Who is your biggest fan?

You’ve com­posed some awe­some songs and found the right musi­cians to lay them down to track. You’ve spent count­less hours at the con­sole to ensure that the right sound you’ve had in your head is not lost in translation.

As a pro­ducer, I know first hand that this is not an easy process. Some­times the ini­tial instru­ment track was not set up to cap­ture exactly what you wanted (an exam­ple is mic place­ment on the drums). It was a great per­for­mance, but the snare was weak.  You try to go after that in the mix down by trig­ger­ing drum sam­ples over the orig­i­nal snare (drum replace­ment tech­nique) to get that fat­ness you orig­i­nally wanted. I’ve been there.

So when you finally have the right mix, you fin­ish the process and burn a CD. Wow, sounds good, doesn’t it? Now your ready to let those tracks loose and let every­one hear ‘em.

What? The reac­tion was not what you expected? Are the songs not as good as what you really thought? Yes, this is a sub­jec­tive mat­ter, how­ever don’t jump to con­clu­sions just yet.

I’ve writ­ten, what I feel are some great tunes. I’ve entered many national and inter­na­tional song con­tests and I’ve been for­tu­nate to reach the top-tier in many of them. I’ve received pos­i­tive feed­back from major song­writ­ers on the qual­ity of my song­writ­ing. Other artist’s have recorded my songs, some of which reached the top 10 on var­i­ous Inter­net charts. I’ve worked on cor­po­rate projects and have got­ten rave reviews on the results. From the evi­dence, it seems like I might be on to something.

But you know what? The lack of sup­port from peo­ple (iron­i­cally, more from peo­ple I know) can be dis­heart­en­ing. I mean, you know you have a good song, but it doesn’t seem to be doing any­thing to the lis­tener at that moment. What’s the prob­lem? Does the song suck? Is it just not their thing?

I’ve had the chance to speak to other song­writ­ers about this same sub­ject. Not just aver­age ones — very good song­writ­ers – and they often rec­i­p­ro­cate my thoughts. Why is this?

I have few the­o­ries. Mind you, they are the­o­ries. Let me start by say­ing I’m not talk­ing about the level of song­writ­ing that some of those begin­ning con­tes­tants bring in front of the Amer­i­can Idol judges. “I’m a great singer and I write songs – just ask my mom.” You know the type.

So, on with my the­o­ries. These are my thoughts.

Peo­ple expect a qual­ity record­ing, period.

These days, record­ing music is eas­ier to do. Where it used to take a major bud­get to go into a com­mer­cial record­ing stu­dio and sound good – bands and musi­cians are doing the same thing at home. As a result, it’s easy to pro­duce music — qual­ity music and upload it to the Inter­net quickly.

It’s no longer dif­fi­cult to pro­duce a pro­fes­sional sound­ing CD. In fact, it has now become the norm. And that is my point. Peo­ple now expect a great sound­ing CD, even on the local level. 15 years ago, that was not the case. A great sound­ing CD from a band on the local level was actu­ally impressive.

A band on every corner

Now, don’t get me wrong. There has always been com­pe­ti­tion in the music busi­ness, but the play­ing field has changed dra­mat­i­cally dur­ing the last 15 to 20 years. There are a lot of good bands out there. Yes, I don’t negate all the crap — but peo­ple expect great­ness, even from local bands. The Inter­net makes it pos­si­ble for a local act to com­pete on a global scale. I could have never imag­ined this when I started out in 1983.

Tech­nol­ogy has made it pos­si­ble for musi­cians to sound excep­tional on stage. Years ago, it wasn’t easy for a band to cover all the parts on their records. Both gui­tarists and key­boardists now have the gear to han­dle any­thing in concert.

I was watch­ing Paul McCart­ney the other day on VH1 Clas­sic. He was play­ing Red Square in Rus­sia and man, did it sound good. All the horn and string parts that the Bea­t­les used years ago, were replaced by a cou­ple key­boards, that actu­ally sounded better.

Music over­load

Grow­ing up, there were 3 places I could get music from:

1. Record Stores (which are dead as we know it).
2. Kmart (This was before Wal-Mart had a major presence)
3. Record Clubs (Colum­bia and BMG).

This was it. There was no Inter­net and MTV had only just started to break out nation­ally in 1983. There was radio – and that was even very dif­fer­ent back in those days. But radio and the record com­pa­nies were tight (not say­ing this was a good thing). That’s all chang­ing now.

In addi­tion, the only way I could get any infor­ma­tion about a band I liked, is to get one of the old rock mag­a­zines like Cream (it has dras­ti­cally changed since those days) or maybe be lucky enough to catch a band on Don Kirshner’s Rock Con­cert. There was a mys­tique to bands and musician’s in that time. Bands actu­ally had careers last more than one album.

Now, Infor­ma­tion is read­ily avail­able on any band or artist aligned with both video and audio. There are hun­dreds of ways to access music. There are sub-genres of sub-genres! We are sat­u­rated with possibilities.

So there you go. Def­i­nitely a debat­able sub­ject and I wel­come all com­ments. I think the main point I want to empha­size is that just because your music doesn’t seem to be grab­bing peo­ple imme­di­ately, doesn’t mean it’s not good. Record com­pa­nies are famous for the “that doesn’t really do much for me” com­ment. It’s a prim­i­tive atti­tude. And, in my opin­ion, it’s one of the rea­sons why great (and yes, often viable) music gets a pass. It’s also why every­thing tends to sound the same in a spe­cific genre.

True, a good song is time­less. I more than agree. But, with the influx of all avail­able music out there, it’s not always easy to get peo­ple to catch on. The music lov­ing pub­lic has become numb with a mas­sive amount of choices and a hun­dred ways to get it. Expec­ta­tions are high. It’s not easy to impress peo­ple anymore.

Who is your biggest fan? You. Sounds a bit arro­gant, and def­i­nitely sub­jec­tive, but you have to be true to what you do. Music mogul Rus­sell Sim­mons has always stood by this mantra: Do You!

Look­ing ahead

Pro­mo­tional strate­gies have to be more cut­ting edge than they used to be. The com­pe­ti­tion is more than just intense, it’s insane. For every Maroon 5, I’ll give you 10 bands that sound just as good. How do you com­pete?  How can you stand out as a band?

For­tu­nately, there is a rea­son why there are sub-genres of sub-genres. It’s because there are peo­ple out there who sup­port them. Might be a small piece of the pie, but it’s a fan base wait­ing to hap­pen – you just might not have tapped into yet.

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