(From the Longing for Orpheus MySpace blog – Originally posted February 20, 2006)
For every succesful musical project (with CDs in stores, radio play, etc.), there are a great many unheard, aspiring musicians who want your attention. Quite a few of them are here on MySpace.
Consider the release of a commercial record – its quite a complex process. Here’s a quick tour:
Writing – Though it varies by genre and individual, this is a big process, and you can probably imagine what’s involved.
Arrangement – Some projects will need to go through arrangement – this is where you take the basic song, and assign parts to different instruments. Take, for example, Depeche Mode. Martin Gore (the songwriter of the group) typcially writes a song on the piano or guitar. Only after the chord progressions and lyrics are laid out is the song translated into the electronic palet that the group is known for. There are also musicians who specialize in arranging for certain ensembles, particularly orchestral string sections.
Tracking – Once you know what parts need to be recorded, and have lined up the musicians to play them, you begin tracking. One by one, you record each intstrument and voice. There’s some variance here – you may record a group of backup singers all together, and its generally preferable to record a string section all together in a large hall.
Guitarists, drummers, bassists, and lead vocalists, though, will generally be recorded one at a time in isolated booths in a recording studio. Don’t imagine that the musician simply plays it through, and is done. They record the same part many times over – sometimes, the best take is the one that makes it to the final album – other times a “best take” is spliced together from all the available versions.
Mixing – Next comes mixing – not to be confused with “remixing.” A mixing engineer, who may have had nothing to do with the tracking, combines all the recorded tracks into a song. This involves setting the relative volume levels, adding various effects, and possibly pruning away some tracks.
Mastering – Finally, after all the songs on the album have been mixed, they’re sent to a mastering engineer (yet another individual who hasn’t been involved in the previous stages). I should note that passing songs on to engineers who are unfamiliar with the music is intentional – the purpose is eliminate the bias of overfamiliarity. The mastering engineer puts the songs in the correct order, and uses various techniques to make them sound like a cohesive package. This is the final stage in producing the actual music.
Everything Else – Now, there are other things that have to be done to get a record out -
someone has to take care of artwork and design, someone has to make sure there’s a place to sell the album, and someone has to market the thing.
Independent musicians have to take care of all this themselves. There’s no staff to help out. Commercial radio stations and music store chains don’t want to talk directly to musicians – they want to talk to big labels. Many of us can’t afford studio time – we are our own engineers, using garages and bedrooms for studios.
So, if independent music doesn’t quite have that same polished sheen as a commercial release, this might just explain it. Thanks to the communities the internet offers, and the high quality recording equipment the digital revolution brought us, we can come surprisingly close.
So, what’s my point? Independent musicians really like music. We devote our time, energy, and money to it. And, we have one important advantage over the musicians on MTV (er, “who would be on MTV if it still had anything to do with music”) – we’re accessible.
We’re invested in music in every possible way, and we love to talk about it. So, please, talk to us. I, for one, would love to hear what you think of my music, who it reminds you of, which songs you like and don’t like, where you think I should go in the future, music in general, how you can start recording your own music, what inspired a song, the philosophy of art, or anything else you can think of. Bono probably doesn’t have to time to discuss this type of thing with you. I do, and I’d love to. I seriously doubt I’m the only one.
