Category: In The Studio

Perfection can lead to trouble. The deep divide is coming. It seems everywhere I’ve been turning lately there is a deep divide based on people’s ideals of what they believe is perfection. Whether its in music or in ideology, people are becoming less tolerant of those who do not share their same taste or view.

I think forward. I’m always thinking forward. If a new sound comes out, I want to hear it. That’s the musician side of me.

Perfection

I think perfection. I didn’t always think perfection. Always do the best you can do, that was beaten into my head while growing up. I now take that very seriously as I produce music. As I start achieving what I hear as musical perfection, I notice how so many others do not understand it.

I love to help out musician friends and other up coming talent. What invariably happens every time I do this is a culminating point of frustration with the person I’ve brought in to work with. This is especially true with those who work day jobs outside of music. The general reason for the frustration stems from being unable to execute an idea.

Usually a budding musician will want to play their instrument or sing. I get it. Its a pride thing. As a full-time musician and often a producer, I’m more interested in the perfection of the performance and I care how I get to the end result. I wasn’t always that way, but I developed that mindset. Its not a common mindset.

Throughout the history of music there are numerous cases of where the writer/composer/artist is not the person on the recordings. Some cases become public, but most of the time no one is the wiser. In some cases, even the artist isn’t aware that its not them.

Is this problematic?

This could be determined by whether you believe that content is king. I’m one of those that believe content is king. The song is the master. Everything has to serve it. The performances, the mixing, the mastering, they all contribute.

The only time when I believe its a major problem is when attempting to use one singer’s voice as the voice for another front person. Aside from voices for the artist, I’m fair game with anything else to make sure that performance works. Why? The human voice is extremely personal and one that you can’t replace – a voice is the same as a fingerprint.

Common Argument

Often when confronted with the technological advances in recording, musicians will reference the purity of the Beatles and their recording process. What this tells me is that they don’t know how the Beatles used the technology they had available to them at the time they were in their heyday.

If you, as a listener or musician, fall into the camp that the Beatles were pure about their recordings, then its likely you’re not aware of all the techniques they used. The Beatles used every available trick in the book they could to achieve their goals. Sometimes going as far as to invent new ways to record sounds. One of my favorites is that they would change the tape speed in order to slow down the tape to make it easier for them to play a part. Then they would speed the tape back up to full speed to make it sound like they performed that music at tempo.

I believe the Beatles would have used pitch correctors, and time shifters to their advantage had the technology been available to them. Why? Because they were cutting edge and strove for perfection.

Currently

For some reason, when a musician uses today’s tools at their disposal they are considered to be cheating when going after that perfection. When in reality they are attempting to achieve the sonic goal they hear in their head. At least that’s how I envision it.

Conclusion

I’m not going to hide the fact that I make use of all kinds of technology to make music happen. In the recording process, I use a computer to track everything. In the mixing process I use all kinds of plugins to remove noise, correct timing (if its not grossly out), tune pitch (sometimes for a performance, sometimes as a means to create an entirely new sound), create space, etc. My entire musical chain is Digital from start to finish including my guitar rig when I perform live.

When I confront an artist that I’m working with or producing, I will explain the how’s and why’s of making use of the technology. Often once its explained, they have no issue with it.

I don’t use technology to deceive, I use it to enhance.

Its late at night. I’m in the studio working on different rhythms for the vocal and lyrics in a new song.

Process

This particular song has been going thru a long process of rewrites. I had the initial idea for it a good long time ago. I laid down a demo of the song, then left it in a pile of 70+ other songs that were eventually going to pulled back out and tweaked for release.

Voting

Those 70+ songs got voted on in an effort to eventually do a classic example of a album. Voted on by a select group of fans. Then I wised up and took a look at how people consume music – they listen to streaming services and singles. Understanding that led me to switching spending time on each individual song as its own entity to be polished to perfection.

Rewrite

I was poking around my hard drive of songs and realized that recent events really dictated that I pull this particular song back out and give it some serious attention. I took it out of its original hard driving hard rock format and turned it into a pop bound rocker that is much more modern in arrangement. Keeping the same drive but really adding a slew of elements to propel the song in to a much wider audience of listeners.

Lyrics

After the arrangement was up to snuff filled with little nuanced tracks, it came time to work on lyrics. The track is flowing with such force that I felt the original lyrics were lacking. The idea was there but the focus was off. Not as laser sharp as it should be; and this was already the 3rd incarnation of the lyrics. I started bouncing rewrites off of friends. I removed two lines and replaced them with a better idea. Where my first idea was saying the same thing as another line in the song (but the second line said it better). Then I changed the title / hook of the song. The original title was apparently too passive and I wanted action!

Different Rhythms

Once the lyrics got tweaked, it required retooling the melody, or rather retooling the rhythms of the verse. Why would I work on different rhythms? Primarily, I had to get used to the new flow of the lyrics. Also I want to make sure I keep the song going in a way that the listener wants to hit that repeat button to listen to the song again and again. Which is where I sit right now. I spent a couple of hours trying various ways to play with the rhythm of what I was singing. I narrowed it down to two different rhythms that I really like.

What gets me is how people react. A first reaction can tell me if I’m really on the right track. Usually I don’t bring a lot of other people in on the process of my writing, but I felt like hey, I could use some help on which different rhythms I should go with for this verse.

I already know the chorus is an anthemic banger. Yet I need to make sure my verse compels you to get to my chorus. Its that simple. Once I have which of the different rhythms I’m going with for the verse, I can start going to town on the vocals and really make it fly.

End Run

My goal is to get this particular song ready and released by January 20th. There’s a significance to that date for this song and if you’re a U.S. citizen – you would be well to know why. If not, I weep. For everyone else, its still going to be an awesome song to bounce along to and play loud and proud in an arena or your party.