Listening in on the Words and Music Demo Panel at Canadian Music Week

Canadian Music Week wrapped up last Saturday with a special Words and Music Demo Listening Session at the Toronto Marriott Downtown Eaton Centre. I have attended a few Date With A Demo sessions before under the auspices of the Songwriters Association of Canada, but this was by far and away the best yet, for a couple of reasons.

First, the 23 songs auditioned by the panel during the two-hour session were, as a group, of much higher quality than I had seen at any SAC session before; and second, because the panelists themselves, drawn from different sectors of the industry that are all relevant to aspiring songwriters, gave such precise prescriptions for making good songs great.

Moderated by SAC’s Ania Ziemirska, the panel included Juno Award-winning singer-songwriter Melanie Doane; radio promotion and music director Andrea Morris; Juno Award-winning producer Gavin Brown; and internationally acclaimed producer-songwriter Brett Rosenberg. As Brown said, their job was to provide analysis, not criticism. For those who were unable to attend, here’s a distillation of their advice, in no particular order.

General production advice

1. Keep intros short. This was hammered home many times during the session. Listeners will give an unknown song about 40 seconds, at most a minute, before moving on to something else. This is particularly true for radio programmers, who need to be grabbed immediately. No one will get to hear a great bridge if they’re not hooked by the first verse and chorus.
2. A demo produced for other people to sing should sound like a finished hit. Try not to allow the production to sound dated. However, a very simple demo, such as piano and voice, may allow a creative producer to imagine the song as it might be produced for different genres
3. Leave room at the beginning to build up excitement as the song progresses. A song that doesn’t change much from beginning to end will tend to sound boring. Make it quieter and louder, not just loud the whole time.
4. Ensure that the low end isn’t muddy. Roll off the low frequencies in the mix and see if that improves the song.
5. If singing from a first person singular point-of-view, maybe it’s best not to have multiple voices harmonizing on the word “I” when it comes around.
6. Make sure the lyrics are always clear. Don’t bury the vocal in the mix.

Lyric-writing

7. Ensure that the singer’s point-of-view is clear and unambiguous. Be careful not to slip from a first person (“I”) to a second person (“you”) or a third person (“she”) point of view as the lyrics unfold, unless the story demands it.
8. Above all, make sure the message is clear. A song is a vehicle for communicating. If a line isn’t communicating anything or isn’t amazing, it shouldn’t be in the song. The re-writing process is tremendously important. As the panel pointed out, prose writers rewrite constantly and have editors who help them revisit the text many times.
9. Look at the building blocks of the song and ask what emotion is in each part. Make sure the different blocks don’t contradict each other.
10. Avoid clichés. Don’t sing what you wouldn’t say. Extend the lyric to its logical conclusion and make sure you haven’t left anything important unsaid.
11. Always avoid awkward lyrics. If a line sounds weird or stilted when spoken out loud, then consider recasting it for the song.
12. Lyrically, something has to happen more than once, or else you’re writing a poem. If working with an extended metaphor, try to milk every association out of it, and make the whole song relate to that one thing.

Verse and chorus

13. Work on the melody. Then work some more. Don’t just sing over the chords. Try singing different notes of the triads or scale. Make the melody memorable.
14. Work on different melodic elements in the music track and the vocal so that they are different but complementary, rather than parallel and similar. For example, the guitar or piano should not be playing the melody in unison with the voice.
15. The title should be the hook. Make sure the song title is clearly stated, perhaps as the last line of the chorus. If you can’t fit it in naturally, then add a beat or two to let it fit. Or if that doesn’t work and it doesn’t fit in the lead vocal more than once, then try to have it sung in the backing vocals.
16. Don’t take too long to get to the chorus. The lift or pre-chorus should be followed immediately by the chorus without being repeated.
17. The chorus should be set up convincingly—most often it is set up on the fifth or dominant chord. A chorus should be awesome. Make it soaring, triumphant. If a chorus doesn’t sound triumphant, then keep trying. Experiment with big interval jumps. Big intervals are exciting.
18. Differentiate between the chords in the verse and the chorus.
19. Take care not to go to half-time or drop beats in the chorus.
20. Don’t let the drummer play over the payoff or the song’s title line in the chorus.
21. Scream it and mean it.

Writing for radio

22. If you’re going to write songs for radio, make sure the song fits the conventions of radio. Listen to the radio, and figure out what stations and formats you’re targeting—even if not every song you write is intended for radio. If you’re new, you can’t start out by doing your own thing—you need to have already established your identity as an artist to pull that off.
23. If sound effects are absolutely essential to the song, then keep them for the album version and provide a stripped down remix for radio play, especially if the effects are at the beginning of the song.
24. Beware of using sexually-tinged lyrics; even a word as innocuous as “virgin” may limit a song’s potential for radio play.
25. Jump into the lyric right out of the gate and make the intro short. A radio programmers’ music meeting is not likely to listen past the first minute of your song, if that.

The quality of the songs was truly impressive. Due to time constraints, only the first verse and chorus of each song was played, but on several occasions, the panelists expressed a desire to hear more of a song. A few songs even elicited spontaneous applause from the audience: Kat Leonard’s witty, off-the-wall I’m My Own Asshole; David Keeble’s liberating, stripped down demo Maybe Freedom; Steve Onotera’s The Field of White with melodic acoustic guitar accompaniment; and—illustrating a soaring, triumphant chorus—Catherine Bacque’s Stand.

Moderator Ania Ziemirska laboured valiantly through a lingering cold to keep panelists on track and play as many songs as possible, skipping songs if the writer was not present. Noting that some of the other CMW sessions were running late, she graciously returned to songs that were skipped, after the writers were able to join the session.

Speaking with the participants after the wrap-up, I can say that most were deeply appreciative of the depth and originality of the advice offered by the panelists, and the gentle candour with which they analyzed each song. There were no bruised egos in evidence, but more than once I heard a writer say, “That was great—now where do we go from here with our songs?”

From that, it’s clear that most found this version of Date With A Demo to be both motivating and inspiring. Given the other sessions that were on offer at the CMW Songwriters Summit, like How Artists Are Being Discovered and Publishing 101, SAC’s Demo Listening Session provided an excellent springboard for writers to move forward with their songs.

Seller Beware—When You're Being Shopped for a Price

I got an email last week asking how much I would charge to mix 5 songs for a band's EP. I wrote back asking whether I'd be recording the original tracks, or just mixing tracks that someone else has already recorded for the band. Both, came the reply, and how much would it cost?

I wrote back to ask about the band, number of players, what instruments, etc., so that I could price out the job using the appropriate recording facility, and asking for a couple of possible dates when the band wanted to start recording. This is an important question, because in sales, there's a strong relationship between price, availability and delivery. You can sometimes get a better deal on studio time that would otherwise remain unbooked.

At this point, the answers started to get vague. What was clear, however, was that I was being shopped for a price. In other words, the prospect (not yet a client) had no intention of coming to me for the job, but was only trying to get a handle on the price of a job that most likely he was bidding on himself.

This happens to everyone from time to time, and is one of the reasons why it's not a great idea just to shoot out a price in response to an inquiry. Every job is different in some way, and a big part of the sales process is asking questions to qualify the buyer.

Asking questions not only keeps valuable business intelligence—your pricing policies— out of the hands of your competition, it also saves you from wasting time with tire kickers who would otherwise take up a lot of your time, but never end up buying anything.

The 80-20 rule seems to apply here: 80% of your business comes from 20% of your prospects. This is further refined so that in turn, 80% of your income comes from 20% of them. In other words, 4% (20% of 20%) of your potential clients are responsible for about two-thirds (80% of 80%) of your business.

Asking questions is your best line of defense here, and a genuine prospect will appreciate that you're drilling down in order to provide the best possible service.

If your glass is more beautiful than the wine, change the wine

So says noted wine writer Tony Aspler.

Owners of smaller home and project studios who are tempted to hire top-notch professional recording engineers to help ramp up their business risk seeing clients follow these engineers to better studios.

I've seen this happen time and time again. Home and project studio owners need to understand that this is almost always inevitable when their reach starts to exceed their grasp and they want to compete with the big boys.

It may be prudent for smaller studio owners to consider a significant upgrade of their rooms and equipment before enlisting the services of established outside recording engineers.

It won't be the engineers' fault if clients seek to follow them to greener pastures.

When a studio won't release the tracks you've paid for

Songwriters and musicians who use the services of small, home-based studios—and, for that matter, established commercial studios—would be well advised to establish the terms, conditions and policies of the studio before undertaking any recording.

I’m writing this because a beginning songwriter has come to me for advice. He is having a hard time getting a home studio owner to release his tracks, even though he has paid his bill in full—over $13,000! The songwriter wants to take the basic tracks of three songs that he recorded at this particular home studio to another, larger commercial studio for editing, mixing and mastering, but the owner of the home studio is refusing to release the material.

By way of explanation, the home studio owner wrote to me saying that he is “not going to let him take the files out of this studio in the condition they are. How he is going to come up with a better mix than any one of our engineers is beyond me to imagine. The files simply aren't ready to be exported or given away. Many guitar and other instrumental parts remain unedited and comped so even if he wanted them they are in no condition to give away.”

(The songwriter has made it clear that editing and comping are among the tasks he wants to complete at the new studio.)

The home studio owner then goes on to say, “We are not willing to give the files out. This is not normal practice. If he really wanted the files he'd have to buy us out but at this time I am not willing to even consider this.”

I’m not sure I understand why the owner thinks that releasing tracks that have been paid for is not “normal practice.” It’s also not clear to me what he means about the songwriter having to “buy us out,” given that he paid his bill in full over six months ago!

The studio owner concludes, “If this project goes out of the studio I have no guarantee if it will be mixed to a certain standard and I've brought in some heavy players that [the songwriter] got at cost.”

Why the studio owner considers it his business that the songs will be “mixed to a certain standard” is beyond me. That is not his responsibility. And the part about providing players “at cost” seems to indicate that the studio owner is in the habit of marking up session players’ fees and then taking a piece for himself. Maybe that’s how the cost of three unfinished demos climbed to beyond $13,000!

This might never have become an issue if the songwriter had clearly established the ground rules at the outset. At this point, it looks like a case for small claims court.

Songwriters be warned: Make sure you know at the outset what policies, practices or procedures a studio considers to be normative before you record a single note there. Second, make it your business to pay session players directly. Don’t accept an all-in deal with the studio, where you pay everything to the studio. In fact, it should be your job—or your producer’s job—to hire the session musicians in the first place.

I know of one instance where a guitar player was unable to attend a session because his wife went into labour that morning with their first child. I was there when the studio owner actually called the rental department of a local music store (Long & McQuade in Toronto) to find an on-the-spot replacement. When the replacement guitarist arrived, it became painfully apparent that he couldn’t read the chart. In fact, he couldn’t even tune his guitar, and he was sent away with return cab fare paid by—you guessed it—the songwriter!

At that point, the songwriter should have called it quits, but he was too cowed by the studio owner to voice his displeasure.

My final recommendation is that songwriters should bring a USB drive—preferably 8 GB or 16 GB—to their sessions, so that they can take a backup of their recordings away with them—provided, of course, that their account with the studio is paid up to date. After all, possession of the recorded material is the only security a studio has against non-payment for services rendered.

I have not named the offending studio in this blog entry, but readers who wish to continue the discussion can email me at buzz@abcbuzz.com.

When a studio's clients want to leave—and take you with them

As a freelance recording engineer, what do you do when artists approach you directly and ask you to produce their recordings in your own right, after you've made their acquantance in someone else's studio and on someone else's dime?

This is a situation I've found myself in a few times over the years. On two occasions, clients told me that the studio we met in didn't sound good and wanted to go elsewhere—with me—to record in the future. In another case, a performer said that the producer was too hyper, "not laid back enough," and could we record somewhere else where the atmosphere was more relaxed. Similarly, in another instance, an artist complained of being stressed out in the presence of the studio owner, and consequently couldn't turn in a first-rate performance.

When this started happening, I thought it best to speak frankly with the producer or studio owner, one of whom told me that none of his other freelancers would ever dream of "poaching" his clients, whose business he had worked diligently to acquire over months and years.

I pointed out that I wasn't in the habit of poaching clients—the industry is far too small and such behaviour is ruinous to one's reputation. I suggested that those who were dissatisfied were eventually going to go elsewhere anyway, and rather than lose their business entirely, why not work out a finder's fee arrangement for him—call it a commission or kick-back if you will—so that his role in securing the business was recognized tangibly.

He rejected this suggestion out of hand, insisting they were HIS clients, and that I should endeavour to convince them to stay despite their expressed concerns.

Well, no one is automatically entitled to a client's business for life, and as the saying goes, whatever it took to get you here isn't enough to keep you here—you're only as good as your last gig. Clients are free to go where they will.

Knowing that some clients may approach competent staff members directly in an attempt to secure their services at more favourable rates, some employers insist that their employees sign a non-compete agreement.

But this doesn't wash with many freelancers, something studio owners should bear in mind when building a business based on out-sourcing the work. It's a two-edged sword—freelancers are not employees, and do not enjoy the same benefits and security that employees do, and turnabout is fair play.

Some savvy studio owners offer freelance engineers a piece of the action—participation in the business akin to stock options—in order to make it more attractive for freelancers to discourage the studio's clients from going elsewhere. I have suggested this on several occasions, with mixed results.

In the end, it's difficult, if not impossible, to maintain a good working relationship with a studio when its clients become dissatisfied and want you to take them elsewhere to record. But for a studio owner, recognizing that you're in a business relationship with freelance engineers, and not a social one, is a necessary first step in arriving at a business solution to what might otherwise become a thorny personal problem.

For a studio owner, it should serve as a wake-up call that all is not as it should be when clients express their dissatisfaction to a sympathetic ear behind the board. The solution may be as simple as staying away from the session, however tempting it may be for a studio owner to participate in the proceedings. From a "strictly-business" perspective, this is the most straightforward solution.

In the case of a home or project studio, this is not as easily accomplished, and sharing a business with a home may open up the studio operation to a level of personal micromanagement that may be detrimental to its success, exposing clients to everything from a simple request to remove their shoes, to disagreeable cooking odors emanating from the kitchen.

When home studio rates are well below prevailing commercial rates, such irritants may well be tolerable, but if home studio owners set their rates equivalent to—or higher than—commercial operations, they may need to adjust their expectations and behaviour accordingly.