Category Archives: music industry

A little music pondering

I remember as a kid, looking forward to the CMA’s every year. I guess before the days of internet, it was the only time you got to see your favorite country artists other than in a magazine. I was amazed and enamored year after year.

Today? Today an awards show makes me hold my breath. Will it be good? Will I be upset?Are they going to shine a good light on the industry?

Granted a big part of that is being as close to the industry as I am today. But a bigger part is the fact that in my heart I am still a big fan, and I just want to see the industry flourish… not fail.

Last night’s CMAs…

Well…

On a whole, I truly enjoyed it. It had its moments where I walked out of the room on a performance that just didn’t answer me. I (not literally) threw things at the TV when I disagreed with a winner. But seriously, in general, I enjoyed it and it showed me glimmers of the great music and the class of award shows of old. (In my opinion, it was one of the better awards shows in the last few years!)

But. Tonight, it really made me sit back and look at the landscape of country music today. One of the things I love about country music is how broad and open it is. One of the things I hate is how hard people push the invisible lines of the genre within that. If country is so open, why do we turn our noses up at people who explore the boundaries of the genre? But in the same breath, why can’t people keep at least a toe in the water of traditional country as they push those boundaries? (And I don’t mean, “Oh let me mention a pickup truck and a back road and that makes it country.”)

Can we ever really find that happy medium and stay there?

Not without getting stagnate.

As much as I shake my fist at artists pushing the envelope (or flat out not playing country, in my opinion), I also have to recognize that they are testing the waters and helping the landscape change with the times… and maybe they’re going to find people pushing back! Or maybe they’re going to draw new fans into the fold who will finally give our more classic country artists a chance for the very first time. Time will tell. This phenomenon has happened in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s.

Sometimes you have to give a little to get a little.

Right now, I hear more and more songs with substance that makes my country music loving heart happy, but I also hear more and more songs with little substance and too much distorted electric guitar set on 10. (I love me a great rock song, just not on a country station.) But, you know what? I’m willing to let those rock songs go in hopes that those rockers truly do respect that classics as they claim to respect. And maybe, just maybe, the heart of country will continue to beat just as strong.

In the studio

Recording Session As I posted earlier this week, I was in the studio shooting photos for a friend’s new recording project. First off, I really want to do more of this kind of photography. Everyone shoots live concerts. Anyone can do head shots, etc. I want to document the creative process.

And it is a process!! By the time you purchase a CD (or download a song from iTunes) hours upon hours of time went into that final product. Which is precisely why music pirating is SO damaging to the music industry! (No, this blog post isn’t going to be a huge, “Music sharing is evil!” post. So don’t run away!)

I am not going to claim to know all the ins and outs of the recording process, but I have been around enough studios to know a few things. One of those things is that I could seriously sit and watch it happen for hours. (Well, given I have slept the night before… going into the studio on no sleep is pretty much a bad idea.)

A song starts with a songwriter. The person or people who conceive an idea. It might be a throw away line someone overheard in a bar. It might just be a single concept. For example, a song that I absolutely just love written by friends came to be just because they thought it might be fun to write about tattoos.  Yes, tattoos. What came to be is a beautiful song that you should go listen to. (Visit here and check out “These Tattoos”… then go ahead and listen to everything else on that page. Kay?)

Skipping ahead a WHOOOOOOLE LOT OF STEPS, like years of tedious steps (did you know a lot of the songs you hear on radio today were probably written years ago?), lets pretend a song has been chosen to go on an album. Hallelujah, that songwriter whose heart is in the words celebrates, here we go!

Here is where the studio time comes in…

I posted on Twitter the other day that the recording process reminds me a lot of the writing editing process. You take the whole story/article/post in general, then you take it apart piece by piece. Word by word. Sentence by sentence. Perfecting it. Tweaking it. Making it a masterpiece.

Now take a song. You have the basic song — the whole story. It has a groove. Then… it comes to life as piece by piece is added. Music. Vocals. Background vocals. Each piece can take hours as you perfect it.  Bobble a segment, that’s okay. You can do it again. And again. And again. And that moment it just comes out PERFECT? You can get goosebumps its just so good. Some little pieces might get scrapped for a better idea later. Often when you leave the studio after you’ve done your part, you still have no REAL grasp of what its going to sound like in the end.

Once all the pieces have been recorded, it goes to mastering. This piece is louder than that piece. Maybe we decide we don’t REALLY want background vocals in this line, so lets cut those out. The guitar laid down a great solo over here, but the piano’s solo just fits better, so lets put that in instead.

HOURS go into the recording and editing processes. By the time you listen to that song on your iPod, a producer, artist, engineer and musicians will have spent the equivalent of days of time on it. Not to mention the love and soul of the writer that started the whole thing. Its these hours that are forgotten that I got to photograph this week. These hours that no one sees in little studios all over the place. On any given day, the #1 hit of next year could be finding life through the talents of the people whose names you may never know.

It’s a true labor of love.