Is It In Your Best Interest To Do Your Own Demos?

[dnafe]

To Mac...

 

That is so totally foreign to me here in Canada.

 

I lived in Ohio for four years 64 -68 and did a number of road trips through to Florida as a kid with my parents I also played a few gigs in Main, Vermont and New York during the late Eighties but it still boggles the mind that there are areas like that still in existence. 

 

The downside to being able to chase the American Dream I suppose

 

 

 

Hey Mike, you wouldn't happen to know Bob Ohlsson who worked at Motown around that time?

[TapperMike]

Mac,  You should try some collabs like I do at acoustica's forums

http://forums.acoustica.com/bbs/viewforum.php?f=23&sid=3bb35d82f50c4a5064b9d7298c74ced6

 

One of us will do the basic chord charts and maybe more throw down a few tracks then the rest join in.

[TapperMike]

 

 

 

Hey Mike, you wouldn't happen to know Bob Ohlsson who worked at Motown around that time?

 

No, not that I can recall. Most of the 70's and early 80's are a blur to me now.

[macmanmatty]

  I am 27 years old and, I am not trying  to make money with this studio recording other artists although if I like their style I will record them. I can play Guitar, banjo, dobro, lap steel, mandolin, tenor banjo, bass, violin and a little, harmonica. I all ready have the recording equipment and all i would have to sink into the construction is 10K MAXIMUM more like 6k . I am trying to use this studio to record demos for myself and get into the bussiness as song writer and,  at $65 / hr  and  more for mixing plus gas to drive 150 mlies round trip to go to the studio it doesn't take for that 10k to pay for it's self.

[TapperMike]

I wish you good luck with that.  I personally think that the way of technology has gone people pay too much for what they really need to accomplish things.  But if you want to get recognized as a songwriter you are going to have to go out and sing for your super.  Noone is going to beat a path to your doorstep.

 

Have you ever heard of "The Brill Building"  That's the way songwriters used to work. It is a huge building that used to be filled with songwriters, publishers, record labels producers and artist.  That's the way things got done.  Nashville has that same type of megaplex scene. If you aren't in bed with these movers and shakers your music will go about as far as your front porch. Noone is going to pull a sheet of your music from thin air and say let's try this.  Noone who can do anything with your music is scouring youtube or soundcloud looking for the next big thing.  You have to be the one busting down the doors.  You have to be the one putting the sheet in front of them and supplying them personally face to face with the music.

 

Taxi may give you a general road plan and evaluate your material but they won't take it farther up the road.  A publisher may help to open some doors for you once you are established but they aren't going to waste their time with you if you aren't They already have more then enough talent waiting inline with a track record behind them.

 

The last guy I've ever read about "making it in the big time music biz while working from home is....Jan Hammer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Hammer

 

He went down a long hard road before he could simply sit at home and produce the music for miami vice.  He said of the time it was the most demanding work he had ever done having to produce essentially an album every two weeks long before the advent of technology of today.  Eventually he became burned out and was cut as the shows music producer.

 

When I was out performing live, Every minute I could I was "pressing the flesh" "Hi, how are you doing? You should really come out and see us at such and such on so and so.  When I was an engineer I'd always be stroking the artists ego.  Because if they like you they might find more work for you in the future. Same thing with producing.  I'd always have my ear to the ground and all the players would too.  You will have to create a "buzz' around you.  You have to be the "go to man" when someone needs what you have to offer.  Because if you don't there will be a Johnny on the Spot who can provide what you could have.

 

 

Luck is being at the right place at the right time. In a field like music you need all the luck you can get, regardless of your skills.

 

Carole King was a big name singer/songwriter long before she began actually performing her own material.  Same with Neil Sedaka (see brill building)

CK got of to a very very young start in a time where songwriters were still separated for the most part from singers. They literally worked in cubicals where the action was, competing with other songwriters.  All the ducks were lined up at the brill building. A composer / songwriter could write a score have it copyrighted get a publisher and a producer and an artist and a label all in the same place.  The same place that had advertising companies.

[MikeRobinson]

Dunno ... as for me, I think that we are simply seeing that the market for music is dissipating – not that it is drying-up.

 

It used to be that the only way to "make serious money from music" was to Pray To The Gatekeepers – in Nashville or where-have-you – who owned the recording studios, owned the record pressing plants, and who also owned the physical means of production of what was fundamentally a physical disc-shaped product, to be packed in boxes and stuffed onto trucks, etc.

 

And, let's face it:  their model was extremely speculative, and a few acts made boat-loads of money (although quite a few of them wound up "in debt to their label"), but many tons of cardboard and plastic got "notched" (written-off in inventory) and eventually scrapped.  They were rolling the dice for the big payoff, and occasionally getting it.

 

Today, music is software.  And, there's a literally world-wide network out there that links producer to consumer directly, with "essentially, zero" variable-costs.  Of course, now that the barriers to entry have all vanished, there's a glut of product, too.

 

It's easy to "diss" that "glut of product" as being mostly no-good, and certainly, some of it is.  But not all of it.  And now, people are doing what they always did with regard to the recording artists that they like:  they're following them, and buying their stuff whenever it comes out.  People are also subscribing to music, and they are individually customizing that subscription.  All of these things also never existed before.

 

Remember the "deejay?"  Some people suggest that when ClearChannel Communications led the way of buying-up radio stations and turning them all into rack-mounted computers playing a single feed out of Kansas City, that was the beginning of the end for the broadcast-music industry ... because they got rid of the tastemaker that made it all work:  the individual deejay.  Customized music feeds, and yes, the return of the deejay (who is both a star and a salesman), are bringing that back now.  But the FM-Radio doesn't have a piece of that action.  People are no longer content to turn on the radio to see what's going to play next, and to turn the channel-knob to another equally-randomized alternative if they don't like what's on Channel-X.  But what has replaced it, has made it more likely, not less, that a consumer will be connected to the music(ian) that (s)he likes, and all of this at virtually zero cost.

 

Living near Nashville, I see how "the system" continues to work.  Big Music is busy trying to re-create "Porter 'n Dolly," with Vince Gill being the new Porter Wagoner and some young and impressionable starlet being groomed to play his sidekick.  They're going through all the right moves, according to the marketing engine, and one day, plastic discs will probably show up at Wal-Mart.  She'll of course play on the Grand Ole Opry; who knows, she might even get inducted.  I wince at what I fear might happen instead, and that she does not see it coming.  And so the machine grinds on.  But-t-t-t... it is a ghost of itself, and it can't sell units of this new act's product, if it went on sale today, in Yugoslavia tomorrow.  Whereas, the Internet can.  And it does.

 

I cautiously suggest that most of the "fame and fortune image" of the music industry was, was always, partially contrived.  It was always part of the show that they served-up to the public, hoping to sell "tens of millions" of units because, in their system, "tens of thousands" was not good enough.

[macmanmatty]

I'm not trying to have people beat down my door step to come me, that is absurd!! I'm going to be proactive and go to them or try to get them to me. But I'm smart enough to know that when you hand a smart person a picture  of something your selling (could be anything car, boat, computer, loaf of bread) he will look at the whole picture, not just the part you want him to and what he sees that you don't or don't want him to may influence his buying decision. The same goes for music even your words and melody are well written if the rest of the song singing, solos, riffs, production, mixing is not up to par your connection may pass it off. Music is art what artist sells paintings based on sketch ups they drew on napkins or notebook paper?   So, Why record demos in a horrible room with a usb mic?

 

 I write americana music with feeling and emotion (  country, folk, bluegrass, blues) and I play finger picked everything I can flat pick and strum too, but I am NOT your 3 chord hack who wrote a country / pop  tune.  The music I see today that sells makes me revolt with sickness that anyone would even think of recording stuff like that let alone listining to it and even worse buying it because they like it???!!! I'm beginning to hate shoes, white girls, trucks, tractors, catfish, woods, and many other things I like because of this. But now just about all of it is free online so why buy?? I think ( maybe I'm wrong though) that this brand of tennie-bopper pop and pop/ country-rock will dissolve into nothing that is worth creating because  now all the teenagers can get for free. I'm hoping that this will be replaced by real talent not good men in cowboy hats who know all of 7 chords and all they do is sing good (but with no emotion) and look pretty for the teenage girls and camera.

 

I'm mainly trying to make it as writer words/ music I don't care if I ever get a real record deal but gigging out (which I  all ready do alot of ) would be on my to do list. I would possibly also consider being a studio musician.  I know the whole not what you know who you know deal and I can work that to the max. I also know enough to send every contract I get back marked in red along with third contract  different from the other two that greatly helps me and hope he won't be smart enough to sign it!!

 

I have connections who would be willing to help and because of location / relation they will give me at least a time of day or point to some one who would or I could get drunk and let them listen.

[MikeRobinson]

Believe me, "Matty," in this you are most-assuredly "preaching to the choir."  

 

Personally, I think that "the music market" has both dissipated and separated.  This has created two, not just one, "massive changes of point-of-view" within the music world.

• "Dissipated":  No one (corporation or group thereof) "controls the only means of entry into" the production of commercially-viable music.  It no longer matters that you own all the 24-track recording studios, or all the record- or CD-pressing plants, or that you're the only one who can actually get a particular song heard on "commercial radio."
• "Separated."  It no longer matters, at least as it once did, that you possess the physical/technical "chops" to manually play an instrument "flawlessly."  Not only can the sound of a less-than-flawless (e.g. "out of tune") performance be digitally corrected, but the sound of "a flawless performance" can be created without the necessity of a manual instrument-performance at all.

We cannot turn back these hands of time.  We cannot insist that creators must use our studios.  We cannot insist that they must employ the performances that we can, in fact "produce in just one take."  Nor must we concede that these alternatives are "better," much less even "equivalent," because they probably aren't.  But we also cannot assert that it must actually matter to them, commercially speaking.  Not anymore.

[macmanmatty]

 on Dissipated  you are 100% correct

 

on separated you are 50% correct this only applies to pop / pop-rock / electronic music. If you are any other genre you you must have the skills to play flawlessly or at least near flawlessly. The record is flawless because a computer fixed your bad playing or slightly of key singing forget playing live. You  won't sound the same as the record or possibly any good and many people probably wouldn't show up  to see you a second time.   Most people playing other genres play live and make some decent wages doing it.  If you don't have the chops or vocal chords to play live then you won't make it at all.

 

 I can do all most all of  my parts in one take on the instruments I am 100% competent on, but I am a 120% perfectionist so some times I will redo or just stop if I didn't the like the note I just played.   Even You can make all wrong notes right by the one you play after save that for gigging. Recordings are forever; they hear you once at a gig and if their drunken butts manage to remember your  slightly bad playing the next day they won't a week later.

[macmanmatty]

 Seriously? 

explain?

[MikeRobinson]

Also, macmanity, please do understand that I agree with you on the points that you raise.  I want that to be clearly understood:  that what we are each saying is, I submit, parallel.  Not contrary.  

 

Although I, myself, have fairly lackluster performance skills, several members of my family were, or are, professional players.  There is a level of musicianship that is in your fingers, beyond the ability of any digital computer to truly match, because when you play, you're a person connecting very directly to another person's soul with absolutely no bit of technology standing in the way.  It's a gift to be able to do that, as well as hard work.

 

What the digital technology did for me was to open up a world of musical performance that I, myself, cannot do "by hand."  (All right, all right, I don't practice enough ...)  We live in very interesting times, where virtuoso players such as yourself can go places that they (alone) have always been able to go to, but to which the common man can now at least also draw close.  We live in very interesting times.

[macmanmatty]

Not that I'm trying to argue but there are computer programs that can turn a 3 chord hack into Chet Atkins??!!! Please list them by names ; they will be on the top of my must have audio programs list  (seriously) !!

[TapperMike]

While Band in a box doesn't have a Chet Atkins chord solo harmony function.  It has several others.

Atkins is actually quite simple compared to Lenny Breau, Ted Greene or Ed Bickert.

 

Here's the thing.  If one is unprepared to learn new things because one thinks that they know enough it's an all stop.  The three chord mentality is an all stop.  If you refuse to learn more because you think you can know it all do it all with three chords you have a reductionist mentality which will forever hinder you.  It will stop you cold before you begin. I've dealt with that mentality in many a forum and from many a student. At which time all stopped.  As a musician you need to take control over your musical destiny.  You do that by learning and applying what you learn.  I couldn't apply myself to play like Chet Atkins does with his alternating bass and melody on top.  So I took lessons  I took lessons and took lessons and followed up with slow methodical practice till I got the hang of it.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18YgS67ASmI

 

But if you decide not to learn how to play like Chet Atkins who's fault is it if you don't sound like him?

 

Arranging for the guitar is not the same as writing a melody. If you are going to write the melody it's a good idea to be able to play the melody and figure out what chord progression you are going to use first.  Most fingerstyle guitarists with lots of experience in fingerstyle guitar can write arrangements with minimal effor.  If you don't have those abilities or knowledge of how it works then... well you are up a creek without a paddle.

 

There are tools believe it or not that can harmonize a given melody if the framework for the key/chord progression is already laid down...

Oddly I use these tools when I'm doing reharmonization as a foundation for my interpertations of melodies.  I don't always stick to the path that's offerred I've picked up a few tricks of my own and will mix and match to suit.

 

I've mentioned the product so many times on this forum it's a wonder I haven't been banned for spamming.

[macmanmatty]

first I said all most all my parts and instruments I am 100% competent on this would only include rhythm guitar usually (fingerpicked in some way) and dobro round neck and squareneck and lap steel. I never made the claim that I can do every part like this and this only when I get the mics placed right and the sound I want. I never can get 100% of I play 100% right on the first time I'm not superman.

[macmanmatty]

While Band in a box doesn't have a Chet Atkins chord solo harmony function.  It has several others.

Atkins is actually quite simple compared to Lenny Breau, Ted Greene or Ed Bickert.

 

Here's the thing.  If one is unprepared to learn new things because one thinks that they know enough it's an all stop.  The three chord mentality is an all stop.  If you refuse to learn more because you think you can know it all do it all with three chords you have a reductionist mentality which will forever hinder you.  It will stop you cold before you begin. I've dealt with that mentality in many a forum and from many a student. At which time all stopped.  As a musician you need to take control over your musical destiny.  You do that by learning and applying what you learn.  I couldn't apply myself to play like Chet Atkins does with his alternating bass and melody on top.  So I took lessons  I took lessons and took lessons and followed up with slow methodical practice till I got the hang of it.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18YgS67ASmI

 

But if you decide not to learn how to play like Chet Atkins who's fault is it if you don't sound like him?

 

Arranging for the guitar is not the same as writing a melody. If you are going to write the melody it's a good idea to be able to play the melody and figure out what chord progression you are going to use first.  Most fingerstyle guitarists with lots of experience in fingerstyle guitar can write arrangements with minimal effor.  If you don't have those abilities or knowledge of how it works then... well you are up a creek without a paddle.

 

There are tools believe it or not that can harmonize a given melody if the framework for the key/chord progression is already laid down...

Oddly I use these tools when I'm doing reharmonization as a foundation for my interpertations of melodies.  I don't always stick to the path that's offerred I've picked up a few tricks of my own and will mix and match to suit.

 

I've mentioned the product so many times on this forum it's a wonder I haven't been banned for spamming.

 Another man singing  to choir  there buddy!!!  I got where I was through persiverance, hard work, many mistakes, and lots of practice. Not taking hard drugs and watching a Chet Atkins concert on TV or using a computer to fake it.  I was simply questioning the advancement of computers / audio programs with that comment.

[Brad Barnett]

Doing your own demos is a horrible idea unless you are a professional audio engineer.  So many home recordings sound terrible because musicians think that they can mix and play the role of engineer when they really don't have a clue.  I have been around studios and have watched engineers work for years and I still wouldn't attempt it!  

[Hamzi]

I don't really believe in demo -no demo...if you have it your demo can be better than someone's best produced song..some people have all the equipment and money and still their music suck