Playing Advice From Keef

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Here's an short interesting video interview excerpt with Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards where he gives advice about playing in time. I'm not so sure I'm down with the advice, since the Stones and Keith aren't the tightest players in the first place, and Keef doesn't exactly explain himself well, but this is the first video I've seen where he comes off as genuine, without any of the usual snarky attitude. He is right about playing with a great drummer though.



Just for fun, here are a few Keith Facts from a great article in The Guardian.

1. On the night of the infamous 1967 Redlands drug bust, Keef was so far gone on LSD that when the police arrived at his Sussex country mansion, he mistook them for uniformed dwarves, welcoming them in with open arms.

3. He once nearly burned down the Playboy Mansion (in his words: "basically it's a whorehouse"). At a party in the 1970s, he and sax player Bobby Keys accidentally set fire to a bathroom while playing "smörgÃ¥sbord" with their doctor's drugs. When staff finally broke down the door to put out the fire, a drugged-up Keef, oblivious to the flames, asked: "How dare you burst in on our private affair?"

6. Jumping Jack Flash was actually Keef's gardener at Redlands, Jack Dyer. The inspiration for the song came when the stomping of Jack's rubber boots woke Jagger from a hazy drug-induced sleep. The front man then appended the word "Flash" to the nickname Jumping Jack, the two riffed on the gardener's rural childhood, and a hit was born.

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Becoming A Producer

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Reader Hector Gutierrez wrote in with a couple of questions that I'm happy to answer. Here we go:

How do you become a producer?
1) You're a producer when you have a client that trusts you with their music. They have to feel comfortable with you personally first and foremost, but they also need to know that you'll help them make the right decisions. Work with as many artists as you can in as many different genres that you can so you can have a portfolio of projects that you can play for someone.

Here's a short excerpt from The Music Producer's Handbook:

"I don’t remember who said it, but the following phrase is really true. “How do you know when you are a producer? When you have a client!”, meaning that as long as someone believes you can do it, then you’ve joined the production ranks. And while becoming a producer can sometimes follow an improbable path, usually there are two career tracks that take you there: being either a musician or engineer. 

The time-honored way to break into production is to discover a young artist looking for a break. If you’ve been coming up through the ranks by working in the various capacities above, you can probably ask for a favor for some musical, arranging and studio help to get a short project recorded. Or, you can pay for it out of your own pocket. Either way, you can be on your way at that point, or not.

An artist or band member that meets with some music business success usually has a pretty good head start into the production world by virtue of that success. If you find an artist that you want to produce, a record label is usually inclined to let you do it, figuring that your success might rub off on the new artist. Sometimes they’ll let you do it just to keep you happy. 

Success on any level tends to rub off on you and makes it easier to find a project to produce. A songwriter, musician, engineer, or others in the business are much more likely to be referred to production work only by virtue of the fact that they were connected to a hit (the bigger the hit, the easier it becomes). It’s a sad fact that it happens this way, and it sometimes bestows undeserved opportunities to the undeserving, but that’s the way the business works."

You can read additional excerpts from the book at bobbyowsinski.com.
How does a producer get paid in these days of low sales?2) It used to be that a producer would get paid completely from about a 3 percent royalty or so that the artist would come out of the artist's royalty. Most producers still get that, but unfortunately there's not much coming in from royalties these days since the sales are so low so many producers are asking for a piece of the publishing or management of the artist. Neither is easy to get as artists are rightfully leery about giving up any publishing rights, but it's possible if you have a track record. Other producers now work for a flat fee up front, sometimes per project, sometimes per song. 
My advice to a young producer starting out:  Work for free until you get your chops up and have something to play for artists, then do whatever you can to find an artist that believes in you as much as you believe in him or her.

As always, please feel free to ask any questions.----------------------------------Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.
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"Whole Lotta Love" Isolated Bass Track

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If you like listening to isolated tracks of classic records, here's a good one. It's John Paul Jones isolated bass track for Led Zeppelin's 1969 hit "Whole Lotta Love."

There are a lot of interesting things here. First of all, JPJ plays an 8 string bass, which is why the sound of the record is so thick (ha, now we know). Other things to listen for is the slight change of the riff at :29, then the mistakes at 1:05 and 1:10. It's amazing what we'd leave in back in those days that no one ever noticed. Also, listen to the tempo speed up slightly, then pull back, another thing that you don't notice in the track.



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The Sound Of The International Space Station

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We always think of being in space as the ultimate in silence. Now wind, no ambient noise, only the absence of sound. Being in the International Space Station is different though, as it's apparently not as quiet as one would think. Take a listen to the clip below.



What you're hearing in the background is the various computer fans, life support systems, and lab experiments polluting their closed environment with the same thing we face on earth.

It looks like you can't get away from our modern noise even 250 miles in space.

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10 Of The Biggest Stories For 2013

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I don't normally cross-post between my Music 3.0 music industry blog and Big Picture production blog, but the topics below apply to both. As 2012 draws to a close, now is the time to take a look at what might be ahead in 2013. Here are 10 story lines to look out for in the year ahead, in no particular order of importance. In some cases we can clearly see what might happen, while in others it's still an open question.

1. A new trend in music. In case you haven't noticed, we in living in the middle of two musical trends with EDM going mainstream and the folk-roots movement led by Mumford and Sons breaking big. Is 2013 going to be more of the same as both trends peak, or will there be something completely new that captures our attention?

2. Streaming music takes over. 2012 was a year for pushing the streaming music ball up the hill and so many people were converted. When Apple announces their plans for streaming in 2013, the ball will begin rolling down the other side of the mountain and downloads will join the ranks of the CD - still in use, but no longer the music distribution mainstay.

3. Guitar Center's decline. The king of the music equipment retailers is in trouble, with falling sales and reportedly a huge balloon payment due. Don't be surprised if you see some changes in the marketplace, with a smaller more nimble GC facing some real competition. All in all, good for the business.

4. The Big 3 provide a boost to DIY. With the Universal Music takeover of EMI now complete, we've moved to a 3 major label world. Although you still need a major to become an international superstar, will this be the year that mold is broken and we see a true DIY breakout?

5. Hi-res music comes to the forefront. Bandwidth and storage are now cheap, and in a world where we're streaming hi-res video with monetary impunity, why should we still be listening to the lowly MP3? With Apple now moving to hi-res with their Mastered for iTunes program, Neil Young's Pono (if it gets off the ground), and sites like HD Tracks, is it possible that the mass market can finally move beyond CD quality?

6. Avid's decline. Talk about a sinking ship, Avid's stock has fallen like a rock (although it's been up a little in recent days), many of their best people have jumped ship, and Pro Tools looks vulnerable for the first time in years. It will still take a lot to get the entrenched pro market to change, but the upcoming NAMM show may hold a few surprises.

7. The tablet takes control. There's no doubt that the tablet computer has taken the world by storm even to the extent that PC sales are way down. While 2012 saw a few new serious audio creation programs come to the platform, will 2013 be the year where we cross the threshold into doing serious projects on it?

8. Diminished trade show importance. With the Internet, we no longer have to go to a trade show to see what's new. With so many of the industry trade shows faltering to the point where some of the biggest manufacturers don't attend, look to see the trend continue toward irrelevance.

9. The increased importance of the Cloud. So much of our every day world now takes place in the cloud that it's almost become transparent to us. Will music creation and storage switch completely to the cloud in order to increase security and eliminate leaks? Will more online collaboration make studios even less relevant than they currently are?

10. Can the album be saved? We now live in a singles world again, and although the album hasn't totally fallen by the wayside, it's becoming less and less important all the time. Every year a new electronic form of the album enters the marketplace, but none have yet to catch on. Will 2013 be the year that a new format wins our hearts and our pocketbooks?

There are many more than these 10 issues, but I thought that these were particularly interesting to watch for, at least in the beginning of the year. As always, it will be fun to look back at this time next year to see how each story developed.

Have a very happy New Year, and may you find it profitable and fulfilling. And once again, thanks for reading!

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How Likely Are You To Die From Music?

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Artist Survivability With Age

The rock and roll lifestyle isn't always what it's cracked up to be and in fact can be quite risky, and now comes a study that proves it. A team of researchers in England have quantified just how much more likely a music star is to die than the rest of the general population.

The co-authors of the paper "Dying To Be Famous," which was published in the British Medical Journel, examined the lives and deaths of 1,489 rock, pop, hip-hop and punk stars from North America and Europe over the last 50 years, of whom 137 (9.2%) had died. Jazz and other non-mainstream musical genres, as well as artists from other parts of the world, were excluded from the study.

Here are the fun facts that the study brought to light:

• Solo performers are twice as likely to die than musicians in a band. In North America, 23% of solo performers died compared to 10% of band-only stars. In Europe, the figures were lower at 10% versus 5%.

• Nearly 39% of those who died did so from factors related to violence, alcohol or drug intake.

• North American pop stars where 12.4% more likely to die than others of the same age and ethnicity.

• Not surprisingly, overdosing on drugs was the most common form of death.

• Also not surprising, the wealth and affluence brought on by stardom amplified any major childhood trauma.

• And just as we always knew, the death toll was higher in the 60s and 70s, with the survivability after 1980 increasing. The study cited the sense of professionalism that grew within the industry as it became a major revenue source, which they said was a factor in preventing more deaths past 1980.

From what I've seen in the business, the study hit the nail right on the head in a couple of points. For someone who has been somehow damaged during childhood, suddenly having wealth, fame and freedom can be deadly. The thing is, they may be successful precisely because that early damage internally pushed them to be so. As it seems with everything in life, fame can truly be a double-edged sword.

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The Greatest Selling Record Of All Time

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What's the best selling record of all time? No, it's not Thriller by Michael Jackson (reported numbers are said to be inflated so it's difficult to even tell how many copies it's sold). It's actually "White Christmas," recorded by Bing Crosby and written by songwriting legend Irving Berlin. The single is said to have sold over 50 million copies alone, with sales of the album putting the total over 100 million.

Recorded in 1942 just after the World War II started for the US and debuted in the movie "Holiday Inn" with Crosby and Fred Astaire, it's widely held that the war actually had a lot to do with the song gaining popularity. Since millions of troops were overseas and longing for family, the song brought a little bit of comfort and the feel of home. From that point, it's become ingrained in our consciousness as a standard that's played constantly (over and over and over again) throughout the holiday season.

There's a lot that's interesting about songwriter Irving Berlin, as well. He was self-taught and could only play using the black keys of F#. Probably because he was self-taught, he also frequently wrote with unusual cadences, and many times never bothered to write a bridge, which was contrary to the times. Still, the song has outlived hundreds of competitors over time with more introduced every year. Despite all the famous songs that Berlin wrote that everyone somehow knows, ("Alexander's Ragtime Band,""Easter Parade," "There's No Business Like Show Business," "God Bless America."), "White Christmas" will be the one he's best remembered for.

So if you really want to make your mark as a songwriter, write a holiday song.
----------------------------------Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.
You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.
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