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I’ve been lurking in this thread and waffling over weighing in myself, which comes in part from a privacy that I’ve cultivated after years of being more free with sharing my music and ending up being disappointed/embarrassed when it doesn’t work out or become what I expected or hoped it would. But ultimately my journey with music has taken a circuitous path that wound through these forums in earlier times, and I think I’ve learned a few things over the years that are worth sharing. My current project will be my first with an outside producer and also my first using professional session musicians instead of the members of a band that I’m in or playing everything myself. It’s costing a good amount of my own money, but I feel almost relieved to have committed to it (25% down on the studio time) and I feel like I’m doing my best creative work so far (more on this later). How did I get here? The same way I got to and through the last project, which felt otherworldly in its own right. Here is the backstory: a band that I was in was having a record mastered for release, and I drove two hours from where I lived at the time to attend the mastering session. The mastering engineer was a well-known, career engineer with a small collection of analog recording equipment that had accumulated over the decades. As we got to talking about this project, he asked what I/the band was planning to do with the release. I was honest with him: my band was in the process of actively winding down, this release was scheduled for a very small vinyl run to a likely disinterested public, there would be no tour in support of it, and it was bumming me out as I had new music that I wanted to work on. At the end of the mastering session, he took me to the back of the studio with all of the recording gear in it, explained that he didn’t do much recording anymore, and certainly none that was crucial to his income as a mastering engineer, and so that if I wanted to work on my new music at this studio, he would lend me the tape, supply me with an engineer, and cut me a good rate. And he did; I booked five days with him at an unbelievable rate, drove back up a month later and worked on the album for a week while I slept out of my van. In January. In upstate New York. But the pain was worth it; I was thrilled with the sounds I was producing and enthralled by the process. It was the first record that I had made where there wasn’t a computer monitor in sight, not to mention the unbelievable store of iconic gear that was otherwise sulking in the shadows in the back of this ugly converted commercial garage space. I’ve never tracked a record this effortlessly. Every instrument that I wanted to record sounded amazing out of the box, I came back a month later to mix for five days, and he mastered the record for me within a week. Then nothing happened. No labels were interested; friends and family were congratulatory, but publishers, licensers, etc. were noticeably absent. But this was my best music! Couldn’t they hear how good it sounded, too? I used a cross-country move as an excuse to book a small tour for myself appearing as only myself, and that was disappointing for its own reasons. Fast forward a year and a half to last October. On a whim, perhaps under the influence, I wrote to a producer who is an artist in his own right who had released a record that I really admired in 2017. I was honest with him the same way I had been honest with my mastering engineer: I told him about the last record, the thrill of recording to tape, the ambition, and the expectations; I told him about feeling directionless since having moved across the country, how I had failed to meet any musicians in my new town, and how much of a bummer it was to feel rejection not just outright, like I always had, but even now, once I had started to internalize and really believe in the work that I had been doing. I have, at times, reached out rather grandly and blindly like this into a world that is so far from my “level,” and it’s probably something I’ll continue to do in life, but suffice to say that I didn’t expect to hear back. Before I knew it he had responded to my email, listened to my record, and wanted to talk on the phone. Last month I was on the west coast for the holidays and was able to meet him in person, see the studio space that I had put a deposit on, and talk shop about the demos I had been sending over in the meantime. So what is the point of this post. That in my experience, honesty, vulnerability, and openness will yield tangible results. There’s no point in posturing or grandstanding, especially to people you barely know, and you should never feel like you have to make excuses for yourself, especially to people you barely know. Attend every session involving your work, seek advice from whoever you can, especially about your music while you’re paying them to work on your music. And don’t be shy about expressing not just your opinion, which hardly matters, but your feelings. How do you feel when you create music, and what would make you feel better? It can be very hard; in order to make progress on my current record, I had to listen to criticism of my last one which I was so proud of and engage that criticism in order to give this producer a reason to help me with the next one. Of course, if the last one were perfect, there’d be no need to make the next one! Of course it’s not perfect, but it can be hard to listen to anyone tell you that there are things that could be better. The point is that I was honest about my shortcomings with both of these people who were in a position to help me, and as a result they helped/are helping me realize my art. What must remain true is that the next one will always be better, to get back to my point at the beginning of the post. You should always be doing your best work. You should always be most excited about your next work. I’ve always felt this way, but it used to be informed by fear; fear that the last thing was not good enough and of the depressing oblivion of not having made anything more. Now, as I get older, this mindset is informed by excitement and love of the craft. This will be better because I will have more fun doing it than anything else, and that’s what it’s about. And if the sole purpose of the first project in this story (or, perhaps, your current project) was to provide a demonstrable vision for the next project in order to secure the confidence of better, more talented collaborators, then it will have been worth it. As for the questions that seem important: will I finally get a record deal out of this one? Will people come to love me through loving this music? Will I get to go on tour again? These are important questions, but they are not important to the creation of the work. There is no point in asking them until much later, if at all. This insight was key for me in unlocking the joy of recording an album, which had prior to then been a fear-driven experience, in this case fear of unfavorable answers to these and other questions. Finally, put some money at stake. You'll find that productivity tends to ramp up when you've got a date to make and cash on the line. Anyway, tl;dr is whatever y’all are up to, be honest with yourself and others and have fun with it!
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Jan 4, 2018 07:31
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I posted in this thread roughly a year ago about making records. Here's the follow-up to my testimony: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3417644&pagenumber=548#post492348894
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Feb 6, 2019 20:36
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