Jody Whitesides

Category: News

  • Breaking the Silence

    Breaking the Silence

    One would think that I’ve been off the reservation with how long it’s been since there was a previous update. [you can go to the last news post and see that it was in December 2022, yikes]

    Tempting to say that I was a caterpillar that went into a lengthy two year cocoon, to end up as a butterfly emerging in 2025. Or maybe, a phoenix rising from it’s ashes being born anew. Nah, it’s the caterpillar example.

    The cocoon I was in was the studio. After doing the remixes of the Christmas music, there was a palpable tension hanging around me in regards to the next steps of my music career. Sadly though that tension is still there, I’ve stopped waiting on it; should it come to fruition it will get announced here.

    I opted take on a rather large remix and new mix situation. After experiencing the updated feel of the Christmas songs, it felt silly not to tackle other older material. Applying decades of experience to those recordings, which were done with cutting edge technology then, to improve the quality now. With console software, new audio listening qualities, newer and more refined fx, I’ve taken those old recordings and done to them what I wished could have been done when they were first done.

    This includes cleaning up edits. Improving room sounds, delays and other effects. Now they sound more like records and cohesive.

    Into the new frontier. Along with improving the original stereo releases (and yes that means the old versions will be disappearing from streaming services and no longer sold on physical media) I’ve also updated them with spacial audio mixes.

    You might ask: what is a spacial audio mix Jody.

    Welp, I’m talking Dolby Atmos. Currently making the rounds for some of the music you hear on Apple Music or some other streaming platform. There is also the forthcoming spacial audio called 360RA, it’s in beta and I’m fortunate enough to be testing it out. It’s got a different quality to Atmos. It still works in headphones and man does it make music sound great.

    When those albums get re-released in the coming months and years, they will have animated cover art, and spacial audio mixes to go with. On as many platforms that make use of it.

    The silence got broken a few weeks ago with the release of a version of Do You Want to Play for the Las Vegas Golden Knights. It’s been a substantially long time since I’ve updated those for all the new teams that have sprung up in the last 8 years or so. The largest group is in the G-League which appears to constantly be tweaking itself.

    That means new teams for the NHL (I’m still waiting on Utah’s team to get it’s official name so I can get that one done), the NFL, the NBA, the WNBA, the G-League, MLB and a couple of surprises for a particular school in Utah.

    To wrap up this overly long update, be prepared as there is a lot of material coming and it all sounds great!

  • Forgotten Warriors

    Forgotten Warriors

    About a year and a half ago my friend Greg Watton came to me wanting to write another song. I mentioned that I thought it would be a great idea to write about Veteran’s, especially since he is a veteran and was going through some rough stuff at the time. So he came up with some lyrics centered around forgotten warriors of America.

    We tooled around with the musical direction. I had started one musical idea but Greg felt it wasn’t quite hitting the right direction. Thus I scrapped that and started something entirely different. He was excited about the new version, which meant it was time to go after the melody.

    Once I finally started digging into the words we had to work on doing a bit of rewriting and editing, as good songwriters often do. The hook became a double-edged hook after I suggested we remove the ‘of America’ part of the title. It didn’t sing or flow well. Once that was removed it became anthemic! Anthemic in two different parts.

    YouTube player

    Greg and I wanted a song that could strike up the awareness about how our veterans are treated after serving our country. Many are left fending for themselves and in dire need of help after seeing the ravages of serving the country. As a terrible and prime example, consider the recent shooting in Thousand Oaks CA. There is a veteran who was obviously having some trouble and had no-one listening.

    Our goal is to have you help make this song a national anthem for veterans. It’s easy to sing along for the chorus and feels wholly empowering in the process.

    Our original plan was to release the song a year ago, but due to unfortunate circumstances I had to forego the idea of releasing last year.

    Fast forward a year…

    Now it’s been released as of last Friday morning. The buzz of the feedback has been great. As I was doing the first live performance of the song last night in sound check at the local TV station, the production crew and host was already singing the song before airtime. It’s always incredible when people you don’t know are singing your words and melodies back at you. Flattering and humbling.

    I look forward to having you singing it back to me at a future show!

  • 180 Turnaround

    180 Turnaround

    Life sure loves to throw a 180 turnaround don’t it?

    Tour

    If you hadn’t heard, I am to be going out on tour this summer. Opening for a significantly bigger artist.

    180 TurnaroundThe unfortunate part is…

    180 Turnaround

    Said act has disappeared into the ether, so plans have to be changed. I’m currently doing a zag when I was supposed to be doing a zig right now.

    Preparations

    See, I was anticipating being homeless for a good portion of 2018 and on into 2019. I mean that in a great way. The plan was to be out on tour for 18 months, initially kicked off with the aforementioned artist. Its not a state secret that it takes roughly 18 months straight of touring in order for an artist to gain critical mass.

    Band members were given setlist choices and had voted on their favs.

    Based on the scheduling that was planned for, I should have been in Los Angeles now starting several weeks of rehearsals. To make sure the show was as tight as can be and to work out all the parts for everyone.

    Said artist had requested that we were to be in the city of the first date of the tour a week early so that rehearsals could be done with their crew to work out the sound and the transitions between my crew and their crew. Smart thinking if you ask me.

    Speaking Without Contracts

    The drag is, I hate talking about projects before contracts are signed. This business is so erratic that its impossible to judge what is going to happen. We were to get the contracts for the tour in early February. Which meant we had a deadline for getting things in place in order to be ready to sign said contracts.

    In a 180 turnaround, there was a desire to make a soft announcement about the tour to companies that I have endorsements with. Which is ideal at the winter NAMM show that takes place in late January.

    I felt pretty darn secure in that my camp had gotten everything that was requested of us for the tour a week prior to NAMM. It didn’t hurt that there was a lot of communication happening between our respective camps. Thus I started leaking the tour plans to my endorsors. Introducing band members to them and helping band members to get endorsements with other companies that more directly related to their instrument.

    Going Modern

    Part of leaking the tour plan was to talk about how I was planning on doing the sound setup. A 180 turnaround from how its normally done.

    All band members, apart from the drummer, had agreed to use a laptop and an audio interface as their sound source for their guitar sounds and vocals. This was a great selling point for several companies I have endorsements with. Most bands don’t do this. Consistency of sound and ease of setup for soundcheck is the primary reason. It really reduces the sound person’s job to mostly dealing with the drum levels, as that would be the most inconsistent source of sound.

    With the rest of us going direct and using in-ear monitors it reduces a ton of the guesswork of sound. The guitar, bass, and vocal rigs would remain the same with very minor tweaks needed for levels and PA eq. That’s the beauty of the computer setups.

    I found a fantastic company to make a rack setup to house the computers and audio interfaces. Which would have made setup a breeze. Especially since we’d all be wireless. Pretty much plug in the power. Plug in the midi switchers (my custom HIVE) for switching sounds for songs. Then plug in the output of the band to the board. No mics on instruments to mess with, other than the drums.

    Support Changed

    It started 180 turnaround about a month ago. I began reaching out to other contacts to find another tour to hop on. I felt like something was wrong when the communication tapered off from the artist’s camp. That’s when I was asked to make a list of a bunch of other bands I felt would be a good fit.

    Bombs

    Then while in the middle of a writing session for another musical project I got a phone call from the point person putting everything together.

    The first thing I was told was that the agent who was dealing with the extra dates, between the weekend dates with the artist I was to open for, the press and radio stuff – decided he was going to quit music. BOMB Drop…

    Next up was the announcement that the person putting all the other moving parts together decided to also get out of the music business and become a preacher. BOMB Drop 2.

    One of the main contacts I had reached out to find other bands came back saying: I can’t find anyone else who is doing an actual tour. Everyone is doing one-off dates. BOMB Drop 3.

    Crater

    A few days ago I started informing people that I had told at NAMM that the tour had gone into the ether.

    The beauty is that everyone in the music industry can relate on some level. The pouring of support that I got back from people was certain uplifting. So many providing words of encouragement and some sending similar stories of things that have happened to them.

    Bright Light

    After the 2nd round of emails that I sent letting out what had happened, I got a call from an unlikely source who had contact with someone that had a cursory role before. Its a little early to tell but I’m encouraged about the initial contact.

    To be continued…

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