like that continued, I started telling them the deal. They looked confused and nervous when I began talking contracts and legal jargon. Than I started explaining to them about copyrights and such. I told them how easy it would be for someone to take their song and they could not do anything about it. Than explained if we continued this route of production that I could claim half or more rights to the song. This promptly got these kids off their lazy butts and came back with their own material for the next sessions. Alot of people do not understand this stuff. They think if they hold a copy of their song,or master copy, that is good in court. Than trying to say the whole "mail it to yourself" as added security. Someone needs to drop the bomb on these folks. Often I end up doing more educating in the studio than recording. Hey, It still pays though.
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