Tag: behind the scenes of music production

  • Backups, Breakdowns, and Breakthroughs: A Musician’s New Year Ritual

    Backups, Breakdowns, and Breakthroughs: A Musician’s New Year Ritual

    Hello 2020

    We’ve made it thru 2019 and we’re still here. That’s a great thing, all things considered. First off – Happy New Year. I hope you had a fantastic trip thru your holiday festivities. As for me, I had a great time hanging with family for the Christmas thru New Years holidays.

    What does a musician do over the holidays? For this time of year I would normally be skiing most mornings (for exercise sake), though this past holiday season that didn’t happen. The reason? Your friendly neighborhood musician nearly broke his leg walking in his driveway. I was coming home from skiing where I was about to enter the house when I slipped and fell. In the short span of the fall I was thinking to myself as I was going down, ow, this hurts. Oh shit, I can feel my bones in my lower leg starting to twist. Please don’t snap, please don’t snap. Fuck that hurt as I was picking myself up.

    Somehow my right leg folded under me and twisted sideways. The end result? A really gnarly sprain for my ankle, which was in a ski boot at the time and my knee. Almost two weeks later, lots of icing plus a couple of days in a device my sister had and my ankle is almost back to normal. I did attempt to get out for some runs last week as I was already walking without a limp, but that proved to be a short-lived 2 runs before I opted to nix that. At that time my leg was feeling unstable and the pressure on my ankle still hurt. Tomorrow I will find out if my ankle and leg feel better as I plan on attempting to ski again. Fingers crossed that my leg won’t feel unstable.

    Music Backup

    Another thing I tend to do at the end of the year is make sure all projects from the year are properly backed up. This year was no exception. No exception with a twist. This time around I ended up consolidating CD and DVD backups to much larger Blu Ray discs. The process actually took a few days of organizing to get completely finished, but now I feel so much better with less overall discs in the library of data – I think I reduced about 300 discs to about 110. Not a bad reduction.

    Music Production

    The song I was working on for an artist that I was producing has been finished! The long road of a song called Divine Intervention has come to a production end. She has approved the mix and master. She’ll be picking up her finished project likely this week and releasing it to the world in 2020.

    Music Of Moi

    I’m mid production on several songs. Right now, today, as of this post being penned, I’m starting the mix of a track that I wrote some time ago but started tracking a full-on production version back in December. That’s the NOW of this post.

    Videos

    Mid production of two lyric videos. I believe I will get them both finished later this week. On the business side of it I’m still working on distribution with VEVO. I’ve run afoul of my previous distributor due to their requirement to control collecting royalties for ContentID. The problem is I have a deal with YouTube for publishing and that means I’m not willing to give a middleman money I’m collecting directly. Thus my music videos and lyric videos are stacking up awaiting release until I have a direct deal with VEVO in place.

    2020 Plan

    There’s quite a few things on the horizon. The policy I’m sticking to right now is, only discuss that which I’m finishing or have just finished. This means that in 2020 I will be increasing my output of posts here. I’m guessing my posts will start happening weekly. I already know that there will be multiple updates for January – but without letting the cat out of the bag right now.

    Have a fantastic day, awesome week and enjoy life.

  • When Social Media Turns Toxic: A Musician’s Guide to Mute, Focus, and Finish the Track

    When Social Media Turns Toxic: A Musician’s Guide to Mute, Focus, and Finish the Track

    You can’t control crazy!

    About an hour ago as I write this, a post I made on social media picked up a few responses from a few people. Then came a crazy response that caused me to think, hey, this might make a humorous response. Off went my reply into the social media ether. Or so I thought.

    A Barrage

    I didn’t expect to suddenly be inundated with a slew of posts where each one made less sense than the one before it. Some insulting. Initially I thought it prudent to explain the humor. Then it went even further south. Its like I tapped into crazy. Or rather some person’s crazy that I eventually had to think to myself. Stop responding.

    More insults

    I ended up wondering exactly what set this guy off. So I make a small trip into his profile. I find someone who fancies themselves a lyricist. One who has publicly promoted a known company that takes hopeful musicians/lyricists money to make demos and offer a publishing deal that is about as good as a rubber quarter for spending. Who knows, maybe this guy is the next country version of Bob Dylan, I’m not willing to find out.

    Mute

    After that trip down the rabbit hole, I continued to get posted – despite my silence. I hit the mute button as I had to remove myself from the situation. It was making my brain hurt.

    The Past

    It seemed quite similar to an exchange I had with a stalker a few years back. Yes, I’ve had a male stalker. You try to be nice and the person continues to be less than considerate, that’s when you have to put the real distance between yourself and their crazy.

    In happier news, I’ve been finishing a bunch of tunes destined for TV. Pardon me while I put focus back into the music.

  • Inside the Studio: How a Simple Change Made This Song More Memorable

    Inside the Studio: How a Simple Change Made This Song More Memorable

    making a hit song

    What goes into the making of a hit song? This is a curious question. If there was one true answer, everyone would be doing it, and nothing would actually end up being a hit. Right? Conspiracy theorists like to believe that the major labels have some sort of computer algorithm that can predict if a song is a hit or not. As the British say: Bullocks. They don’t know any better than any one else, the different is, they’re in a position of power to sell something.

    While recording Till We Meet Again, George, Jesse, and I get into a quick discussion about things that can help make a song a hit song. In this case, we’re talking about a little trick that Jesse and I did with a particular transition of a song from one part to another. We changed something about the song structure in such a way that it makes people take notice. Watch the video about making a hit song and find out what we did.

    Making A Hit Song

    YouTube player

    Did you catch what we were talking about? Think you can go write a hit song now?