TuneCorner

The DIY Guide To Singing In The Studio

I’m going to begin this article by quoting from one of my earlier articles:

Your career as a recording artist hinges on many things from the songs you choose to the musicianship on your records. But the single most important thing for your artist identity is your voice. Your ultimate goal as a vocalist is to sound exactly like yourself. In other words, the more relaxed and confident you are as a singer, the more people will know who you are and what you’re about. In reality, it’s predominantly musicians who listen to CD’s for the musicianship, but the people who decide to buy your CD will connect with your voice first and everything else much later.

This article will serve as a do-it-yourself primer for how to approach singing in the recording studio. In today’s independent musical environment, it’s typically the case that you will play the part of not only the artist, but the manager, record label and producer, too. The trick when it comes to getting great vocal performances is to make the most of each of these roles by knowing which role to play and when. I’ll be describing your responsibilities for each of these roles in the paragraphs below.

The TuneCore Huffington Post Article

This posting went live at the Huffington Post some time ago - I thought it made sense to make it available here as well.

The Democratization of the Music Industry

(The original posting can be found here.)

Due to the advent and adoption of the Internet, digital media and hardware by the masses, control of the global music industry has being broken. For the first time, all music creators can choose to be their own record label – there are no longer subjective gatekeepers controlling who gets let “in”, promoted, exposed and made available to the masses, the choice now becomes ours.

For the past century, artists could record, manufacture, market, and, to some degree, promote their own music, but no matter if they were The Beatles, Elvis or Led Zepplin, they could not distribute it and get in placed on the shelves of the stores across the country, the required costs and infrastructure of the physical world were just too massive – a 500,00 square foot warehouse staffed with 30 people,  trucks and inventory systems, insurance, a field staff of 30 people walking to music stores leveraging, begging, pleading and paying to get the CD, album, 8-track, wax spool etc on the precious shelves of the retail stores.

One Possibility: A Conversation with Multiple Grammy Award Winning Producer/Engineer Jim Anderson

People, like myself, who love performing, producing and recording music will inevitably ask themselves this question:  How can I get paid to do this?  To start, you should answer these questions three:

1. What do you want to do?
2. What positions exist that fit with your dreams?
3. How can you get there?

Let’s say your dream is to engineer and produce.  You’re passionate about alternative rock music and you want to work with it in some capacity.  What positions are out there?  If you want to make albums, then you could work at a studio or build your own (the latter having become much more common).  If you want to do live sound, you can work for a specific venue or travel with artists when they tour.  Interested in all the above?  Perhaps a job in broadcasting might suit your fancy.

Working in radio is how Grammy Award winning producer, mixer and engineer Jim Anderson began his long and successful audio career.  Since his graduation from Duquesne University School of Music in 1973, he has literally done it all:  TV credits include “The Muppets”, and “In Performance at the White House”, in addition to my childhood favorite “Dog City”.  He has mixed and engineered tracks for the likes Patricia Barber, Bebo Valdés, and Ron Carter, to barely scratch the surface of his more than thirty-plus years in the industry.

Rather than try to squeeze everything he’s done into this one blog, I decided to speak with Mr. Anderson about how he got his start.

Musical Freedom = Musical Responsibility

"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." ~George Bernard Shaw

As a musician, entrepreneur, and consultant, I've spent a lot of time thinking about how to create a new "path" for musicians to succeed.

Unlike the olden days, success doesn't have to equate with record sales, or even concert attendance.

Why? The emerging music industry is flexible. There aren't any make-or-break "gatekeepers." It's wide open and the costs are pretty much zero. There are no barriers to expression. Make a song for your mom and email it to her. Or take over the British singles charts. Whatever. Make what you want of it.

The key word, however, is "you". Even more than usual, musicians are the ones who will be ultimately responsible for music's progress.

Online Music is the Future of the Music Business, and the Future is Now.

Hey all,

Sorry about the hokey title, but I wanted to get my opinion on digital retail and distribution out straight away. I’ve been a fan of Jeff Price’s for awhile, having admired SpinART, the early work he did with EMusic, and what he has now done with TuneCore. To me, digital distribution is one of the greatest things to come out of the Internet, as it pertains to music.  To read stories about Trent Reznor spending $56.61 to distribute Ghosts I-V to Amazon’s MP3 store through TuneCore really blows my mind.  And the best part is that every independent artist can do the same thing.   

I’ve worked at several indie record labels over the years, and I now teach a 12-week online course for Berklee College of Music's online school called Music Marketing 201. My course covers all the major marketing segments an artist should consider when creating their marketing plan: building and maintaining your community, merchandising, branding, online marketing and video, advertising, publicity, some form of radio (online, non-com, and college primarily), touring, and of course retail and distribution. We thought it might be helpful to provide you with a free lesson excerpt from the course.