It is said that music production started in the 1890s with Fred Gaisburg. He ran the first recording studio and would arrange the musical instruments and singers to get an effective recording. In his day, arranging meant physically moving the musicians, as opposed to arranging the sounds electronically as a producer would today. Music production really came into its own, however, in the 1950s and 60s with record producers such as Phil Spector, who devised the "wall of sound" technique; George Martin; and John Hammond.
Without music production, we would still be listening to tinny recordings where the vocals and instruments are, at best, not balanced correctly, at worst totally out of time. Music production is the process by which all music we listen to is recorded. A good producer can get singers with only a modicum of talent to the top of the charts by understanding the commercial music marketplace and creating the correct package. Likewise, talented artists without the right musical production values behind them can end up sounding awful on track.
There are many different effects that can be used in the production of music, depending on the sound that is trying to be created. One of the biggest breakthroughs in music production came about in the 1950s. Phil Spector created a technique known as the "wall of sound." This entailed duplicate acoustic instruments being used---sometimes entire orchestras---with large, echoing spaces to create a "layered" sound effect that sounded good when tracks were played on AM radio, popular at that time. As technology has improved so has the range of effects available to music producers. They can distort or reverberate sound to make it sound futuristic or disguise, if necessary, a singer's voice. Acoustic artists will often be given a pared back sound to give the impression the listener is hearing it live.
There remains a misconception that music production is expensive. In the 1950s and 1960s when Phil Spector was revolutionizing the art form, it was. Now a track that what would have taken lots of musicians, recording equipment and time can be created on a PC in a matter of hours. Many aspiring artists, in all genres of music, are mixing and producing their own tracks at home and releasing them via the Internet, rather than wait for a record label to sign them up. Music production is becoming more fragmented, as it becomes more cost-effective. It is no longer solely the domain of large record labels.
There are a variety of music production courses offered throughout the U.S. Some courses are run by recognized universities, others by privately run organizations. Most courses tend to focus on four core areas of music production: recording and technology, song writing/composition, performance, and how the music industry works. Rather than paying to study music production, another alternative is to buy the basic equipment required to be a music producer and teach yourself---nothing beats practical experience. The minimum equipment required to produce your own tracks is a decent computer (250GB of memory, 1GB RAM), music software package (Cakewalk sonar studio for the PC, Apple Logic pro for the Mac), MIDI interface, Mixer and microphone.