Get out of town...(Part II)

I recently read a blog by Don Mak about setting up an “open mike tour.”

“Great idea!” I thought. But being constantly on the road as a management consultant, I believed I would never have a chance to try it.

Then I started poking around on www.OpenMikes.org, the site that Don suggested we all use to book our “open mike tour.” To recap from Don’s article, this is an awesome site. Just go to the main page and type in your city or ZIP code. Tell the form how far out you want to look from the epicenter (25 miles, 50 miles, etc.). Then simply click “OK” and you’re off. You get list of every registered open mike night within the area specified.

Now it gets really cool, because you can ask the tool to tell you just the nights of the week you’re interested in. A quick click on Tues and Wed check boxes and another “OK” and you’ve got your listed narrowed down. There are links to the venues, reviews and maps. Click an “I’ll Be There” button for the gig and it will arrange a list of your appearances in your profile area, so you can keep track of where you’re supposed to show up.

I’ve been traveling with my Yamaha Silent Guitar—basically a neck, a frame, a battery and an acoustical modeling computer—because it’s the only thing I can bring easily on the plane. I dabbled with doing an open mike night at The Mission in Augusta, Georgia and a coffeehouse in Atlanta on recent assignments. Though the guitar can be too brittle for recording, it plays great for live gigs so I’ve been using it a lot.

So suddenly I find myself in Newark, NJ for a four-day-a-week, three-week consulting stint. Hmm. I haven’t played in New York since I played next to CBGB’s 30 years ago. Off to www.OpenMikes.org. I plugged in Manhattan, NY and within minutes found a list of open mike and open performance venues. Okay, so I got a little hung up on the one that featured anything goes, including poetry, strippers, and performance art. I finally decided against that one. I mean, I’m good but I don’t think I can follow a stripper. For one thing, my mouth will be too dry. Once again…a whole ‘nuther blog.

For the next two weeks, I’ve got four open mike nights booked. I’m not only excited about playing to a New York crowd, I know it will be fun listening to the material everyone else has to offer. Ryan rocks NY? Why not? How about you?

Your studio experience: Avoiding rip-offs and chaos

So you’ve written some great songs, you’ve done some quick demos in your bedroom studio, and now you want to kick it up a notch. Maybe it’s time to take it to the studio and get some “professional help.”

That could be a good idea, but I’d like to steer away from some mistakes and dangerous assumptions. First, you’re going to need some help that the studio is not (usually) going to give you—an advisor and project manager in the form of a producer. Second, it’s really good to have a plan for your recording project. Showing up without a clue is going to cost you a lot more money.

Now, maybe you can be that producer. But the producer cannot be someone associated with the studio. Why? Because the producer is supposed to look out for your interests, not the studio’s. Paying an engineer or studio-affiliated person to be producer is a like hiring a fox to guard the chicken house. The studio probably wants you to take a long time to make your recording—they get paid by the hour.

If we were comparing the situation to the movie business, your record producer is the equivalent of the movie producer and the movie director combined. If they're doing their job right, they're managing the recording project as effectively as possible (like a movie producer) and they're telling you when your takes are good, bad, or not quite there (like a movie director). They also oversee the mix.

So what does the engineer do? The engineer works for the recording studio. They run the mixing board, place the mics, and position the musicians. They also usually know enough to record pretty good sounds from the instruments that you’re playing in the recording session. But half the time the engineer is going to sit with their arms crossed waiting for you to tell them what to do—even if that takes you an hour or two to figure that out. Then they're often going to drag their feet and take forever to get set up. The producer (remember them) should keep things moving along, watching the clock and avoiding time-wasters.

Now comes the plan, which the producer should be able to help you with. What are some ways you can cut studio time down to something manageable? One approach you might consider is “production-lining,” that is, trying to get the same types of tracks down for several songs in a row.

Here’s an example. Often, you’ll want to build the bottom of the band first. You’ll record the drummer, the bass player, a “scratch” guitar or piano, and a “scratch” vocal. The “scratch” instrument and vocal are there just for reference to let everyone know where they are in the song—you’ll record them better later.

It can take hours to get good sounds on the drums, so why just record one song when you get them right? You might as well record three, four, or five songs in a row when the bass and drums are together, tuned up and ready to go. Maybe it’s time to add a real guitar next. Got the sound you like? Go record all your songs, one-right-after-another, while you have your guitar out and it’s sounding really good. Who knows, you might not get that same great sound when you come back tomorrow—or at least it’s going to take more time to get the sound right again.

Who comes up with these ideas? You and your producer. Not the studio or engineer (usually), for obvious reasons. So before you go in and spend $50 to $350 an hour, sit down with someone who has some experience running studio recording projects. Make a plan, with a schedule and a list of players. Get your partner to help you make reasonable estimates, and set your musician arrival times appropriately. Finally, in my experience, if you’re going to allow alcohol or drugs into the session, go ahead and double your estimates.

Now, go make some history.