Songwriter101 http://www.songwriter101.com en webmaster@songwriter101.com Copyright 2003-2012 2012-05-17T15:36:08+00:00 This is an XML content feed. It is intended to be viewed in a newsreader or syndicated to another site, subject to copyright and fair use. Songwriter101 - Articles: Takes from the Top: Recording Simon & Garfunkel’s ‘The Boxer’ http://www.songwriter101.com/articles/entry/557421 The explorations in sound that would feature prominently on Simon & Garfunkel’s fifth studio album, 1970’s Bridge Over Troubled Water, were evident right from the start with the making of “The Boxer,” which began on November 16, 1968 inside Columbia’s Music Row Studios in Nashville. Having envisioned a guitar-laden rhythm track, Paul Simon was fortunate to secure the services of session ace Fred Carter, Jr., by then a familiar face on the Nashville country and pop scene. While taping numerous acoustic and electric guitar and Dobro overdubs, Carter was struck by the unorthodox recording style that had become the hallmark of S&G’s handpicked soundman, Columbia producer/engineer Roy Halee. “Paul and I sat down to cut the basic track,” recalls Carter, “and suddenly I’m surrounded by seven or eight different microphones — in front, behind . . . he even miked my breathing!” It was Carter who provided the song with its signature cascading acoustic-guitar introduction, concocted on the spot. “I was playing one of those Martin 000-18s, tuned up a third and cross-chorded to an open G,” reveals Carter. “That baby guitar’s got such a short neck, it was easy to bring the strings up to the right tension. I came up with this thing and played it to Paul. And he said, ‘I love it . . . but I think it needs to be played on a concertina.’ So there was some dude from Italy doing his first tour of the United States, who just happened to Italy’s greatest classical concertina player. So Paul brings him in with an interpreter, and we sat there all day and went over the lick, and they wrote it out for the guy, who then played it. And afterwards Paul says, ‘Naw, that’s not it.’ And he dismissed the guy and he walks out in bewilderment, and we went right back to where we were and got it in about the third take.” The spirit of technical creativity continued weeks later back in New York City. In an effort to fulfill his love of big natural reverb, producer Halee rang up session drummer Hal Blaine, who eventually found himself standing alongside a large empty elevator shaft inside Columbia’s East 52nd Street studio building on an otherwise quiet Sunday afternoon. “There we were with all these mic cables, my drums, and a set of headphones,” says Blaine. “When the chorus came around — the ‘lie-la-lie’ bit — Roy had me come down on my snare drum as hard as I could. In that hallway, right next to this open elevator shaft, it sounded like a cannon shot! Which was just the kind of sound we were after.” The song’s distinctive instrumental break was also conceived under unusual circumstances. During the Nashville recordings, session man Curly Chalker had been summoned to cut the part on pedal-steel guitar. While recording their lead vocal tracks in a Columbia University chapel a month later, however, Simon and Garfunkel came up with the idea of using a wind instrument as an alternate solo, and the call went out for a piccolo trumpeter. Rather than choose one part over the other, Halee, back in his East 52nd Street control room, experimented by making a single dub of the two diverse instruments, carefully blending Tennessee country with New York classical —and the now-famous passage was complete. All of these flights of fancy would ultimately test the limits of Columbia’s late-’60s recording capability, Halee later recalled. “Columbia only had eight-track machines in those days, and I obviously needed a lot of tracks! So I devised a way of syncing up two eight-track machines in order to get 16. It was tough, though — you had to hit both record buttons exactly right, or it wouldn’t work. Plus I would do a lot of what we’d call ‘wild tracking’; that is, flying an overdub into the mix, sometimes at random.” A brief Dobro lick (played by Carter) at the 2:46 mark is one example; Halee employed the same method for the string section that appears during the song’s finale. It was no easy task; once the tape machines began to heat up, the speed of the motors would change, making it exceedingly difficult for Halee to get everything to gel. “Consequently the strings kept going out of sync with the vocals, so I had to mix eight bars, then stop, mix another eight bars, stop again, and so on. As a result, there were a lot of edits during that section. If you could see what went on in an engineering capacity, you would not believe it!” When Garfunkel accepted an offer to appear in the Mike Nichols film Catch-22, work on Bridge Over Troubled Water effectively ground to a halt for the better part of a year. But after reconvening at Studio B in the late fall of 1969, Halee, Simon and Garfunkel took little more than three weeks to complete the bulk of the album. By the time Bridge was finished on January 26, so was the career of Simon & Garfunkel, for all intents and purposes. Nevertheless, Bridge would go on to become the duo’s greatest success, scoring a sea of Grammys and topping album surveys worldwide (in the UK it charted for more than 300 weeks total, 41 of them at number one).   Career {media_event} The explorations in sound that would feature prominently on Simon & Garfunkel’s fifth studio album, 1970’s Bridge Over Troubled Water, were evident right from the start with the making of “The Boxer,” which began on November 16, 1968 inside Columbia’s Music Row Studios in Nashville. Having envisioned a guitar-laden rhythm track, Paul Simon was fortunate to secure the services of session ace Fred Carter, Jr., by then a familiar face on the Nashville country and pop scene. While taping numerous acoustic and electric guitar and Dobro overdubs, Carter was struck by the unorthodox recording style that had become the hallmark of S&G’s handpicked soundman, Columbia producer/engineer Roy Halee.

“Paul and I sat down to cut the basic track,” recalls Carter, “and suddenly I’m surrounded by seven or eight different microphones — in front, behind . . . he even miked my breathing!”

It was Carter who provided the song with its signature cascading acoustic-guitar introduction, concocted on the spot. “I was playing one of those Martin 000-18s, tuned up a third and cross-chorded to an open G,” reveals Carter. “That baby guitar’s got such a short neck, it was easy to bring the strings up to the right tension. I came up with this thing and played it to Paul. And he said, ‘I love it . . . but I think it needs to be played on a concertina.’ So there was some dude from Italy doing his first tour of the United States, who just happened to Italy’s greatest classical concertina player. So Paul brings him in with an interpreter, and we sat there all day and went over the lick, and they wrote it out for the guy, who then played it. And afterwards Paul says, ‘Naw, that’s not it.’ And he dismissed the guy and he walks out in bewilderment, and we went right back to where we were and got it in about the third take.”

The spirit of technical creativity continued weeks later back in New York City. In an effort to fulfill his love of big natural reverb, producer Halee rang up session drummer Hal Blaine, who eventually found himself standing alongside a large empty elevator shaft inside Columbia’s East 52nd Street studio building on an otherwise quiet Sunday afternoon.

“There we were with all these mic cables, my drums, and a set of headphones,” says Blaine. “When the chorus came around — the ‘lie-la-lie’ bit — Roy had me come down on my snare drum as hard as I could. In that hallway, right next to this open elevator shaft, it sounded like a cannon shot! Which was just the kind of sound we were after.”

The song’s distinctive instrumental break was also conceived under unusual circumstances. During the Nashville recordings, session man Curly Chalker had been summoned to cut the part on pedal-steel guitar. While recording their lead vocal tracks in a Columbia University chapel a month later, however, Simon and Garfunkel came up with the idea of using a wind instrument as an alternate solo, and the call went out for a piccolo trumpeter. Rather than choose one part over the other, Halee, back in his East 52nd Street control room, experimented by making a single dub of the two diverse instruments, carefully blending Tennessee country with New York classical —and the now-famous passage was complete.

All of these flights of fancy would ultimately test the limits of Columbia’s late-’60s recording capability, Halee later recalled. “Columbia only had eight-track machines in those days, and I obviously needed a lot of tracks! So I devised a way of syncing up two eight-track machines in order to get 16. It was tough, though — you had to hit both record buttons exactly right, or it wouldn’t work. Plus I would do a lot of what we’d call ‘wild tracking’; that is, flying an overdub into the mix, sometimes at random.” A brief Dobro lick (played by Carter) at the 2:46 mark is one example; Halee employed the same method for the string section that appears during the song’s finale. It was no easy task; once the tape machines began to heat up, the speed of the motors would change, making it exceedingly difficult for Halee to get everything to gel. “Consequently the strings kept going out of sync with the vocals, so I had to mix eight bars, then stop, mix another eight bars, stop again, and so on. As a result, there were a lot of edits during that section. If you could see what went on in an engineering capacity, you would not believe it!”

When Garfunkel accepted an offer to appear in the Mike Nichols film Catch-22, work on Bridge Over Troubled Water effectively ground to a halt for the better part of a year. But after reconvening at Studio B in the late fall of 1969, Halee, Simon and Garfunkel took little more than three weeks to complete the bulk of the album. By the time Bridge was finished on January 26, so was the career of Simon & Garfunkel, for all intents and purposes. Nevertheless, Bridge would go on to become the duo’s greatest success, scoring a sea of Grammys and topping album surveys worldwide (in the UK it charted for more than 300 weeks total, 41 of them at number one).

 

]]> 2012-05-17T14:36:08+00:00 Songwriter101 - Articles: (More) Successful Strategies for Studio Singers http://www.songwriter101.com/articles/entry/556905 Over the years I’ve become familiar with the infamous studio stories involving celebrated prima-donnas like Barbra Streisand et al, who spent many a session brutalizing hapless engineers with between-take tantrums (“too loud,” “too soft,” “can’t read the lyrics,” “can’t stand these headphones,” etc.). Though she’s no Streisand (and thank God), working with my wife has nonetheless given me a little taste of what it must have been like for those control-room craftsmen, who, in addition to knowing exactly how to make the artiste in question sound great on tape, had to arrive at work each day armed with the patience of Job.  Like so many singers, in the studio my wife has what I like to think of as a “performance threshold” — that is, a limited number of attempts at cutting a complete vocal before giving way to fatigue, self-consciousness, and, at times, indignation when her husband suggests trying “just one more” over the talk-back. And yet in spite of this, over the years, my wife’s finished masters have almost always wound up sounding quite superb. While much of this is due to her innate talent as a singer, I have also picked up various recording techniques — some of them technical, some psychological — that have proven essential for cutting vocals (not to mention preserving one’s marriage). Level It Most singers tend to emphasize certain phrases or passages during a recorded performance, and, often, that extra burst of exuberance results in unanticipated volume spikes. A basic limiter (or compressor-limiter), however, addresses these issues by controlling the peaks, giving you a much more uniform vocal sound. Lowering the device’s threshold (the point at which the limiter becomes “active”) while adjusting the amount of effect (i.e., the “attack/release” ratio) adds definition, while providing an “edgier” sound. When using compression, try to add the effect in small doses, lest you lose the natural dynamics of the vocal. Double-Take One of the oldest tricks in the book, double-tracking (cutting a duplicate version of the original vocal to a separate track) provides extra dimension while simultaneously covering any minor miscues during the initial pass. While double-tracking, some singers may expend too much energy trying to replicate the tone and phrasing of the original take. To avoid this, I usually mute the original track; even without hearing the first part, the vocalist will usually perform a second take that is nearly identical anyway (or at least good enough for double-tracking purposes). Though multiple vocal takes are typically “stacked” in mono, when mixing, you can sometimes achieve nice results by spreading the parts in stereo; for that matter, you could even try a third or fourth vocal overdub further down in the mix, just loud enough to add extra dimension without it being obvious to the listener. ‘Print’ It Rather than always adding in vocal effects during the mix stage (i.e., “post-production”), consider “printing” reverb, delay or other effect being fed to the vocal mic during the take itself. Allowing the singer to “react” to the live effect that they’re hearing in their headphones often produces a very different kind of performance than you might achieve without using any coloration. While admittedly riskier than saving the processing for later, many engineers still prefer recording with the effect, since what you’re hearing during the take is what you’re getting as your final sound. Different Mics for Different Types Generations of home engineers have at one time or another sunk to one knee at the sight of some famous artist singing their guts out in front of some big fancy Neumann microphone. Indeed, the sensitivity and multiple pickup patterns of a fine studio condenser offers the kind of warmth and presence that most of us crave when cutting vocals — and, thanks to companies like RODE, Blue, et al, decent condenser mics can now be had without incurring a lot of debt. And yet even engineers equipped with a locker-full of choice mics have at times opted for something more mild-mannered, including trusty dynamic mics like the Electro-Voice RE20 “broadcast” model, or even a basic Shure SM57. Because the latter is normally associated with stage work, the SM57 or similar hand-held mic also provides a psychological advantage, since it doesn’t look like a big scary studio mic (suspended from an equally intimidating overhead boom stand). Nor can it hurt to experiment using different mic settings and placement. When recording with a condenser, for instance, you would normally put the singer directly in front of the mic, just a few inches from the diaphragm, in order to get a full, warm sound (known as the “proximity effect”). For a more ambient, less direct sound, however, you could try pulling the microphone several feet back, adjust the height of the boom, have the singer turn slightly away from the mic, switch the pickup pattern from cardioid to omni, and so forth. Are You Comfortable? Having a roomful of top-notch equipment is one thing; even more important is having a comfortable environment for your singer to record in. Pianists or guitarists who are accustomed to singing and playing at the same time (like they would on stage) can feel awkward when overdubbing a lead vocal, simply because they don’t know what to do with their hands! One easy way to rectify that problem is to just let them play — even if you don’t actually record the instrument during the take (although it can’t hurt). If you don’t feel like dealing with the potential leakage issues, however, try putting the singer on a high stool (since many find it more comfortable to sit rather than stand during recording), or, at the very least, give them something to keep their hands busy — a bottle of water, some sheet music, etc. The Faster, the Better Above all, always try to cut the vocal parts in as few takes as possible while the singer’s energy level is still fresh. Many artists like to do complete passes, one after another, then choose the best performance and patch over any imperfections afterward. Whatever your strategy, make sure you record everything — even if you don’t get what you want in one pass, using a basic editing tool (such as Audacity), you’ll have the option to edit together a completed vocal master using portions of the various takes later on. Songwriter101 exclusive by Dave Simons, photo by Karen Howard The Band, Career {media_event} Over the years I’ve become familiar with the infamous studio stories involving celebrated prima-donnas like Barbra Streisand et al, who spent many a session brutalizing hapless engineers with between-take tantrums (“too loud,” “too soft,” “can’t read the lyrics,” “can’t stand these headphones,” etc.). Though she’s no Streisand (and thank God), working with my wife has nonetheless given me a little taste of what it must have been like for those control-room craftsmen, who, in addition to knowing exactly how to make the artiste in question sound great on tape, had to arrive at work each day armed with the patience of Job.  Like so many singers, in the studio my wife has what I like to think of as a “performance threshold” — that is, a limited number of attempts at cutting a complete vocal before giving way to fatigue, self-consciousness, and, at times, indignation when her husband suggests trying “just one more” over the talk-back.

And yet in spite of this, over the years, my wife’s finished masters have almost always wound up sounding quite superb. While much of this is due to her innate talent as a singer, I have also picked up various recording techniques — some of them technical, some psychological — that have proven essential for cutting vocals (not to mention preserving one’s marriage).

Level It
Most singers tend to emphasize certain phrases or passages during a recorded performance, and, often, that extra burst of exuberance results in unanticipated volume spikes. A basic limiter (or compressor-limiter), however, addresses these issues by controlling the peaks, giving you a much more uniform vocal sound. Lowering the device’s threshold (the point at which the limiter becomes “active”) while adjusting the amount of effect (i.e., the “attack/release” ratio) adds definition, while providing an “edgier” sound. When using compression, try to add the effect in small doses, lest you lose the natural dynamics of the vocal.

Double-Take
One of the oldest tricks in the book, double-tracking (cutting a duplicate version of the original vocal to a separate track) provides extra dimension while simultaneously covering any minor miscues during the initial pass. While double-tracking, some singers may expend too much energy trying to replicate the tone and phrasing of the original take. To avoid this, I usually mute the original track; even without hearing the first part, the vocalist will usually perform a second take that is nearly identical anyway (or at least good enough for double-tracking purposes). Though multiple vocal takes are typically “stacked” in mono, when mixing, you can sometimes achieve nice results by spreading the parts in stereo; for that matter, you could even try a third or fourth vocal overdub further down in the mix, just loud enough to add extra dimension without it being obvious to the listener.

‘Print’ It
Rather than always adding in vocal effects during the mix stage (i.e., “post-production”), consider “printing” reverb, delay or other effect being fed to the vocal mic during the take itself. Allowing the singer to “react” to the live effect that they’re hearing in their headphones often produces a very different kind of performance than you might achieve without using any coloration. While admittedly riskier than saving the processing for later, many engineers still prefer recording with the effect, since what you’re hearing during the take is what you’re getting as your final sound.

Different Mics for Different Types
Generations of home engineers have at one time or another sunk to one knee at the sight of some famous artist singing their guts out in front of some big fancy Neumann microphone. Indeed, the sensitivity and multiple pickup patterns of a fine studio condenser offers the kind of warmth and presence that most of us crave when cutting vocals — and, thanks to companies like RODE, Blue, et al, decent condenser mics can now be had without incurring a lot of debt. And yet even engineers equipped with a locker-full of choice mics have at times opted for something more mild-mannered, including trusty dynamic mics like the Electro-Voice RE20 “broadcast” model, or even a basic Shure SM57. Because the latter is normally associated with stage work, the SM57 or similar hand-held mic also provides a psychological advantage, since it doesn’t look like a big scary studio mic (suspended from an equally intimidating overhead boom stand).

Nor can it hurt to experiment using different mic settings and placement. When recording with a condenser, for instance, you would normally put the singer directly in front of the mic, just a few inches from the diaphragm, in order to get a full, warm sound (known as the “proximity effect”). For a more ambient, less direct sound, however, you could try pulling the microphone several feet back, adjust the height of the boom, have the singer turn slightly away from the mic, switch the pickup pattern from cardioid to omni, and so forth.

Are You Comfortable?
Having a roomful of top-notch equipment is one thing; even more important is having a comfortable environment for your singer to record in. Pianists or guitarists who are accustomed to singing and playing at the same time (like they would on stage) can feel awkward when overdubbing a lead vocal, simply because they don’t know what to do with their hands! One easy way to rectify that problem is to just let them play — even if you don’t actually record the instrument during the take (although it can’t hurt). If you don’t feel like dealing with the potential leakage issues, however, try putting the singer on a high stool (since many find it more comfortable to sit rather than stand during recording), or, at the very least, give them something to keep their hands busy — a bottle of water, some sheet music, etc.

The Faster, the Better
Above all, always try to cut the vocal parts in as few takes as possible while the singer’s energy level is still fresh. Many artists like to do complete passes, one after another, then choose the best performance and patch over any imperfections afterward. Whatever your strategy, make sure you record everything — even if you don’t get what you want in one pass, using a basic editing tool (such as Audacity), you’ll have the option to edit together a completed vocal master using portions of the various takes later on.

Songwriter101 exclusive by Dave Simons, photo by Karen Howard

]]> 2012-05-01T12:39:10+00:00 Songwriter101 - Articles: Seeking Songwriting Success: Three Ways Follow-Through Pays Off http://www.songwriter101.com/articles/entry/556830 Songwriting is art. Like all art, songs require a healthy dose of inspiration, which is nearly impossible to predict or control. In that way, the spark that results in the creation of a song is a gift but the rest of the process is nothing more (or less) than good, old-fashioned work. By following through in a variety of different ways, you stand a much better chance of achieving the goal of getting your songs out in the world and hopefully generating some income for you. 1. The Song Gets Finished. We all have them: bits and pieces of what seemed like a good start to a song that have languished in notebooks or lost folders on our laptops. This is an unavoidable and necessary part of the creative process, but there comes a time when some of these ideas should be finished. Not all songs come easily and, on occasion, some of the best ones are ideas that just needed a little elbow grease to finish up. By reviewing some of these orphaned ideas from time to time, you’ll often find that there’s something well worth finishing. By following through in this way, you’ll end up with songs that might not otherwise have happened. 2. The Song Gets Demoed. Having a finished song is a victory in and of itself. That being said, the reality of our business is that these finished songs need professional demos in order to give them (and you) a fighting chance of being acknowledged by the decision-makers in the music industry Having a bunch of great songs that aren’t presentable isn’t a viable way of pursing a professional songwriting career. By the way, not every song you write will be demo worthy but for those that are, following through with a plan on how and when to make high quality recordings of them is a big step towards having your songs generate income for you. Like any business, you need to invest money in order to eventually make it. 3. The Song Gets Cut/Placed. Okay, so you’ve got a great song and a beautiful sounding recording of it. Congratulations. However, if only a small group of family and friends ever hear it, then it might as well not exist in the eyes (and ears) of the industry. I’ve talked about this in previous articles, but there is nothing romantic about pitching your songs. It’s work. Still, it is an absolute necessity if you’re hoping to sell your music. Follow-through can take a variety of forms here, including reading industry pitch sheets to find artists looking for new material, seeing which music supervisors are looking for songs for a film or television show and even making sure that an up-and-coming artist in your community (without a record deal) has a chance to put their vocal over the instrumental mix of your existing demo. In other words, get your songs out there. By the way, just in case you think sending your song to someone means your work is done here, it’s the follow-up (and follow-up and follow-up) that separates the pros from the novices. Never assume that just because you’ve sent in your song you can sit back and wait for your phone to ring. I highly recommend placing a note on your calendar to follow up with an email or phone call two weeks later and two weeks after that if you still haven’t heard anything. By following through on your pitches and following through on your follow-through (getting my point?), you’ll give yourself a fighting chance of getting your songs heard — after that, the sky’s the limit. Talent is a wonderful thing. On some level, we’ve all got it. However, what separates the success stories from the tragically unrecognized geniuses is what you do after the inspiration is over. By digging in, doing the work and following through you’ve got a much better shot at the kind of songwriting success we all dream about. Cliff Goldmacher is a songwriter, producer, session musician, engineer, author and owner of recording studios in Nashville, TN and Sonoma, CA. Cliff’s site, Educated Songwriter, is full of resources for the aspiring songwriter, including a brand new HD video series. Cliff’s company, Nashville Studio Live, provides songwriters outside of Nashville with virtual access to Nashville’s best session musicians and singers for their songwriting demos. You can download a free sample of Cliff’s eBook, “The Songwriter’s Guide To Recording Professional Demos”. Facebook: www.facebook.com/EducatedSongwriter Twitter: @edusongwriter Songwriting, Career {media_event} Songwriting is art. Like all art, songs require a healthy dose of inspiration, which is nearly impossible to predict or control. In that way, the spark that results in the creation of a song is a gift but the rest of the process is nothing more (or less) than good, old-fashioned work. By following through in a variety of different ways, you stand a much better chance of achieving the goal of getting your songs out in the world and hopefully generating some income for you.

1. The Song Gets Finished. We all have them: bits and pieces of what seemed like a good start to a song that have languished in notebooks or lost folders on our laptops. This is an unavoidable and necessary part of the creative process, but there comes a time when some of these ideas should be finished. Not all songs come easily and, on occasion, some of the best ones are ideas that just needed a little elbow grease to finish up. By reviewing some of these orphaned ideas from time to time, you’ll often find that there’s something well worth finishing. By following through in this way, you’ll end up with songs that might not otherwise have happened.

2. The Song Gets Demoed. Having a finished song is a victory in and of itself. That being said, the reality of our business is that these finished songs need professional demos in order to give them (and you) a fighting chance of being acknowledged by the decision-makers in the music industry Having a bunch of great songs that aren’t presentable isn’t a viable way of pursing a professional songwriting career. By the way, not every song you write will be demo worthy but for those that are, following through with a plan on how and when to make high quality recordings of them is a big step towards having your songs generate income for you. Like any business, you need to invest money in order to eventually make it.

3. The Song Gets Cut/Placed. Okay, so you’ve got a great song and a beautiful sounding recording of it. Congratulations. However, if only a small group of family and friends ever hear it, then it might as well not exist in the eyes (and ears) of the industry. I’ve talked about this in previous articles, but there is nothing romantic about pitching your songs. It’s work. Still, it is an absolute necessity if you’re hoping to sell your music. Follow-through can take a variety of forms here, including reading industry pitch sheets to find artists looking for new material, seeing which music supervisors are looking for songs for a film or television show and even making sure that an up-and-coming artist in your community (without a record deal) has a chance to put their vocal over the instrumental mix of your existing demo. In other words, get your songs out there. By the way, just in case you think sending your song to someone means your work is done here, it’s the follow-up (and follow-up and follow-up) that separates the pros from the novices. Never assume that just because you’ve sent in your song you can sit back and wait for your phone to ring. I highly recommend placing a note on your calendar to follow up with an email or phone call two weeks later and two weeks after that if you still haven’t heard anything. By following through on your pitches and following through on your follow-through (getting my point?), you’ll give yourself a fighting chance of getting your songs heard — after that, the sky’s the limit.

Talent is a wonderful thing. On some level, we’ve all got it. However, what separates the success stories from the tragically unrecognized geniuses is what you do after the inspiration is over. By digging in, doing the work and following through you’ve got a much better shot at the kind of songwriting success we all dream about.

Cliff Goldmacher is a songwriter, producer, session musician, engineer, author and owner of recording studios in Nashville, TN and Sonoma, CA. Cliff’s site, Educated Songwriter, is full of resources for the aspiring songwriter, including a brand new HD video series.

Cliff’s company, Nashville Studio Live, provides songwriters outside of Nashville with virtual access to Nashville’s best session musicians and singers for their songwriting demos.

You can download a free sample of Cliff’s eBook, “The Songwriter’s Guide To Recording Professional Demos”.

Facebook: www.facebook.com/EducatedSongwriter
Twitter: @edusongwriter

]]> 2012-04-27T18:00:12+00:00 Songwriter101 - Articles: Five Myths about Achieving Success as a Songwriter http://www.songwriter101.com/articles/entry/556519 With April Fools Day upon us, I thought I’d address some common misconceptions about life as a songwriter that tend to either slow down our progress or discourage us unnecessarily. The more educated you become about the mostly unwritten rules of the music industry, the less often you’ll be fooled and the better prepared you’ll be to make the slow and steady progress that leads to success. 1. Industry people are open to homemade, rough recordings. I get it. A song is made up of a melody and lyric and as long as you can hear those, any reasonable person ought to be able to tell whether a song is good or not, right? Well, not really. The reality is that a&r reps and publishers spend their entire day listening to music and a lot of it is beautifully recorded. Whether it’s fair or not, your homemade recording is being held up to that level of quality. The analogy I tend to use is one where you go on a blind date and, while you may be a terrific person, you don’t bother to shower. My guess is that your personality is not going to be the first thing your date will notice about you. Finally, given that you’ve only got one chance to make a first impression, a professional recording of your song (even if it’s a simple guitar or piano and vocal) will go a long way towards marking you as someone who is serious about his or her craft. 2. You’ll get “discovered” at a music conference. Music conferences provide many valuable functions, including opportunities for learning, connecting with your peers and, yes, networking with music industry professionals. Conferences are a great way to begin your relationships with the decision-makers in attendance. I say “begin” your relationships because conferences are, at best, only a couple of days and, last time I checked, no deep and lasting friendships or working relationships are ever fully realized in two days. If we’re honest with ourselves, our secret dream at a music conference is that someone will hear one of our songs and either immediately put it in a movie or bring it to their artist to record. This mindset not only places too much pressure on your interactions at these conferences but also tends to make it uncomfortable for the industry folks who are there because they end up getting mobbed or interrupted at inappropriate moments. If you look at these conferences as an opportunity to learn and begin to develop relationships with people in the industry, you’ll have a much better time and get a lot more out of them. 3. A publishing deal is the answer to your prayers. Being a songwriter is lonely work, which explains why we tend to crave industry recognition and approval of our material. While it’s always nice to have people in the industry appreciate what you do, it’s even better to know that you’re doing quality work and not to give away your publishing just because someone in the industry tells you they like your songs. A publishing deal is a business arrangement where you’ll be giving up part ownership in your songs (sometimes more than part and sometimes forever), so you should be very sure you know what you’ll be getting in return. There are a lot of functions that publishers perform that we, as songwriters, can take care of ourselves — not the least of which is pitching our own material. While it’s nice to have a publisher with industry relationships shopping your material, sometimes it’s better to develop those relationships yourself over time and keep ownership of your songs. Publishers provide a very valuable function in the music industry but don’t assume that having a publisher is the only way to succeed. 4. Anything of lasting value happens quickly. Being a songwriter is a game of patience and perseverance. For that first cut or movie placement, you’ll have most likely spent hundreds if not thousands of hours working on your craft. We all want success to come quickly but often, success as a songwriter is the result of reaching a critical mass of songs, pitches and networking. The key to success is sticking around, doing your work and not getting discouraged by the disappointments you’ll undoubtedly encounter along the way. Since financial success comes slowly, it’s even more important that you enjoy your day-to-day work as a songwriter, since that’s what will sustain you on your road to eventual success. 5. It’s impossible to have success as a songwriter. While the road to success as a songwriter is an unpredictable one, it’s by no means a dead end. There are things that you can — and should — be doing every day to improve your odds and to give yourself more than a fighting chance of earning income from your songs. However, the fundamentals of this approach are similar across any business and not just music. By being methodical, focused and willing to do the unromantic work that any business requires as well as the fun, exciting musical work, you’ll be amazed at just how attainable success can be. I’ve come to believe in my 20-plus years in music that by setting reasonable expectations and doing the work, it becomes much harder to be fooled or discouraged by some of the pervasive myths that exist around songwriting success. As long as you’re not planning on only being a songwriter this week, take a deep breath, keep your eyes open and know that by taking a more realistic and constructive view of your career as a songwriter, you’ll be headed in the right direction. Cliff Goldmacher is a songwriter, producer, session musician, engineer, author and owner of recording studios in Nashville, TN and Sonoma, CA. Cliff’s site, http://www.EducatedSongwriter.com, is full of resources for the aspiring songwriter including his 14-part video podcast series. Cliff’s company, http://www.NashvilleStudioLive.com, provides songwriters outside of Nashville with virtual access to Nashville’s best session musicians and singers for their songwriting demos. You can download a FREE sample of Cliff’s eBook “The Songwriter’s Guide To Recording Professional Demos” by going to http://www.EducatedSongwriter.com/ebook. Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/EducatedSongwriter Twitter: edusongwriter Career {media_event} With April Fools Day upon us, I thought I’d address some common misconceptions about life as a songwriter that tend to either slow down our progress or discourage us unnecessarily. The more educated you become about the mostly unwritten rules of the music industry, the less often you’ll be fooled and the better prepared you’ll be to make the slow and steady progress that leads to success.

1. Industry people are open to homemade, rough recordings. I get it. A song is made up of a melody and lyric and as long as you can hear those, any reasonable person ought to be able to tell whether a song is good or not, right? Well, not really. The reality is that a&r reps and publishers spend their entire day listening to music and a lot of it is beautifully recorded. Whether it’s fair or not, your homemade recording is being held up to that level of quality. The analogy I tend to use is one where you go on a blind date and, while you may be a terrific person, you don’t bother to shower. My guess is that your personality is not going to be the first thing your date will notice about you. Finally, given that you’ve only got one chance to make a first impression, a professional recording of your song (even if it’s a simple guitar or piano and vocal) will go a long way towards marking you as someone who is serious about his or her craft.

2. You’ll get “discovered” at a music conference. Music conferences provide many valuable functions, including opportunities for learning, connecting with your peers and, yes, networking with music industry professionals. Conferences are a great way to begin your relationships with the decision-makers in attendance. I say “begin” your relationships because conferences are, at best, only a couple of days and, last time I checked, no deep and lasting friendships or working relationships are ever fully realized in two days. If we’re honest with ourselves, our secret dream at a music conference is that someone will hear one of our songs and either immediately put it in a movie or bring it to their artist to record. This mindset not only places too much pressure on your interactions at these conferences but also tends to make it uncomfortable for the industry folks who are there because they end up getting mobbed or interrupted at inappropriate moments. If you look at these conferences as an opportunity to learn and begin to develop relationships with people in the industry, you’ll have a much better time and get a lot more out of them.

3. A publishing deal is the answer to your prayers. Being a songwriter is lonely work, which explains why we tend to crave industry recognition and approval of our material. While it’s always nice to have people in the industry appreciate what you do, it’s even better to know that you’re doing quality work and not to give away your publishing just because someone in the industry tells you they like your songs. A publishing deal is a business arrangement where you’ll be giving up part ownership in your songs (sometimes more than part and sometimes forever), so you should be very sure you know what you’ll be getting in return. There are a lot of functions that publishers perform that we, as songwriters, can take care of ourselves — not the least of which is pitching our own material. While it’s nice to have a publisher with industry relationships shopping your material, sometimes it’s better to develop those relationships yourself over time and keep ownership of your songs. Publishers provide a very valuable function in the music industry but don’t assume that having a publisher is the only way to succeed.

4. Anything of lasting value happens quickly. Being a songwriter is a game of patience and perseverance. For that first cut or movie placement, you’ll have most likely spent hundreds if not thousands of hours working on your craft. We all want success to come quickly but often, success as a songwriter is the result of reaching a critical mass of songs, pitches and networking. The key to success is sticking around, doing your work and not getting discouraged by the disappointments you’ll undoubtedly encounter along the way. Since financial success comes slowly, it’s even more important that you enjoy your day-to-day work as a songwriter, since that’s what will sustain you on your road to eventual success.

5. It’s impossible to have success as a songwriter. While the road to success as a songwriter is an unpredictable one, it’s by no means a dead end. There are things that you can — and should — be doing every day to improve your odds and to give yourself more than a fighting chance of earning income from your songs. However, the fundamentals of this approach are similar across any business and not just music. By being methodical, focused and willing to do the unromantic work that any business requires as well as the fun, exciting musical work, you’ll be amazed at just how attainable success can be.

I’ve come to believe in my 20-plus years in music that by setting reasonable expectations and doing the work, it becomes much harder to be fooled or discouraged by some of the pervasive myths that exist around songwriting success. As long as you’re not planning on only being a songwriter this week, take a deep breath, keep your eyes open and know that by taking a more realistic and constructive view of your career as a songwriter, you’ll be headed in the right direction.


Cliff Goldmacher is a songwriter, producer, session musician, engineer, author and owner of recording studios in Nashville, TN and Sonoma, CA. Cliff’s site, http://www.EducatedSongwriter.com, is full of resources for the aspiring songwriter including his 14-part video podcast series. Cliff’s company, http://www.NashvilleStudioLive.com, provides songwriters outside of Nashville with virtual access to Nashville’s best session musicians and singers for their songwriting demos.

You can download a FREE sample of Cliff’s eBook “The Songwriter’s Guide To Recording Professional Demos” by going to http://www.EducatedSongwriter.com/ebook.

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/EducatedSongwriter
Twitter: edusongwriter

]]> 2012-03-27T18:03:41+00:00 Songwriter101 - Articles: Let It Bleed: Learning to Love Leakage http://www.songwriter101.com/articles/entry/556280 Recently, I was working on a recording session with a local keyboard player, using live piano and drums in the same room for the foundation tracks. Since we had a digital console piano, we could have plugged straight into the mixing board and kept the sounds totally separate; however, since I seldom do things the easy way, I opted to record the piano “live,” and proceeded to place a pair of Sennheiser 421 dynamic microphones underneath the piano, one on each side. When the pianist balked, I told him that we could try it both ways, and if he didn’t like how mine came out we could just go direct. It only took a few takes for him to realize that maybe there was something to my approach, even if it had nothing to do with the actual sound of the keyboard. Because of the proximity of the two players in the room, the piano microphones were picking up some of the ambient drum sound — vice versa for the overhead drum mics and the piano — which gave the whole recording a nice dynamic live feel. In short, had we recorded the piano direct without using any microphones, the sound would have been completely different. I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t even see that coming (I was merely trying for a more “analog”-sounding piano track). However, as a friend once put it, recording is “equal parts good sense and botched science,” and that even in a modern-day context, these kinds of lucky accidents can still occur, providing you have the right ingredients. Which helps explain why it’s often a good idea to encourage leakage — i.e., allowing certain ambient sounds to be partially captured (intentionally or not) by adjacent microphones. Though it often gets a bad rap, microphone leakage (or “bleed”) has played a key role in some of the world’s most memorable recordings. Half of the attraction of those early rock records from the ’60s is that element of barely controlled mayhem — the sound of loud guitars, bashing percussion and screaming vocalists all battling it out in a three-minute musical slugfest. Back in those days, bands like the Kinks, Beatles, Who, et al., typically recorded in a single room using only a handful of tracks, and the result was a menagerie of sound leakage. “When something comes on the radio today and has that kind of vibe, you can always hear it,” explains Richard Lush, the Australia-based recording engineer who spent the early part of his career crafting sounds for the Beatles at London’s EMI Abbey Road studios. “That’s what’s happening when you listen to those recordings — drums are all over the vocal mics, limiters are going on and off so as soon as the guitars stop, the drums suddenly come up. When you’ve got that kind of arrangement, it tends to add to the excitement of the whole recording.” Sometimes, the more people you stuffed into a room, the better the results. At Philadelphia’s soul factory Sigma Sound, home to innumerable Gamble-Huff hits like “Expressway to Your Heart” and “For the Love of Money,” the tracking area was barely 20 feet across, yet on a good day the studio housed upwards of 30 different players. “As a result, the instruments were always ‘talking’ into each other’s microphones,” recalls Sigma’s founder and chief engineer Joe Tarsia. “But I loved that, because you’d always get something unexpected.” In fact, Tarsia learned to love leakage as a student of recording back in the early ’60s. “I remember one time being at Bell Sound in New York, and they were recording a rhythm section plus horns, vocals and strings, all at the same time. At first the drums had the same lousy sound that I’d been getting, but then the engineer flipped open the strings mic, and wham — suddenly it was just huge-sounding! That left a big impression. So I started doing things like that on purpose.” Encourage Leakage While some isolation may be required depending on the size of the room, the volume of the band or the type of music being recorded, don’t go overboard; at the very least, allowing some of the sounds to mingle will typically produce a much tastier mix. Rather than waste time schlepping baffles or “soloing” tracks to hear how one instrument is affecting another, just hang some mics and get to work; if the whole thing sounds good coming through the speakers, nothing else matters. Generally speaking, dynamic microphones are better at providing good, controllable leakage with the least amount of effort. A Shure SM57 or 58, for example, has a very directional pick-up pattern and is relatively low gain (compared to a “hotter” condenser mic). Put a 57 in front of a guitar amp and you won’t have to worry about the sound of a neighboring amp invading its space, yet the bleed will still be audible enough to give the mix an ambient feel. For that matter, try using dynamic mics as drum overheads (as opposed to the more traditional condenser mono or stereo pair). Because bass frequencies are typically the toughest to tame, bassists who don’t go direct often find themselves playing in a separate room. Not that it’s mandatory to always have bass in its own space. “I think the bleed of the bass amp into the drum mics can add size, depth and warmth to the track,” says leakage-lover Matt Wallace, producer/engineer for Faith No More, Paul Westerberg, Maroon 5 and others. “The inherent delay between bass mike and drum mike picking up the same signal makes for a really tasty sound.” Though most of us are inclined to overdub vocals once the rhythm tracks are complete, there’s no harm in attempting some takes with the rest of the band. While a sound baffle may be necessary to prevent excessive bleed, recording the singer live using a Shure SM57 or similar dynamic mic pointed away from adjacent amps and drums — and with a touch of limiter in the signal path — can frequently result in a surprisingly vital vocal. Some of the benefits of using mic leakage are less obvious. For instance, one of my favorite things is hearing the sound of a drummer’s snares vibrating during a song’s intro. Why? Because it proves that the guitarist and the drummer were playing in the same room! At the same time! Which, in this isolationist era, is something we hardly get to hear enough of. Therefore, the next time you’re laying down band tracks, try leaving the snares on and don’t edit out the rattle. For that matter, resist the temptation to mute stick clicks, buzzing amps during quite passages, or the sound of someone clearing their throat on the other side of the room as heard through the drum overheads. Though it’s subtle, those extraneous noises can add a little human element to an otherwise sterile tracking session. Songwriter101 exclusive by Dave Simons Career {media_event} Recently, I was working on a recording session with a local keyboard player, using live piano and drums in the same room for the foundation tracks. Since we had a digital console piano, we could have plugged straight into the mixing board and kept the sounds totally separate; however, since I seldom do things the easy way, I opted to record the piano “live,” and proceeded to place a pair of Sennheiser 421 dynamic microphones underneath the piano, one on each side. When the pianist balked, I told him that we could try it both ways, and if he didn’t like how mine came out we could just go direct.

It only took a few takes for him to realize that maybe there was something to my approach, even if it had nothing to do with the actual sound of the keyboard. Because of the proximity of the two players in the room, the piano microphones were picking up some of the ambient drum sound — vice versa for the overhead drum mics and the piano — which gave the whole recording a nice dynamic live feel. In short, had we recorded the piano direct without using any microphones, the sound would have been completely different.

I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t even see that coming (I was merely trying for a more “analog”-sounding piano track). However, as a friend once put it, recording is “equal parts good sense and botched science,” and that even in a modern-day context, these kinds of lucky accidents can still occur, providing you have the right ingredients. Which helps explain why it’s often a good idea to encourage leakage — i.e., allowing certain ambient sounds to be partially captured (intentionally or not) by adjacent microphones.

Though it often gets a bad rap, microphone leakage (or “bleed”) has played a key role in some of the world’s most memorable recordings. Half of the attraction of those early rock records from the ’60s is that element of barely controlled mayhem — the sound of loud guitars, bashing percussion and screaming vocalists all battling it out in a three-minute musical slugfest. Back in those days, bands like the Kinks, Beatles, Who, et al., typically recorded in a single room using only a handful of tracks, and the result was a menagerie of sound leakage.

“When something comes on the radio today and has that kind of vibe, you can always hear it,” explains Richard Lush, the Australia-based recording engineer who spent the early part of his career crafting sounds for the Beatles at London’s EMI Abbey Road studios. “That’s what’s happening when you listen to those recordings — drums are all over the vocal mics, limiters are going on and off so as soon as the guitars stop, the drums suddenly come up. When you’ve got that kind of arrangement, it tends to add to the excitement of the whole recording.”

Sometimes, the more people you stuffed into a room, the better the results. At Philadelphia’s soul factory Sigma Sound, home to innumerable Gamble-Huff hits like “Expressway to Your Heart” and “For the Love of Money,” the tracking area was barely 20 feet across, yet on a good day the studio housed upwards of 30 different players.

“As a result, the instruments were always ‘talking’ into each other’s microphones,” recalls Sigma’s founder and chief engineer Joe Tarsia. “But I loved that, because you’d always get something unexpected.” In fact, Tarsia learned to love leakage as a student of recording back in the early ’60s. “I remember one time being at Bell Sound in New York, and they were recording a rhythm section plus horns, vocals and strings, all at the same time. At first the drums had the same lousy sound that I’d been getting, but then the engineer flipped open the strings mic, and wham — suddenly it was just huge-sounding! That left a big impression. So I started doing things like that on purpose.”

Encourage Leakage
While some isolation may be required depending on the size of the room, the volume of the band or the type of music being recorded, don’t go overboard; at the very least, allowing some of the sounds to mingle will typically produce a much tastier mix. Rather than waste time schlepping baffles or “soloing” tracks to hear how one instrument is affecting another, just hang some mics and get to work; if the whole thing sounds good coming through the speakers, nothing else matters.

Generally speaking, dynamic microphones are better at providing good, controllable leakage with the least amount of effort. A Shure SM57 or 58, for example, has a very directional pick-up pattern and is relatively low gain (compared to a “hotter” condenser mic). Put a 57 in front of a guitar amp and you won’t have to worry about the sound of a neighboring amp invading its space, yet the bleed will still be audible enough to give the mix an ambient feel. For that matter, try using dynamic mics as drum overheads (as opposed to the more traditional condenser mono or stereo pair).

Because bass frequencies are typically the toughest to tame, bassists who don’t go direct often find themselves playing in a separate room. Not that it’s mandatory to always have bass in its own space. “I think the bleed of the bass amp into the drum mics can add size, depth and warmth to the track,” says leakage-lover Matt Wallace, producer/engineer for Faith No More, Paul Westerberg, Maroon 5 and others. “The inherent delay between bass mike and drum mike picking up the same signal makes for a really tasty sound.”

Though most of us are inclined to overdub vocals once the rhythm tracks are complete, there’s no harm in attempting some takes with the rest of the band. While a sound baffle may be necessary to prevent excessive bleed, recording the singer live using a Shure SM57 or similar dynamic mic pointed away from adjacent amps and drums — and with a touch of limiter in the signal path — can frequently result in a surprisingly vital vocal.

Some of the benefits of using mic leakage are less obvious. For instance, one of my favorite things is hearing the sound of a drummer’s snares vibrating during a song’s intro. Why? Because it proves that the guitarist and the drummer were playing in the same room! At the same time! Which, in this isolationist era, is something we hardly get to hear enough of. Therefore, the next time you’re laying down band tracks, try leaving the snares on and don’t edit out the rattle. For that matter, resist the temptation to mute stick clicks, buzzing amps during quite passages, or the sound of someone clearing their throat on the other side of the room as heard through the drum overheads. Though it’s subtle, those extraneous noises can add a little human element to an otherwise sterile tracking session.
Songwriter101 exclusive by Dave Simons

]]> 2012-03-14T11:27:30+00:00 Songwriter101 - Articles: Six Things To Do When Your Song Is Finished http://www.songwriter101.com/articles/entry/555903 Knowing when a song is finished is an entire article in and of itself, so I’m going to predicate these comments on the understanding that your song is, indeed, done. While having a finished song is its own victory, there’s more work to do if you’re hoping to keep your records straight, stay organized and possibly generate income with your song. By treating your songwriting like the profit-making business you’re hoping it will become, you’ll be in a position to capitalize on your opportunities as they arise. 1. Finalize Your Lyric Sheet. An accurate lyric sheet is a great place to start once your song is done. Use this lyric sheet to capture all the pertinent information about your new song. At the bottom of the page, write out the D.O.C. (date of creation), the name of the writer (or writers in the case of a co-write) and all pertinent publishing information, including the PRO (performing rights organization). This way, when it comes time to provide the necessary information to the record label or music supervisor, it’s all in one place. For example, the bottom of my lyric sheets looks like this: ©3.1.12 Cliff Goldmacher, Famous In France Music (BMI) Next, if/when you provide this lyric sheet to a demo vocalist, make sure that every word of the song is written out. Avoid shortcuts like writing “repeat chorus.” By writing out every word exactly in the order it’s sung, you’re making the job of the vocalist that much easier. And, to that end, I’d also recommend indenting your choruses so that they’re easily distinguishable from your verses and bridge. Finally, there’s no need to double space your lyric and it should all fit on one page. This makes it easier for the eventual demo vocalist to read it on the music stand among other reasons. If you’re over one page, you can fudge a little by combining lines or using a smaller font but if you really can’t fit your entire lyric on one page, you might seriously consider editing your lyric. 2. Create The Definitive Rough Recording. Now that your song is done, you’re going to need a quick and easy recording that captures its melody, lyric and chord changes. As I’ve mentioned in my workshops, there is no Grammy for best rough recording, so a simple guitar or piano and vocal recorded directly into your smartphone or laptop is perfectly acceptable. This recording is useful for a couple of reasons. First, quite simply, it will prevent you from forgetting how your song goes. This may sound far-fetched for those of you who’ve only written a few songs, but as you begin to write more often and start to build your catalog, you’d be amazed at how quickly these little buggers can erase themselves from your memory. Secondly, this recording will serve as the reference for the demo vocalist and session musicians should you choose to bring your song to the next level. 3. Schedule A Demo. Speaking of bringing your song to the next level, it’s time to decide if this song is worth a further investment of your time and financial resources. If we’re honest with ourselves as songwriters, we have to admit that not every song we write is demo-worthy. However, if you believe that this particular song is genuinely ready for prime time, then you have to create a professional demo of the song so that you can present it to the music industry at large and be taken seriously. This is not the time to hope that music business professionals will be able to “hear through” your rough recording. Instead, I’d recommend investing the money on a professional studio recording using a trained demo singer and at least one session musician. If you’re prepared to spend the necessary time and effort learning to sing, play and record your own songs at the highest level, then by all means do this yourself. But, given the number of hours in the day, if you have to choose, I’d consider spending your time working on your songwriting and pitching your songs and leaving the recording to the folks that do it all day, every day. 4. Catalog Your Mixes. Once you’re the proud owner of a great-sounding, professionally recorded demo of your song, you’ll need to make sure you’ve got easy access to it. This way, when an opportunity presents itself, you’ll know exactly where to go and what to look for. I can’t think of anything more depressing than an artist, label or publisher asking for a copy of your song and you not being able to find it. To that end, I’d ask the demo studio for high-resolution wave file mixes of your demo with and without vocals (instrumental versions of your songs are always great to have). Then, I’d learn how to use iTunes to not only convert your .wav files to mp3 for easier emailing but also to embed the necessary metadata (song title, contact info, etc.) directly into the mp3. This can be a bit daunting at first, but remember, if you’re hoping to make money from your songwriting, then you’re running a business and knowing how to prepare your product is all part of it. 5. Create A Backup. Now that you’ve got your songs and all the accompanying information properly labeled and stored, it’s time to set up a reliable backup system. It’s essential to remember that it’s not “if” but “when” your computer hard drive — with all your rough recordings, finished demos and lyric sheets — will fail. Not only do your demos represent a significant financial investment, but your songs themselves are priceless. My motto is that if it doesn’t exist in two places, it doesn’t exist. Learn how to back up your computer to a separate drive or, to coin the current phraseology, to the cloud. Under no circumstances should you go without some kind of backup. That’s simply a recipe for a catastrophic event. 6. Pitch Your Song. I know this sounds obvious but once you’ve got a finished demo of your song, you’ve got to show it to people. It’s amazing to me — and I was equally guilty of this early in my career — how few songwriters make the effort to get their songs out there. There are a variety of reasons for this. First and foremost, it’s work. At this point, you could be selling shoes as far as you’re concerned. There is nothing romantic about having a product and figuring out who’s interested in buying it. But, as I mentioned earlier, you’re running a business and so it needs to be done. Secondly, even if you are willing, it can be a bit daunting trying to figure out who’s looking for what you’ve got. There are reputable pitch sheets such as www.SongQuarters.com and www.RowFax.com that, for a fee, provide the necessary information and there are organizations like www.Taxi.com that will do the pitching for you for a fee. Finally, there’s no substitute for getting out there and meeting the decision-makers yourself by traveling to NYC, Nashville and Los Angeles, attending music conferences and going to workshops. The opportunities are out there if you’re willing to look for them. Writing a song is a remarkable accomplishment. Don’t ever forget that. However, once that’s done, I hope the information I’ve provided will serve as a road map for what comes next. Cliff Goldmacher is a songwriter, producer, session musician, engineer, author and owner of recording studios in Nashville, TN and Sonoma, CA. Cliff’s site, http://www.EducatedSongwriter.com, is full of resources for the aspiring songwriter and his company, http://www.NashvilleStudioLive.com, provides songwriters outside of Nashville with virtual access to Nashville’s best session musicians and singers for their songwriting demos. You can download a FREE sample of Cliff’s eBook “The Songwriter’s Guide To Recording Professional Demos” by going to http://www.EducatedSongwriter.com/ebook. Facebook: www.facebook.com/EducatedSongwriter Twitter: @edusongwriter Songwriting, Career {media_event} Knowing when a song is finished is an entire article in and of itself, so I’m going to predicate these comments on the understanding that your song is, indeed, done. While having a finished song is its own victory, there’s more work to do if you’re hoping to keep your records straight, stay organized and possibly generate income with your song. By treating your songwriting like the profit-making business you’re hoping it will become, you’ll be in a position to capitalize on your opportunities as they arise.

1. Finalize Your Lyric Sheet. An accurate lyric sheet is a great place to start once your song is done. Use this lyric sheet to capture all the pertinent information about your new song. At the bottom of the page, write out the D.O.C. (date of creation), the name of the writer (or writers in the case of a co-write) and all pertinent publishing information, including the PRO (performing rights organization). This way, when it comes time to provide the necessary information to the record label or music supervisor, it’s all in one place. For example, the bottom of my lyric sheets looks like this:

©3.1.12 Cliff Goldmacher, Famous In France Music (BMI)

Next, if/when you provide this lyric sheet to a demo vocalist, make sure that every word of the song is written out. Avoid shortcuts like writing “repeat chorus.” By writing out every word exactly in the order it’s sung, you’re making the job of the vocalist that much easier. And, to that end, I’d also recommend indenting your choruses so that they’re easily distinguishable from your verses and bridge. Finally, there’s no need to double space your lyric and it should all fit on one page. This makes it easier for the eventual demo vocalist to read it on the music stand among other reasons. If you’re over one page, you can fudge a little by combining lines or using a smaller font but if you really can’t fit your entire lyric on one page, you might seriously consider editing your lyric.

2. Create The Definitive Rough Recording. Now that your song is done, you’re going to need a quick and easy recording that captures its melody, lyric and chord changes. As I’ve mentioned in my workshops, there is no Grammy for best rough recording, so a simple guitar or piano and vocal recorded directly into your smartphone or laptop is perfectly acceptable. This recording is useful for a couple of reasons. First, quite simply, it will prevent you from forgetting how your song goes. This may sound far-fetched for those of you who’ve only written a few songs, but as you begin to write more often and start to build your catalog, you’d be amazed at how quickly these little buggers can erase themselves from your memory. Secondly, this recording will serve as the reference for the demo vocalist and session musicians should you choose to bring your song to the next level.

3. Schedule A Demo. Speaking of bringing your song to the next level, it’s time to decide if this song is worth a further investment of your time and financial resources. If we’re honest with ourselves as songwriters, we have to admit that not every song we write is demo-worthy. However, if you believe that this particular song is genuinely ready for prime time, then you have to create a professional demo of the song so that you can present it to the music industry at large and be taken seriously. This is not the time to hope that music business professionals will be able to “hear through” your rough recording. Instead, I’d recommend investing the money on a professional studio recording using a trained demo singer and at least one session musician. If you’re prepared to spend the necessary time and effort learning to sing, play and record your own songs at the highest level, then by all means do this yourself. But, given the number of hours in the day, if you have to choose, I’d consider spending your time working on your songwriting and pitching your songs and leaving the recording to the folks that do it all day, every day.

4. Catalog Your Mixes. Once you’re the proud owner of a great-sounding, professionally recorded demo of your song, you’ll need to make sure you’ve got easy access to it. This way, when an opportunity presents itself, you’ll know exactly where to go and what to look for. I can’t think of anything more depressing than an artist, label or publisher asking for a copy of your song and you not being able to find it. To that end, I’d ask the demo studio for high-resolution wave file mixes of your demo with and without vocals (instrumental versions of your songs are always great to have). Then, I’d learn how to use iTunes to not only convert your .wav files to mp3 for easier emailing but also to embed the necessary metadata (song title, contact info, etc.) directly into the mp3. This can be a bit daunting at first, but remember, if you’re hoping to make money from your songwriting, then you’re running a business and knowing how to prepare your product is all part of it.

5. Create A Backup. Now that you’ve got your songs and all the accompanying information properly labeled and stored, it’s time to set up a reliable backup system. It’s essential to remember that it’s not “if” but “when” your computer hard drive — with all your rough recordings, finished demos and lyric sheets — will fail. Not only do your demos represent a significant financial investment, but your songs themselves are priceless. My motto is that if it doesn’t exist in two places, it doesn’t exist. Learn how to back up your computer to a separate drive or, to coin the current phraseology, to the cloud. Under no circumstances should you go without some kind of backup. That’s simply a recipe for a catastrophic event.

6. Pitch Your Song. I know this sounds obvious but once you’ve got a finished demo of your song, you’ve got to show it to people. It’s amazing to me — and I was equally guilty of this early in my career — how few songwriters make the effort to get their songs out there. There are a variety of reasons for this. First and foremost, it’s work. At this point, you could be selling shoes as far as you’re concerned. There is nothing romantic about having a product and figuring out who’s interested in buying it. But, as I mentioned earlier, you’re running a business and so it needs to be done. Secondly, even if you are willing, it can be a bit daunting trying to figure out who’s looking for what you’ve got. There are reputable pitch sheets such as www.SongQuarters.com and www.RowFax.com that, for a fee, provide the necessary information and there are organizations like www.Taxi.com that will do the pitching for you for a fee. Finally, there’s no substitute for getting out there and meeting the decision-makers yourself by traveling to NYC, Nashville and Los Angeles, attending music conferences and going to workshops. The opportunities are out there if you’re willing to look for them.

Writing a song is a remarkable accomplishment. Don’t ever forget that. However, once that’s done, I hope the information I’ve provided will serve as a road map for what comes next.


Cliff Goldmacher is a songwriter, producer, session musician, engineer, author and owner of recording studios in Nashville, TN and Sonoma, CA. Cliff’s site, http://www.EducatedSongwriter.com, is full of resources for the aspiring songwriter and his company, http://www.NashvilleStudioLive.com, provides songwriters outside of Nashville with virtual access to Nashville’s best session musicians and singers for their songwriting demos.

You can download a FREE sample of Cliff’s eBook “The Songwriter’s Guide To Recording Professional Demos” by going to http://www.EducatedSongwriter.com/ebook.

Facebook: www.facebook.com/EducatedSongwriter
Twitter: @edusongwriter

]]> 2012-02-27T12:39:57+00:00 Songwriter101 - Articles: Three Good Reasons To Love Your Songs http://www.songwriter101.com/articles/entry/555671 In order to suffer the slings and arrows that are an inevitable part of trying to generate income from your songs, it’s a good idea to love them first. I’m talking about a very specific kind of love here. What I’m not talking about is the kind of desperate, dysfunctional love where your song is so dear to you that you’re crushed if someone doesn’t love the song as much as you do. The love I’m talking about is where, like a good parent, you’ve put all of your experience and effort into creating a solid, well-adjusted song-child and you feel confident putting it out in the world no matter what anyone else says. I realize this kind of confidence/love won’t come right away and seeking out constructive criticism from more experienced songwriters is a very useful part of your education. However, in the end, this is art you’re creating and the most important opinion is yours. Below are three good reasons why loving your songs can be a huge asset when it comes to getting your songs out there and furthering your career. 1. Maintaining Your Motivation. Writing songs is hard work and requires a great deal of willpower and dedication. In the best of circumstances, it’s a tall order to motivate yourself to create something from nothing. If you don’t feel good about your songs or you’re too easily discouraged by a less-than-glowing comment, it’s twice as hard to get up the courage to dig in. Regarding negative comments, you have to be thick-skinned. Very few non-songwriters can appreciate what it takes to write a song, so don’t let a thoughtless or uninformed comment discourage you or shake your belief. And, too, negative or mean-spirited critiques from seasoned, successful songwriters should be taken with a grain of salt. In the end, they’re only opinions and, as I mentioned above, it’s your opinion that matters most. 2. Pitching Your Songs. When it comes to the unromantic, soul-sucking work of pitching your songs for various opportunities, loving what you’re “selling” is a huge help. The more confident you are about your material, the easier it will be to get up every day and subject your songs (and yourself) to the whims of the music industry. If you only love your song when someone else loves it, that means you won’t believe in it if someone says it’s not for them. Our industry is full of success stories who were told “no” over and over again. What if they’d listened? Loving your songs gives you the courage to try again when your song is passed over for a given opportunity. 3. Confidence Is Contagious. Loving your songs and being confident in them works on many levels. As I mentioned above, if you love your songs, you’re more likely to want to keep making new ones. But, more importantly, confidence is something people can detect in a million small ways, from your body language in a pitch meeting to what words you choose when you’re submitting a song via email. In other words, if you love your songs, people will be able to tell and they’ll be more likely to love them, too. This explains, in large part, why your first cut is the hardest to get. It’s easier to believe in — love — your songs once you’ve gotten some outside affirmation. That being said, it really does begin with you loving your songs first. Be patient. The kind of love I’ve been talking about is not something that happens overnight. It comes from putting in the countless hours necessary to perfect your craft, incorporating others’ suggestions that make sense to you and ignoring the ones that don’t. Once you’ve done all that, loving your songs, in a quietly confident way, will make your work — and your life — more fulfilling. Cliff Goldmacher is a songwriter, producer, session musician, engineer, author and owner of recording studios in Nashville, TN and Sonoma, CA. Cliff’s site, http://www.EducatedSongwriter.com, is full of resources for the aspiring songwriter and his company, http://www.NashvilleStudioLive.com, provides songwriters outside of Nashville with virtual access to Nashville’s best session musicians and singers for their songwriting demos. You can download a FREE sample of Cliff’s eBook “The Songwriter’s Guide To Recording Professional Demos” by going to http://www.EducatedSongwriter.com/ebook. Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/EducatedSongwriter Twitter: @edusongwriter Career {media_event} In order to suffer the slings and arrows that are an inevitable part of trying to generate income from your songs, it’s a good idea to love them first. I’m talking about a very specific kind of love here. What I’m not talking about is the kind of desperate, dysfunctional love where your song is so dear to you that you’re crushed if someone doesn’t love the song as much as you do. The love I’m talking about is where, like a good parent, you’ve put all of your experience and effort into creating a solid, well-adjusted song-child and you feel confident putting it out in the world no matter what anyone else says. I realize this kind of confidence/love won’t come right away and seeking out constructive criticism from more experienced songwriters is a very useful part of your education. However, in the end, this is art you’re creating and the most important opinion is yours. Below are three good reasons why loving your songs can be a huge asset when it comes to getting your songs out there and furthering your career.

1. Maintaining Your Motivation. Writing songs is hard work and requires a great deal of willpower and dedication. In the best of circumstances, it’s a tall order to motivate yourself to create something from nothing. If you don’t feel good about your songs or you’re too easily discouraged by a less-than-glowing comment, it’s twice as hard to get up the courage to dig in. Regarding negative comments, you have to be thick-skinned. Very few non-songwriters can appreciate what it takes to write a song, so don’t let a thoughtless or uninformed comment discourage you or shake your belief. And, too, negative or mean-spirited critiques from seasoned, successful songwriters should be taken with a grain of salt. In the end, they’re only opinions and, as I mentioned above, it’s your opinion that matters most.

2. Pitching Your Songs. When it comes to the unromantic, soul-sucking work of pitching your songs for various opportunities, loving what you’re “selling” is a huge help. The more confident you are about your material, the easier it will be to get up every day and subject your songs (and yourself) to the whims of the music industry. If you only love your song when someone else loves it, that means you won’t believe in it if someone says it’s not for them. Our industry is full of success stories who were told “no” over and over again. What if they’d listened? Loving your songs gives you the courage to try again when your song is passed over for a given opportunity.

3. Confidence Is Contagious. Loving your songs and being confident in them works on many levels. As I mentioned above, if you love your songs, you’re more likely to want to keep making new ones. But, more importantly, confidence is something people can detect in a million small ways, from your body language in a pitch meeting to what words you choose when you’re submitting a song via email. In other words, if you love your songs, people will be able to tell and they’ll be more likely to love them, too. This explains, in large part, why your first cut is the hardest to get. It’s easier to believe in — love — your songs once you’ve gotten some outside affirmation. That being said, it really does begin with you loving your songs first.

Be patient. The kind of love I’ve been talking about is not something that happens overnight. It comes from putting in the countless hours necessary to perfect your craft, incorporating others’ suggestions that make sense to you and ignoring the ones that don’t. Once you’ve done all that, loving your songs, in a quietly confident way, will make your work — and your life — more fulfilling.

Cliff Goldmacher is a songwriter, producer, session musician, engineer, author and owner of recording studios in Nashville, TN and Sonoma, CA. Cliff’s site, http://www.EducatedSongwriter.com, is full of resources for the aspiring songwriter and his company, http://www.NashvilleStudioLive.com, provides songwriters outside of Nashville with virtual access to Nashville’s best session musicians and singers for their songwriting demos.

You can download a FREE sample of Cliff’s eBook “The Songwriter’s Guide To Recording Professional Demos” by going to http://www.EducatedSongwriter.com/ebook.

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/EducatedSongwriter
Twitter: @edusongwriter

]]> 2012-01-31T13:18:27+00:00 Songwriter101 - Articles: In Praise of “Modular” Recording http://www.songwriter101.com/articles/entry/555406 Much has been made of the long-awaited official release of the Beach Boys’ epic SMiLE album, which, despite being abandoned back in mid-1967, represents the creative high-water mark for its composer, BB leader and pop wunderkind Brian Wilson. By 1966, Wilson, using the technology available at the time, was hard at work developing an entirely different approach to crafting music in the studio. Rather than cutting backing tracks live from start to finish (as had been his usual custom), Wilson had begun recording song ideas in short bursts (or “feels” as he sometimes called them), subsequently stitching together the various parts to form a seamless whole. “Good Vibrations,” comprising numerous bits and pieces using no less than five different recording studios, proved that Wilson was onto something good; by the time the single reached the top of the charts that fall, Wilson had already completed half an album’s worth of new material based on his “modular” method, which he initially titled Dumb Angel, then later SMiLE. Though the enormity of the project would ultimately overwhelm an increasingly fragile Wilson, the arrival of the bountiful SMiLE Sessions multimedia box last November — featuring no less than five CDs of the masterpiece in the making — reveals that Wilson was indeed operating on a creative level well above his most celebrated peers (the Beatles included). For us studio mortals lucky enough to own the kind of basic sound-manipulation tools that would have made Wilson’s job so much easier back then, SMiLE demonstrates the infinite possibilities of crafting whole songs using musical modules, rather than in a single gulp. Musical Recycling For those who lack the time or discipline to sit down and write a fully formed song in the traditional sense, modular recording represents the perfect opportunity to recycle discarded bits of ideas that have fallen by the wayside. Hence the importance of saving all of your musical fragments in a dedicated folder on your hard drive; even things that may sound trivial today could play an important role when attempting to assemble a song from spare parts later on. There are a number of easy-to-use (and even free-of-charge) utilities that allow you to weave together your various components without making the stitch marks obvious to the listener. One popular program is Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net), which includes a full complement of editing features like copy and paste, clip trimming, pitch and tempo adjustment, peak leveling and equalization. Because Audacity allows you to work with multiple waveforms on a single template, you can mix and match fragments at will — extracting a portion of the bridge for use as an intro, swapping the intro for the outro, shuffling the order of the various pieces, and so forth. Rather than repeating a verse or chorus multiple times, using your editing tools you can simply copy and paste the initial take throughout the song (as Wilson himself did to perfection in “Good Vibrations” and throughout the SMiLE tracking sessions). You can utilize the modular approach during a live tracking-session as well. Even in the good old days of analog, bands would often come up with a framework for a song by recording long jams in the studio and then cobbling together any “keeper” fragments after the fact. Digital is tailor-made for such work — just hit record and start playing; with a little judicious editing, you can isolate, cut, paste and loop any promising ideas into the makings of an actual song. Modular Mixing You can also use the same methodology to construct a finished master by choosing from select portions of various “trial” mixes. Let’s say you’ve made four or five different mix attempts of your multitracked song, and while listening back you realize that you like the way the guitar jumps out in the second mix, but you think the vocal sounds better on the third mix, while the drums are less intrusive on the fourth, etc. Assuming all the mixes are relatively uniform (i.e., levels and tempos are consistent throughout), import the different mix files into your project using Audacity or other editing utility. With each waveform on the screen, locate the beginning and end of each designated passage, highlight the various sections and then copy each onto a new “master” waveform. Carefully merge the various pieces one by one, previewing each edit along the way; if any of the welds are obvious (i.e., you cut a section a bit too long), just hit “undo” and try again until you get it right. Once complete, save the “master” mix to your hard drive and then burn to CD. Songwriter101 exclusive by Dave Simons Tech, Career {media_event} Much has been made of the long-awaited official release of the Beach Boys’ epic SMiLE album, which, despite being abandoned back in mid-1967, represents the creative high-water mark for its composer, BB leader and pop wunderkind Brian Wilson. By 1966, Wilson, using the technology available at the time, was hard at work developing an entirely different approach to crafting music in the studio. Rather than cutting backing tracks live from start to finish (as had been his usual custom), Wilson had begun recording song ideas in short bursts (or “feels” as he sometimes called them), subsequently stitching together the various parts to form a seamless whole. “Good Vibrations,” comprising numerous bits and pieces using no less than five different recording studios, proved that Wilson was onto something good; by the time the single reached the top of the charts that fall, Wilson had already completed half an album’s worth of new material based on his “modular” method, which he initially titled Dumb Angel, then later SMiLE.

Though the enormity of the project would ultimately overwhelm an increasingly fragile Wilson, the arrival of the bountiful SMiLE Sessions multimedia box last November — featuring no less than five CDs of the masterpiece in the making — reveals that Wilson was indeed operating on a creative level well above his most celebrated peers (the Beatles included). For us studio mortals lucky enough to own the kind of basic sound-manipulation tools that would have made Wilson’s job so much easier back then, SMiLE demonstrates the infinite possibilities of crafting whole songs using musical modules, rather than in a single gulp.

Musical Recycling

For those who lack the time or discipline to sit down and write a fully formed song in the traditional sense, modular recording represents the perfect opportunity to recycle discarded bits of ideas that have fallen by the wayside. Hence the importance of saving all of your musical fragments in a dedicated folder on your hard drive; even things that may sound trivial today could play an important role when attempting to assemble a song from spare parts later on.

There are a number of easy-to-use (and even free-of-charge) utilities that allow you to weave together your various components without making the stitch marks obvious to the listener. One popular program is Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net), which includes a full complement of editing features like copy and paste, clip trimming, pitch and tempo adjustment, peak leveling and equalization. Because Audacity allows you to work with multiple waveforms on a single template, you can mix and match fragments at will — extracting a portion of the bridge for use as an intro, swapping the intro for the outro, shuffling the order of the various pieces, and so forth. Rather than repeating a verse or chorus multiple times, using your editing tools you can simply copy and paste the initial take throughout the song (as Wilson himself did to perfection in “Good Vibrations” and throughout the SMiLE tracking sessions).

You can utilize the modular approach during a live tracking-session as well. Even in the good old days of analog, bands would often come up with a framework for a song by recording long jams in the studio and then cobbling together any “keeper” fragments after the fact. Digital is tailor-made for such work — just hit record and start playing; with a little judicious editing, you can isolate, cut, paste and loop any promising ideas into the makings of an actual song.

Modular Mixing

You can also use the same methodology to construct a finished master by choosing from select portions of various “trial” mixes. Let’s say you’ve made four or five different mix attempts of your multitracked song, and while listening back you realize that you like the way the guitar jumps out in the second mix, but you think the vocal sounds better on the third mix, while the drums are less intrusive on the fourth, etc. Assuming all the mixes are relatively uniform (i.e., levels and tempos are consistent throughout), import the different mix files into your project using Audacity or other editing utility. With each waveform on the screen, locate the beginning and end of each designated passage, highlight the various sections and then copy each onto a new “master” waveform. Carefully merge the various pieces one by one, previewing each edit along the way; if any of the welds are obvious (i.e., you cut a section a bit too long), just hit “undo” and try again until you get it right. Once complete, save the “master” mix to your hard drive and then burn to CD.

Songwriter101 exclusive by Dave Simons

]]> 2012-01-11T21:21:27+00:00 Songwriter101 - Articles: Three Reasons To Be Thankful You’re a Songwriter http://www.songwriter101.com/articles/entry/555210 On the heels of this Thanksgiving, I thought I would take a moment to tell you (and myself, while I’m at it) a few of the things we have to be thankful for as songwriters. Songwriting is the kind of pursuit that often takes place in a vacuum with little or no encouragement and is, by its very nature, solitary. Also, given that only the tiniest percentage of the songs we write ever get to see the light of day by getting cut, it’s easy to get frustrated. The risk is that we tend to forget what a gift being a songwriter actually is.  Here are a few reminders. 1. You’ve got a way to express yourself. In the course of living our day-to-day lives, we are subjected to an unpredictable mixture of elation and sadness. No matter what, this is a lot to handle, but having the ability to write about it is a huge advantage. Putting your thoughts in a song that will not only help you but also those who hear it is a wonderful, constructive way of processing life.  Without the ability to write songs, you might never have the luxury of this kind of perspective. 2. You’ve got something you’re passionate about. Many people go through their entire lives without finding something that truly moves them. You’ve got a passion. While your passion for songwriting will make you crazy and plunge you into the depths of despair, it will also bring you great joy and drive you to efforts that you never imagined yourself capable of. This kind of growth can only come from true, heartfelt dedication. Never take this for granted.  Being passionate about your songwriting is its own reward. This is not to say that you shouldn’t strive for any and all successes that are out there. However, it’s important to remember every once in a while that you’re lucky to have found something in this world that is so important to you. 3. You’re on a journey. Whether it’s the first time you write a whole song or winning a Grammy, every step of your journey as a songwriter should be appreciated. You will only have one first time to see someone listen to something you’ve written and cry. Don’t forget to stop and enjoy each event no matter how small. The danger in putting too much significance on the end game of financial success is that you’ll miss all the incredible moments along the way. We all know how difficult, frustrating and even scary songwriting can be. Being thankful for all of the good it brings us can help keep things in perspective.  Personally, I’m thankful for my high-school piano teacher who nonchalantly asked for the impossible at the end of one of our lessons: “For next week, I’d like you to write a song.” Cliff Goldmacher is a songwriter, producer, session musician, engineer, author and owner of recording studios in Nashville, TN and Sonoma, CA. Cliff’s site, http://www.EducatedSongwriter.com, is full of resources for the aspiring songwriter and his company, http://www.NashvilleStudioLive.com, provides songwriters outside of Nashville with virtual access to Nashville’s best session musicians and singers for their songwriting demos.  You can download a FREE sample of Cliff’s eBook “The Songwriter’s Guide To Recording Professional Demos” by going to http://www.EducatedSongwriter.com/ebook. Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/EducatedSongwriter Twitter: edusongwriter Songwriting, Career {media_event} On the heels of this Thanksgiving, I thought I would take a moment to tell you (and myself, while I’m at it) a few of the things we have to be thankful for as songwriters. Songwriting is the kind of pursuit that often takes place in a vacuum with little or no encouragement and is, by its very nature, solitary. Also, given that only the tiniest percentage of the songs we write ever get to see the light of day by getting cut, it’s easy to get frustrated. The risk is that we tend to forget what a gift being a songwriter actually is.  Here are a few reminders.

1. You’ve got a way to express yourself. In the course of living our day-to-day lives, we are subjected to an unpredictable mixture of elation and sadness. No matter what, this is a lot to handle, but having the ability to write about it is a huge advantage. Putting your thoughts in a song that will not only help you but also those who hear it is a wonderful, constructive way of processing life.  Without the ability to write songs, you might never have the luxury of this kind of perspective.

2. You’ve got something you’re passionate about. Many people go through their entire lives without finding something that truly moves them. You’ve got a passion. While your passion for songwriting will make you crazy and plunge you into the depths of despair, it will also bring you great joy and drive you to efforts that you never imagined yourself capable of. This kind of growth can only come from true, heartfelt dedication. Never take this for granted.  Being passionate about your songwriting is its own reward. This is not to say that you shouldn’t strive for any and all successes that are out there. However, it’s important to remember every once in a while that you’re lucky to have found something in this world that is so important to you.

3. You’re on a journey. Whether it’s the first time you write a whole song or winning a Grammy, every step of your journey as a songwriter should be appreciated. You will only have one first time to see someone listen to something you’ve written and cry. Don’t forget to stop and enjoy each event no matter how small. The danger in putting too much significance on the end game of financial success is that you’ll miss all the incredible moments along the way.

We all know how difficult, frustrating and even scary songwriting can be. Being thankful for all of the good it brings us can help keep things in perspective.  Personally, I’m thankful for my high-school piano teacher who nonchalantly asked for the impossible at the end of one of our lessons: “For next week, I’d like you to write a song.”


Cliff Goldmacher is a songwriter, producer, session musician, engineer, author and owner of recording studios in Nashville, TN and Sonoma, CA. Cliff’s site, http://www.EducatedSongwriter.com, is full of resources for the aspiring songwriter and his company, http://www.NashvilleStudioLive.com, provides songwriters outside of Nashville with virtual access to Nashville’s best session musicians and singers for their songwriting demos. 

You can download a FREE sample of Cliff’s eBook “The Songwriter’s Guide To Recording Professional Demos” by going to http://www.EducatedSongwriter.com/ebook.

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/EducatedSongwriter
Twitter: edusongwriter

]]> 2011-11-30T14:40:21+00:00 Songwriter101 - Articles: Four Things You Can Do To Improve Your Odds in Film/TV Song Placements http://www.songwriter101.com/articles/entry/553218 Having had the good fortune of song placements in both films and television shows, I can safely say there is no magic bullet when it comes to how to make this happen. That being said, there are certainly things that you, as a songwriter, can do to improve your odds. I’ve listed a few of these below. 1. Make sure your song is professionally recorded and performed This may sound obvious but there is absolutely no wiggle room for a poorly sung, performed or recorded version of your song when you’re pitching to film and TV. You’ve only got one chance to make a first impression. Put yourself in the position of the music supervisor or studio executive who is listening to hundreds of songs for a project.  If the recording — no matter how well written the song may be — sounds like it was done by amateurs, you’re biasing the listener against you before they’ve even given your melody and lyric consideration.  It’s one thing to write a great song but if you’d like someone to give you money for it, then you have to invest the money necessary to present your song in the best possible light. 2. Do your homework It doesn’t make sense to randomly send out songs in the hope that one will get placed. Find out which music supervisors are looking for which shows or films. There are industry pitch sheets and magazines with all kinds of information about who is looking for what; get familiar with them and mark yourself as a professional by making targeted pitches. Unfortunately, no one’s going to do this work for you. 3. Make sure you have complete ownership of the recording In order to give permission to a film or TV show to use your music, you’ll need to own your recording. This means filling out the necessary releases with any session musicians/singers involved in the project and being sure that the studio where you have recorded has given you full ownership of the master recording. Make absolutely certain your pitch plans aren’t derailed by finding out (after the fact) that the singer or players aren’t willing to give you permission to use their recorded performances in this manner. Music supervisors often have very little time to get songs cleared for use in a film or TV show and it will mark you as a pro if you can let them know at the outset that everything is “free and clear” for their use. 4. Get Known for a Style It’s a good thing to be able to write in a variety of styles but you (and your music) will be easier to remember if you become known for providing one particular style and doing it well. Music supervisors are often asked to gather songs in a specific style of music so if you’ve established yourself as a “go-to person” for that style, you’ve got a greater chance of being remembered when the time comes. When it comes to getting songs in film and TV, there is absolutely no substitute for doing the work. By “the work,” I mean all of the things I’ve mentioned above.  Unfortunately, it’s not enough to simply be a great songwriter; you need to be a savvy businessperson who is willing to take care of the unromantic, day-in and day-out details of having a career in order to succeed.  That being said, there is no greater thrill than turning on your TV or going to a theater and hearing one of your songs playing.  It somehow makes all your effort worthwhile. Cliff Goldmacher is a songwriter, producer, session musician, engineer, author and owner of recording studios in Nashville, TN and Sonoma, CA. Cliff’s site, http://www.EducatedSongwriter.com, is full of resources for the aspiring songwriter and his company, http://www.NashvilleStudioLive.com, provides songwriters outside of Nashville with virtual access to Nashville’s best session musicians and singers for their songwriting demos. You can download a FREE sample of Cliff’s eBook “The Songwriter’s Guide To Recording Professional Demos” by going to http://www.EducatedSongwriter.com/ebook. Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/EducatedSongwriter Twitter: edusongwriter Career {media_event} Having had the good fortune of song placements in both films and television shows, I can safely say there is no magic bullet when it comes to how to make this happen. That being said, there are certainly things that you, as a songwriter, can do to improve your odds. I’ve listed a few of these below.

1. Make sure your song is professionally recorded and performed

This may sound obvious but there is absolutely no wiggle room for a poorly sung, performed or recorded version of your song when you’re pitching to film and TV. You’ve only got one chance to make a first impression. Put yourself in the position of the music supervisor or studio executive who is listening to hundreds of songs for a project.  If the recording — no matter how well written the song may be — sounds like it was done by amateurs, you’re biasing the listener against you before they’ve even given your melody and lyric consideration.  It’s one thing to write a great song but if you’d like someone to give you money for it, then you have to invest the money necessary to present your song in the best possible light.

2. Do your homework

It doesn’t make sense to randomly send out songs in the hope that one will get placed. Find out which music supervisors are looking for which shows or films. There are industry pitch sheets and magazines with all kinds of information about who is looking for what; get familiar with them and mark yourself as a professional by making targeted pitches. Unfortunately, no one’s going to do this work for you.

3. Make sure you have complete ownership of the recording

In order to give permission to a film or TV show to use your music, you’ll need to own your recording. This means filling out the necessary releases with any session musicians/singers involved in the project and being sure that the studio where you have recorded has given you full ownership of the master recording. Make absolutely certain your pitch plans aren’t derailed by finding out (after the fact) that the singer or players aren’t willing to give you permission to use their recorded performances in this manner. Music supervisors often have very little time to get songs cleared for use in a film or TV show and it will mark you as a pro if you can let them know at the outset that everything is “free and clear” for their use.

4. Get Known for a Style

It’s a good thing to be able to write in a variety of styles but you (and your music) will be easier to remember if you become known for providing one particular style and doing it well. Music supervisors are often asked to gather songs in a specific style of music so if you’ve established yourself as a “go-to person” for that style, you’ve got a greater chance of being remembered when the time comes.

When it comes to getting songs in film and TV, there is absolutely no substitute for doing the work. By “the work,” I mean all of the things I’ve mentioned above.  Unfortunately, it’s not enough to simply be a great songwriter; you need to be a savvy businessperson who is willing to take care of the unromantic, day-in and day-out details of having a career in order to succeed.  That being said, there is no greater thrill than turning on your TV or going to a theater and hearing one of your songs playing.  It somehow makes all your effort worthwhile.


Cliff Goldmacher is a songwriter, producer, session musician, engineer, author and owner of recording studios in Nashville, TN and Sonoma, CA. Cliff’s site, http://www.EducatedSongwriter.com, is full of resources for the aspiring songwriter and his company, http://www.NashvilleStudioLive.com, provides songwriters outside of Nashville with virtual access to Nashville’s best session musicians and singers for their songwriting demos.

You can download a FREE sample of Cliff’s eBook “The Songwriter’s Guide To Recording Professional Demos” by going to http://www.EducatedSongwriter.com/ebook.

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/EducatedSongwriter
Twitter: edusongwriter

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