larcollins|music - Heads Will Roll, Part 2 - Up Sh*t Creek Without A Drummer

Back to December 2012.  My birthday that day had already been special after receiving the gift of studio time at a major recording studio.  But my day was far from over.  I had been invited by my friend and former bandmate Victor to meet up for birthday drinks at the Culver Hotel.  Victor and I share birthdays and have celebrated ours together in the past.  It had been a while since we'd seen each other.

I got there as most people were leaving but to my pleasant surprise another former bandmate of ours was also there  - Jon!  I hadn't seen Jon in years either since he moved back east.  I had been in a few bands with both of these guys.  The last one together being The Lula Stream, which to this day is the band that deeply broke my heart when we broke up.

I don't believe in coincidences, but it took me a few days for it to dawn on me.  How interesting was it that I'd unexpectedly run into two former bandmates right after I offered studio time?  Not just any two bandmates, but musicians I admired and absolutely trusted.

My session was set for January 4, 2013 in Studio A at Hensons.  I was nervous, anxious and excited as hell.  We wouldn't be starting until that afternoon, but of course something like this could never go smoothly, right?  That morning I hear from Victor.   He can't do the session.  

F***!!!  I have no drummer.

For the next few hours it was a mad scramble trying to find someone to replace him.  I mean someone who would work for free!  The one thing I was counting on with Vic was I knew I could trust his timing.  It's my biggest musical pet peeve - you can do all the fancy crap in the world on your instrument - flames could shoot from your fingers - but if you can't play to a click?  As far as I'm concerned you're completely useless. (Kids, always practice to a metronome.  You'll thank me later.)

 

I had friends who had friends willing to fill in for Victor.  Even Jon, who was still on for the session, knew someone.  But I was flying blind.  I was up sh*t creek without a drummer.  I needed to know whoever was coming in, had good timing.  I decided to go with Jon's guy.  I trusted Jon so I figured anyone he brought in had to be pretty good.  Right?  Right?

larcollins|music - Heads Will Roll, Part 1 - original demo

My latest music production project and the one I am learning the most from.  In December 2012, I was given the ultimate birthday gift.  It was something I had dreamed of getting since I was a tween - studio time at a professional recording studio.

Yes, that is an odd gift for a 12 year old to wish for.  But at that age I had decided I wanted to be a music producer.  I didn't want to be the famous singer or in a successful band (those fantasies would rise and die later), I wanted to be that guy (there were virtually NO female music producers back then) in the studio, putting everything together.  Deciding which echo effect goes where.  What instruments should be together.  Somehow at that age I understood the role of a music producer and I knew deep down that's what I wanted to do.

So 30 plus years later, I am back to focusing on making that 12 year old's dreams come true.  Imagine how floored I was when my co-worker arranged with the manager and head engineer at Henson's Recording Studio to let me record there for one day!  I'm almost collapse to the floor and cried.  Most amazing gift ever.

My session was set for January 2013.  I had to decide which of the songs I had written throughout my lifetime was going to get the full blown audio day spa treatment.  It came down to what was currently my favorite among the songs I've ever written, a song called "Girlcrush (Won't You Come Home)" and "Dark Rotary"

"Dark Rotary" didn't even have an official title until long after it had been written.  But, duh, in the chorus I repeat the line "Heads will roll" so the name of the song was staring me in the face.  I posted "Dark Rotary" on SoundCloud along with several other original tunes I had written but for some reason this particular song seemed to inspire the most listens.  As much as I love "Girlcrush," more people were connecting with the other song - so "Dark Rotary" won out.

I had taken the demo of the song off SoundCloud since I was going to be recording a true professional version.  Today I put the demo back on the site as a way to demonstrate the evolution of the song from home demo to professional recording.  And also to document what lessons I've learned along the way.

larcollins|music - "Boyfriend"

I'm starting a new feature here to showcase my work in music. Here's entry number 1!

I've never been a prolific songwriter. I love the process, but inspiration tends to be a fleeting thing. I may crank out one to two songs a year at the most. To be a professional in that area you have to crank out at least one a day! It doesn't always have to be good, but that's the workout you have to give yourself to build up your songwriting muscle.

Because of this I decided to shift my focus to music production. I've always produced my own stuff - stuff I've written - but I wanted to see what the process would be like producing someone else. Low and behold, it's a lot more fun to play with someone else's song! I've discovered doing your own stuff is kind of like giving yourself a haircut.

Below is a song written and sung by my friend Cyndi Vellmure. I played bass in Cyndi's band for a few years and had some of her demos laying around. I decided to take one of those demos, chop it up in my recording software (Reaper) to fix the timing and see how well I could frost that cake. For comparison here is the original demo with just guitar and vocal I consider this my first official foray into music production work.  Now I need to find more songwriters to work on my production muscle.  If you know anyone who wants their song produced for free, send them my way.