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giveaway

Thought I’d Be Home By Now… Giveaway!

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011: CD listening partyHave you ever had a CD that you just loved that you wished you could share with everyone you know? I’m betting you have… and you probably just copied it using your computer and burned it to another CD to share. Am I right?

Well, I happen to have a CD I love — that I am in fact proud to have been a part of the making — and instead of burning a copy for friends, I’m giving away copies for you to share yourself!

Rick Tiger’s “Thought I’d Be Home By Now” is available for purchase through iTunes and CD Baby. It’s a labor of love for everyone involved. Rick is a dear friend, one who has totally taken me, my husband, and countless others under his wings. Several friends call him, “Daddy Rick” and that about sums it up right there.

So, as I said, this CD is one we were all honored to be a part of making.

From Rick’s own liner notes:

Here is a total labor of love mixed with honesty, emotion and humility. I am so blessed and humbled to be a part of it. I have been a fortunate and lucky man most of my life and this project is no different. It is surrounded by the incredible talent of some endearing friends of mine. I hope you enjoy listening as much as we had creating and when you reach the final note I hope you know me and who I am a little more. God Bless.

Outside of it being a special CD for those involved its just REALLY GREAT MUSIC. Music presented by the man who wrote the songs… the love and emotions in the songs are impossible to miss. The talent of the musicians and engineers who contributed their time and talent to the album just put that finishing touch to each track. If you haven’t heard the album, you can hear clips of each song over on CDBaby and get a little taste of what I am talking about.

I’ve watched people purchase multiple copies to share with friends and family, and it got me thinking… I’d like to host a giveaway of the CD. So I approached Rick with the idea, and he was all for it… in fact he upped the prize…

Three (3) copies to a first place winner, Two (2) copies to a second place winner, and One (1) copy to a third place winner. All autographed. WOW!!

So here is how you enter to win… as I said, this is in the spirit of sharing great music, so what I am asking you to do to enter to win is simple… between now and Sunday, December 18, in the comments below simply tell me in 50 words or less how YOU best describe this album and why you want to share it with friends and family.  The winners will be picked by voting next week. Make sure you leave your name and email so I can let you know you won!

If by some chance you just don’t want to take your chances with the giveaway, you can pick up copies via CD Baby and iTunes (where you can also gift it to a friend!).

Disclaimer for the lawyer types: I’m not receiving any compensation for holding this Giveaway outside of the joy of sharing friends’ work with others. Otherwise, we’re music-types. We’re all broke. So there. Thanks!

Okay, with that little unpleasantness over with… get to describing this album! GO!

music industry, nashville, passion

In the studio

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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.