Paolo Motta
ONE PRODUCER.EVERY INSTRUMENT.
Conservatory-trained producer and multi-instrumentalist in Rome. PM Productions is his studio, and he's the one who answers your email.
Conservatory first, which is where the arrangement thinking comes from. Then two decades of the unglamorous part: bands, other people's songs, mixing until a record translated, and a thousand videos of explaining it on YouTube.
The instruments are the difference. Guitar, bass, violin, cello, drums, piano, clarinet, saxophone, flute — all one person, so an arrangement idea never has to survive a budget conversation before it exists. A cello line agreed at eleven is in the song by two.
Italian and English, all day, with artists in Rome and bands who will never visit. Emerging pop and rock: real vocals at the front, real instruments behind them, a chorus that earns its lift.
The long way round
The beginning
A guitar, then everything else
It started the way it starts for most people: one instrument, badly, for a long time. What was less usual is that Paolo did not stop at one. Guitar led to bass, bass to drums, drums to piano, and somewhere along the way to violin, cello, clarinet, saxophone and flute. Not as a party trick - because hearing a part in your head and not being able to play it is unbearable.
photo slotpublic/images/story-1.jpgConservatory
Learning why it works
Playing by ear gets you a long way and then stops. The conservatory years are where the arrangement thinking comes from: voice leading, orchestration, why a chorus lifts when the bass moves and not when it does not. It is the difference between adding a string line because it sounds nice and writing one that makes the song bigger.
photo slotpublic/images/story-2.jpgBands and stages
Twenty years of rooms
Then the unglamorous part, which is also the best part: bands, vans, small stages, bad monitors, good nights. Playing live teaches you what a song has to do to hold a room, and that knowledge never leaves a producer. It is why records made here are arranged to be played, not only to be streamed.
photo slotpublic/images/story-3.jpgThe channel
A thousand videos of explaining
Somewhere in the middle of all that, Paolo started filming what he knew: guitar, production, gear, songs taken apart and put back together differently. Over a thousand videos later, most questions have been answered twice, and thousands of people have decided he is worth listening to before ever sending him a song.
photo slotpublic/images/story-4.jpgRome, now
PM Productions
The studio is where all of it ends up in one place: a room in Rome with the instruments in it, the training behind the arrangements, the stage years behind the performances, and one person carrying a song from a rough demo to a finished master. Bands come to record in it; bands who will never see it get the same records made for them online.
Instruments played on records here
- Guitar
- Bass
- Violin
- Cello
- Drums
- Percussion
- Piano
- Keys
- Hang drum
- Clarinet
- Saxophone
- Flute
On YouTube
Playing, producing, explaining gear and rearranging songs. If you want to know how someone thinks before you send them your music, this is the fastest way.
Visit the channelSend me your project
I'll tell you what it needs and what it would take. It costs nothing to ask.
Free, no obligation