Rob Roper, Producer


Learning from John McVey

I have to interrupt my page here to say that, asking John McVey to produce my record is teaching me a lot about producing. John is a very creative and experienced producer. Seeing how he works has been tremendous. I'll write a longer blog about it one of these days.

Back to the page....

Before I got heavily into songwriting and singing, I was primarily a guitar player, and I used to do arrangements for songwriters and bands. Helping people improve their songs' music and lyrics, and developing arrangements-- if anything comes naturally to me, that's it.

I'm not a professional recording engineer. I would hire one for someone else's project. However, In 1994-1995, I produced and engineered two cassette albums by Faded Innocence, a band I was in at the time. I recorded all the instruments to 4-track cassette in my home in Tucson, where I lived at the time. In 2007, I recorded my own Some Songs I Wrote on a Yamaha 16-track digital recorder in my Denver home. And I have recorded demos for other singer-songwriters. So I know something about the technical aspects of recording, and would be able to communicate with a professional recording engineer.

Here's what Kurt Loken, bassist, singer, and principal songwriter of Faded Innocence said about working with me in that band:


Rob and I were in a band called Faded Innocence in 1995-96. We recorded two homemade cassette albums called Charlie's Dream and Seasons Change to document our creative time together. I was the main songwriter of the band, but Rob was the one who made the songs "music" that people might actually want to listen to through his creativly composed guitar parts and skillful arrangements our songs. A few of the songs from these albums can be heard at the Faded Innocence MySpace site. We did not have access to professional equipment for these recordings, but the high quality of the LoFi recordings was a true credit to Rob's technical ability to push the limits of the equipment we used. The technical skill in the recording and mixing of the final versions of the songs for these two cassettes was 100% Rob, and I can take zero credit for any of that. Given the high sound quality that we achived with our modest equipment, imagine what he could have done with professional studio's resources. I highly recommend working with Rob.

Here's what a member of the Denver Songwriting Group, Ken Morris, said about my abilities to assist songwriters with their songs:


Rob has a true understanding of what makes a great song, and how to get there. His years of song critiquing and impressive list of songwriting training activities put him in a position to get a project completed from early development to finished tracks. Rob has a great musical sense and understanding of the way different chords, rhythms, lyrics and song structures go into making a song memorable. I hold Rob's abilities in high regard and recommend him if you are looking for a producer to oversee your project.

Email me at rob@robroper.com if you think you may want to work with me.