Louder is Not Better…

There is an editorial on the April ‘08 issue of Recording Magazine (available now to Taxi members) from Scott Dorsey which I feel highlights the lack of interest the recording industry has taken towards achieving top quality sound recordings. In the article, Dorsey talks about “how louder is better when it comes to mastering your albums”. Dorsey suggests that it’s ok to sacrifice the dynamic ranges in recording mixes for the sake of getting your mix to sound louder.

This is a concept that is heavily shared today by just about all the major record labels and most independent companies as well. The idea is to get your song as loud if not louder than the songs on other albums. This process involves heavily compressing and limiting the signals while at the same time eliminating almost all dynamic ranges that are found within the actual performances of the songs. This procedure takes place at the mastering stage of an album, where in many cases it actually the record execs that tell the mastering engineers that they want their album to sound “louder”.

Online Communities for your music

I think by now all of us know the impact that online communities like MySpace and Facebook have had in helping Artists and songwriters get exposure that we otherwise would not have had. There are even a few cases where Artists have found songs on these community sites in which they’ve liked enough to have them cut on their albums, however these collaborations have been with independent Artists and I haven’t heard of any major Artists finding songs for their albums through any community websites.

I Can Only Write….

If you’re someone who only writes lyrics but not music and you are seriously looking into making a living as a songwriter, then you need to hook up with someone who can fill the other half of your glass. The same can not be said for instrumentalist, because if you only write music but can’t write lyrics, then you can shop your music to TV and film projects looking for instrumentals. But if you can’t write the music, you need to find a collaborator who can put music to your lyrics.

The chances of a lyricist getting a publishing deal based only on lyrics is extremely rare today. Back in the 60’s and 70’s a lyricist could get a deal on his words alone because Artist development wasn’t just for Artists back then.  It was also a smart investment for publishers to hook up good lyricist with one of their top musicians. Publishers knew that if they could develop a strong working collaboration between two or more writers, they could have a better catalog of hits to pitch. However the days of Artist (or songwriter) development are over. You need to be able to do both very well or find someone who can take over where your strengths ends.

How Close is Too Close?

As a songwriter who primarily writes music for film and TV projects, one of the things that I am sometimes asked to do is to create a new song or instrumental piece that is very similar to something that has already been written. These types of request are more commonly found in film projects because when the director is editing his film he usually has what’s called “temp music” playing through a particular scene. Temp music is simply a song that the director and editor uses as a reference to what will be in the final edit of the film.

Podcasting for Songwriters

Before I began this blog I use to host and produce a weekly podcast. I first started out with a health & fitness show back in 2005 then I did a songwriting show with contents similar to what’s found in this blog. Recently I’ve had a few songwriters ask me if I thought that starting a podcast would be a good idea in order for them to promote their music. They also wanted to know if they could make some money off podcasting while at the same time getting their music out in front of a larger audience. My answer to them is, “not really”.

You see podcasting is very similar to radio, in the sense that if you’re not producing interesting content with each episode, your listeners may stop subscribing or downloading your show. Now I’ve seen Artists out there that have made both video and audio podcast and have been very successful, but these generally have been established Artists that have a big following. Quincy Jones, and Mark Hoppus from Blink 182 are two good examples. An even those guys don’t really put out a weekly show all the time. Quincy Jones started his podcast in the Fall of 2007, and so far only has 8 episodes, and neither one of these guys are currently monetizing their podcast.