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5 Reasons Why You Won’t Make Your Next Hit Record At Home

Ok, let’s get this one off the table to start with: I’ve heard and read ALL of the stories.

Beck, Bon Iver, David Gray, Owl City. I know that they have made some of their most seminal work at home.  But since we’re friends, I have just got to be honest with you…you’re NOT Beck. You’re not even Jeff Beck, but neither am I. So, let’s sit together and talk about why you’re NOT going to make that next big HIT RECORD sitting there in nothing but your undies, under the watchful gaze of a single basement lightbulb.

 

And before you get all “I’ll show YOU!”; take a breathe, grab a drink, have a seat, and let’s just talk. This will only take a few minutes.

 

I’m not saying that you’re not talented, that you’re not a visionary, or that you’re probably wasting your life on some fruitless endeavor, Don Quixote. Those aren’t merely windmills in the distance and eventually, I think you’re going to do great things. Right now, I just want to point a few things out and see how I can be of assistance to you and your creative crusade.

 

1. Distractions Abound!

 

I have run my business from home for more than a decade. (Yes, I know well all of the pitfalls of being “that guy”.) Your home is FULL of distractions.

 

The dog needs to go outside (again). There are 4 different TV’s that you seem to run into within every 5 steps. It’s a really pretty day outside (or not). You have not seen every single funny, ‘Bird Cursing At His Owner’ video on YouTube….yet. And let’s not forget that dreaded Honey Do List! (It’s not secret; my hedges have needed trimming for at least 5 weeks now. )

 

Even if you’ve finally created the “perfect” creative space somewhere in your home and you can go into that room anytime & essentially shut the world out, it’s all still RIGHT THERE next to you! You are one single cell phone chirp away from forgetting that infectious hook that will launch your career into the Stratosphere. You’re one doorbell ring away from a brown box that needs to be opened NOW. You might even be one disgruntled spousal “Sigh” away from putting every bit of your gear on eBay.

 

Regardless of the source, there is a ton happening around you right now at home that desperately beckons for your immediate attention.

 

That Man Cave (or She Shed) may be great for capturing glimpses of inspiration. You might even get all of the way through a single acoustic guitar pass before a blender whirls into your sonic perview. But, it is inevitable: Distractions will kill your Creative Process.

 

You need a different place where you can go that will buffer you from all distractions. You need a cove of serenity that keeps your attention focused and keeps would-be interference from creeping in.

 

2. Your Inner Critic Lives There, Too!

 

We all have THAT voice. You know, the one that constantly says, “That song stinks. I think you should do it again. You’re only on Take 57. Real artists bleed for their art. I don’t even see a paper cut on you, Loser.”

 

Your Inner Critic is the biggest saboteur to your Creative Process. That little guy (why is it always a guy with a little leprechaun voice or is that just me?), that annoying little person chattering away between your ears really has no constructive information to give you. He’s never actually completed ANYTHING. And the longer you sit by yourself with THAT voice, the less likely you are to get anything done that you can be proud of, too.

 

Going into a “real studio”, one that has a professional engineer, and expensive mic pre amps’s, and microphones with vacuum tubes in them is a MUCH safer and productive environment for doing your best creative work. Just having even ONE other talented person in the room with you, one who has worked on more recordings than you could listen to during an entire week at the beach, is going to dampen that incesant, destructive Inner Critic’s voice and give you a constructive sounding board for all those immensely creative ideas swimming around in your artsy lil cabeza.

 

When you work in a professional working environment with an enthusiastic, empathetic audio engineer, your creative productivity will SOAR and the quality of all that newfound output will be exponentially better. You will gain more confidence almost instantly! And that extra self-esteem will do wonders for knocking down any Writer’s Block or creative bottlenecks that you may encounter along the way.

 

3. You’re Not Al Schmitt… you’re not even Hal Schmitt.

 

Al Schmitt is unarguably one of the best recording engineers EVER!

 

(20 Grammys and a discography that includes Henry Mancini, Steely Dan, Toto, Quincy Jones, George Benson, Bob Dylan, and just about every other BIG name in the music industry make for a solid argument about his greatness.)

 

*Hal Schmitt is a 53 year-old recording engineer at a studio in the Midwest that you’ve never heard of but he’s been doing this for a long time, too.

 

The difference is either of those two guys and you? They’ve been getting paid to record people for DECADES now. They have first-hand knowledge of the differences between a U47 and a U87 and the sounds they can capture are COMPELLING. The tracks that ole Schmitty has recorded are wide and deep and beautiful and majestic and every other awesome adjective I can think of for “really, really, good”.

 

Professional recording engineers have a completely different footlocker that’s filled to the rim with seasoned, cultivated skills. These guys (and gals) have a set of finely-tuned ears that most bedroom-based recorders don’t possess.

 

Even if you can’t afford Al and the overwhelming amount of success that he carts behind him, enlisting the help of your friendly neighborhood ‘salty dog’, an audio engineer who has worked on hundreds (if not thousands) of recording dates and/or mixed scores of different types of projects, is going to ensure that the stuff you are recording is going to SOUND FABULOUS!

 

Mistake #1 that most home studio creators make on an hourly basis: Not knowing there is a HUGE difference between “ON” and “GREAT!”.

 

Now admittedly, with enough time and effort and training, you can learn to go from ‘On to Great’ eventually. But, in the decades it may take you to get to that point, how much MORE could you have recorded and released with the help of a professional audio engineer inside a professional studio?

 

How much further along could your creative life have gotten while you just sat in a mire of e-books, and online courses, and low budget YouTube videos?

 

4. Success is a Team Sport!

 

As awesome as Micheal Jordan or Kobe was… as incredible as Springsteen or Dylan or [INSERT YOUR FAVORITE ARTIST HERE] is, these people do not build creative legacies alone. Sure, they may each practice their craft in solitude. Each remarkable artist may write melodies and dance with the germs of great ideas in their lonesome, but no one creates anything that eventually bears the fruits of lasting success and International resonance all by themselves.

 

Getting into a “real studio” with other highly talented, wildly creative people moves the likelihood of your own creative success up several order of magnitude. Enlisting the help of a professionally equipped studio and its roster of skilled professionals won’t ensure that your next album will be a “HIT” but, it will give you confidence in the results of your creative labor.

 

Great songs, performed well, recorded well, & mixed well, have a MUCH better chance of rising above the groundswell of chatter currently vibrating in the ears of the world today.

 

There are hundreds of thousands of people in their bedrooms, tapping on their laptops, recording musical fragments, and posting that stuff to free sites like Soundcloud, BeatPort, and Facebook. Every one of those people and every one of those “songs” are competing for the limited sonic real estate of a finite population. You NEED a Competitive Advantage to get above all of that noise. And here’s what I can guarantee you…

 

HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE ARE NOT CREATING THEIR MUSICAL ART IN PROFESSIONAL STUDIOS WITH PROFESSIONAL ENGINEERS AND PROFESSIONAL MUSICIANS.

 

If they were, my calendar would be COMPLETELY black with appointments. Every single engineer and session musician I know would be gainfully employed on recording projects for 60-hours a week, EVERY week. And studios all over the globe would be turning away business by the metric ton because they couldn’t handle all of those indie artist customers.

 

HINT: That is NOT happening and now,that fact has now become YOUR Competitive Advantage.

 

If you want to be more successful than the hundreds of thousands of frustrated artists and “Producers” who are lost in a global groundswell, do what most of them are unwilling to do…

 

Which brings me to my final point!

 

5. We Value Most What We Spend Our Hard-Earned Money On

 

I am currently enrolled in more than 50 FREE Coursera, Udemy, and EdX classes. Sadly, I am currently working on 2 of those free online courses and have only completed a handful of them as of this moment.

 

By contrast, I pay a monthly subscription to Groove3.com and use it almost daily. I have paid for 47 classes at CreativeLive.com and have completed most of them. I regularly pay other Top Level professional musicians and audio engineers for private lessons and work on the information they’ve given me EVERY SINGLE DAY.

 

When we pay for something, we value it much more!

 

There is plenty of documented research that proves it but my own little incubator of Me is all I need to guarantee you that this fact is 100% true: When we trade our time for dollars and then trade those hard-earned dollars for ANYTHING, we place more value on that product, service, or information that we just purchased. The likelihood that we will do something productive with our purchase is usually assured.

 

There isn’t a single person alive that LIKES to WASTE money.

 

So, what are the odds that the studio time that you just paid for will lead to completion of your recording project? How likely are to take the tangible creative output that comes from the professionals that YOU PAID YOURSELF and finish a piece of art that you can then share with other people?

 

I think that you know the answers to those last two questions. You knew them even before I asked them. You live this reality every single day.

 

Whether it’s studio time or your favorite meal at your favorite restaurant, you value most what you invest your own money in.

 

So, PUT SOME SKIN IN THE GAME!

 

So, now that we have had this little talk, how can I help you be tangibly successful with any of those awesome artistic ideas currently floating between your ears? My business exists purely because I help people just like you to capture their creative ideas and turn them into signature works of art that can be repeatedly enjoyed by other people, near and far.

 

I have been in this business as a professional Music Producer, Engineer, and Musician-For-Hire for over 20 years because someone just like you picks up a phone & makes a call (or start typing an email on whatever device you’re currently reading this on) and asks for my help.

 

Reach out now and let’s do something AWESOME together now!

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you when I see you,
B

PreProduction For Fun and Profit

In my roles as producer, engineer, and session musician, I can only think of a few people who have truly been prepared to enter the studio.  Few are ever really ready for the big session, but most people just fail to follow through on preparation and planning prior to scheduling studio time.

 

When it comes to preproduction, especially within the independent music community, there seems to be a sort of punk rock-style attitude that runs amuck.  Many musicians robe themselves in a cavalier attitude that screams “I must play everything on this record from a place of anxiety-ridden improvisation lest I sell out to the god of contrived thoughts and actions!”  (Ok, maybe I am overreacting a little bit there.)  My point is that, with a little forethought, you can save a bundle on studio costs and come out with a much better recording.

 

The first thing I recommend for everyone I work with is to take your songs and strip them down to the bare minimum.  I have always been of the volition that a bad song produced well is still a bad song.  Yes, you can polish a turd, but it doesn’t stink any less.  Try just an acoustic guitar or piano, a bare bones vocal, and a cheap tape recorder to capture your songs.  Go through each song’s form and check it for flow and compositional sensibility.  If you are not sure how to measure these qualities, dissect recordings of other artists in your same genre.  Pull their songs apart to see how they work while trying to infer the reasoning behind their musical and lyrical decisions.

 

For bands, the next step would be to systematically add each member’s part.  Remember to listen carefully to what others are playing, thinking about how it relates to your own musical contribution.  Just because a part is fun to play or technically challenging does not ensure it will be the best choice for your tune.  I would suggest recording yourself at each point through this step.  These recordings do not have to sound great.  They just have to give you an accurate picture of what is happening inside of your songs.

 

After you have all settled on parts to play, there is nothing wrong with a series of intense rehearsals to solidify each person’s ability to reproduce his/her parts with consistency and accuracy.  Record these rehearsals and pay special attention to groove/tempo choices, amp tones, and vocal styling. I would even suggest practicing the order and timeline of recording you will try to follow once in the studio.

 

Lastly, be realistic about how much time you will need to get your recording completed.  If you need more time that you can afford, wait a little while longer and come up with the budget necessary to have it done right. With a little more patience and preparation, you may find that you save money and come out with a better recording at the same time.

 

Recording Engineer Is To Hair Dresser As…

What do recording engineers and hairdressers have in common?  More than you might imagine.  The other day, the gal that cuts my hair was complaining about customers who bring in pictures of celebrity hairstyles and then go on to insist that their own cuts match perfectly.  Like any good hairstyle, there are a lot of factors that go into the making of any recording.  When it comes to the overall sound of your recording, regardless of whether it is a demo or full-production CD, there are many considerations to be made when preparing to enter the studio.

 

I cannot tell you how many times someone has come in my studio with a ‘Strat-knock-off’ guitar and a Crate practice amp expecting me to give them a thundering wall of rock-n-roll Marshall-style glory.  It won’t happen.  That’s not to say that a small amp can’t sound fat, but it is a lot easier to get the sound you are looking for from the appropriate equipment.

 

That being said, the biggest secret to success in your recording project will not be found once you get to the studio, but can be uncovered in the weeks and months of planning prior to your studio trip.  Begin picking out CD’s that sport sounds you would like to emulate.  The saying that “Good composers borrow and great composers steal” is very fitting in this instance.  For example, I don’t feel there is any crime in matching an acoustic guitar sound from one artist and marrying it with the vocal treatment of another artist.

 

To go one step further, begin looking in magazines, on television, and on the internet for information that details the recording process for your favorite albums.  I keep a running file of print articles that dissect the recording techniques used on albums I am really fond of.  I am constantly building a library of information about how different engineers and producers achieve the sounds that are heard on their albums.  This library is an invaluable reference as I am going through the preproduction process with a client.  I also refer to this stockpile of knowledge as I am seeking out fresh ideas or new approaches for projects I produce.  This kind of research doesn’t take a lot of effort, only an inquisitive mind and honest desire to get the sound that may be lurking inside your head.

 

The other asset that many people overlook is your recording engineer.  Good engineers are valuable in helping get sounds recorded, but great engineers can help identify and capture the exact sound you are looking for.  This kind of person has an intense love for the recording process and is constantly enhancing his/her knowledge of this process through diligent study and real-world practice.  It is surprising to see just how many people forget to consult the engineer for an upcoming recording project until their money is grilling on the face of a raging studio clock.  Talk with your engineer weeks in advance of your session time.  If you do not own the appropriate gear needed to get your album’s sound, then look at borrowing, renting, or purchasing that gear in the weeks prior to your session time.

 

And lastly, realize that, in striving to match the sound of your favorite CD’s, the degree to which you miss the target may very well become your own signature sound.  A sound that may be copied by generations of other musicians that come after you.

Finding The Right Producer

In talking with bands, rappers, and singers, the question that I am always asked is, “Do I really need a producer?”  The short answer to this is “Yes”.  In fact, the long answer would eventually end up at “Yes”. The question that everyone needs to address is “What can the right producer do for me and my music?”  Many people think that a producer is some sort of Svengali that waves a magic wand and makes great music appear from thin air.  Some producers can make the recording process look this easy, but behind the scenes, there is a lot of grunt work going on.

 

The main job of a producer is that of a mentor.  Many independent artists find themselves with more questions than answers, and a good producer can serve to fill in the holes.  I work with countless people who wonder, “What makes a great song?” or “How do I convey my true feelings to the listener?”  Many bands will question,”How do we capture our live energy on CD?” or “How do we get our music to sound like [INSERT YOUR FAVORITE BAND HERE]?”  A good producer helps answer those questions not only in words but in finished product.  The right producer does not stop at reciting the criteria for a great song or pointing out hits that you can study.  (There are 1,001 books at Barnes and Noble that can do that.)  He will take the time to help craft your material and assist in creating that “great” song.  A good producer is also a sounding board for ideas.  All of the artists I work with feel comfortable with calling me just to sing a new lyric or melodic hook.

 

When you are working with the right producer, there should be a sense of trust between everyone involved in the project.  That isn’t to say that there will not be times of heated debate or artistic conflict.  Most great records have more than a handful of great stories where artists and producers have butted heads on an idea.  But, overall, there is a feeling of camaraderie between artist and producer that serves to pull the best out of everyone involved in the process of making a great album.

 

The producer is usually the most objective member of the team.  This means not being married to any preconceived notions or personal agendas that could hamper the music.  If a lyric idea is trite or a musician’s performance sub par, the producer will point it out.  Out of everyone involved in the recording process, the producer is the person with the overall vision for the project in mind.  His line of sight is the clearest in regard to the ultimate goal: a great record.

 

There are countless hats that a producer may wear, depending on his technical skills, personal strengths, and professional methodology.  But, overall, a great producer can get inside artists to help them release that true inner voice while pulling the best out of them and their music.  In the end, everyone is left with a sense of pride in the results from that kind of teamwork.