A Pro Musician Answers Your Questions About Professional Music
 

So, my recent posts of some recordings reminded me that things I consider part of ordinary life are sometimes mystical to people outside of my little world. I thought it would be fun to throw open the door a bit, and give people a peak inside how things really work.

So, think of this thread as an "insider perspective" on the music industry. If you have any questions, I'll answer them as well as I can. I prefer not to answer questions about my specific career (private messages might be more appropriate for that), but about things in general. If you wonder how people get paid, who does what on an album, how people find work, what the studio process is really like, anything like that, I'll answer as best I can.

So, ask away.

My BIL is a drummer who toured with a band for a couple of years, and made enough money to live off that income at the time. But the band broke up. He's recently lost his fall back day job.

What are the prospects for getting paying work in a studio or something like that? He's in northern New Jersey and could make it in to NYC. How do you get into the studio musician world?

Networking!

Almost everybody makes it into the recording world by being a first-call sub for somebody already working. Usually that means being a student of one of the top players. There are a lot of people who pay to take lessons from the top call players specifically so that they can get on their radar, and hopefully start picking up sessions that the top call guy can't do.

My path in was a little different. I played keyboards for a major label artist on her very last tour. After she got off the road, she started working as a song-writer and producer for up and coming female artists. She pulled me in to play keyboards on the recordings, and from there I was able to network with other people in the recording industry.

The live world and the recording world are surprisingly separate from each other. The live world is sort of the slums of the music industry. It doesn't pay very well unless you're at the very top, a lot of young players get hired because they're cheap and pretty, and the standards for musicianship are usually pretty low. There are a LOT of people trying to make the transition from playing live to playing on recordings.

Are there people who are kinda not talented, but who get by because they're dependable and not assholes and maybe know a couple good jokes? Like a guitarist who can't solo anything but 12 bar blues, which he's great at but can't really do much else, but he's a good guy and people like having him around?

FWIW, the same is true from the mixing/engineering side of things. Setting the mix for a live performance is a completely different beast from running things in a nice studio, and depending on the venue can require much more skill to do it well, yet everyone I've ever worked with would still rather do anything in a studio than run a live tour, no matter how big or famous. Maybe because in the studio you're the "engineer," while on tour you're just called a "roadie."

Since you work with keyboards...

What is the best recording software? I normally use either Reaper or Soundbooth as of now, but is there anything better out there?

Have you seen the film being screened about The Wrecking Crew? http://www.wreckingcrew.tv/index2.html Ever met any of those folks?

Just saw that not too long ago at a film festival, very cool stuff I hope it makes it to DVD soon.

Converse to the guy who has killer chops but is impossible to get along with?
I've read that "not being an asshole" is among the most desirable qualities.

No, not really. Studio players are almost all amazingly versatile. I've seen players go from nylon string classical guitar solos to flamenco to face-melting power chords all on the same session. That's the norm.

There are a handful of people who have built a career out of being good at only one thing, but that one thing is usually very niche, like being good at authentic early delta blues dobro guitar, or chinese folk erhu.

Being dependable and not an asshole and knowing a couple of good jokes is important, but if you can't hang with the music, you don't get called back. You might get called to go out for beers after the session, but in the room, what matters is what matters, the music.

For the money, I don't think you can beat Apple's Logic Studio. I use that pretty much exclusively for programming, sound design, composing, film scoring. I use Pro Tools when I have to, but for everything else, I use Logic.

I have ton of respect for good live engineers. They can make or break show.

But I've never known a live engineer who can make $250k in a year, and I know dozens of studio engineers who clear that.

There are no back-end royalties on live tours.

The Wrecking Crew were waaaaay before my time, and frankly way higher up than any of the circles I'm traveling in. The closest I've come to any of them is buying a bunch of old gear that Glen Campbell used on his live rig.

I did some low-level technical work on a software instrument called the Trilogy, a bass emulator. Carol Kaye was a consultant on it, but I've never met her.

I've gotta see that. I've emailed with Carol Kaye a couple of times over the years. Great gal, incredible bassist.

Pro Musician:

Have you gotten rich yet doing local gigs for weddings? What do you eat for dinner on a regular basis? Have you considered growing your own food or raising chickens to supplement your diet?