Recording - April 2015 - 30

Production is important, but it does have its dark side. Within
the depths of today's technologies, producers and engineers
can quantize, pitch-correct, comp, everything... and most of
them do. The pitchless suddenly have pitch, the chopless suddenly have chops, and the mediocre suddenly have a "major
label" sounding record, as they used to call it in the '90s. A
famous singer drops his mic into the audience during a concert
and the crowd still hears him singing, a famous band plays the
Super Bowl and their instruments aren't plugged in... you can be
a rock star with all this tech, but I humbly suggest it's better for
you to be what this magazine says on the cover every month: a
recording musician. To do that, you don't need toys first... you
need skills first.
You don't need a lot to say a lot. You just need something to
say. If that doesn't click with you, give the bank its money back,
you're not ready to build a studio yet. The coolest toys can be a
great help to the accomplished professional, but if you don't
have the ideas, can't play, can't write, and can't apply those
cool gadgets to complement worthy songs, Willy Wonka will tell
you what you have: http://bit.do/NOTHING
Walking the walk from a hospital bed
Once upon a time, in a lovely little hamlet known as Coral
Gables, Florida, there lived an uninsured and struggling young
producer who didn't yet know that he had a tumor in his chest
the size of a fist. To pass the time, this young man decided to
start fiddling with a friend's 4-track and guitar. The problem
was, he had no idea how to play guitar, but he started to pick
it up at the recommendation of another friend, Travis Tooke.

By Eric Alexandrakis

In this day and age, in order to become a proper recording artist, you must not only perfect your songwriting, but
also your arranging and production skills. I firmly believe
this. I don't believe that "great songs are great in any
recorded form;" I think that skillful production can bring out
the magic when it's not so obvious from the song itself.
Music is like food; one song will feel like it's poisoning you
while another will inspire you into creative sugar-shock...
and the guy next to you might feel the opposite. The right
production is what brings out the musical yumminess, and
this magazine is a great resource to help you decide what
your specific needs are and learn how to meet them.
That said, I want to take a step back and point out two
things in my first sentence that will be the center of this
article. One is that you must perfect your songwriting. I put
songwriting first, and so must you. The other is that you
must perfect your arranging and production skills. There's
nothing in there about your mics, your preamps, your
DAW, your plug-ins, or any other toys.
30

RECORDING April 2015

Travis was the guitarist in a band called For Squirrels, signed to
Sony/550 Music in 1995 after a huge bidding war. Two weeks
before the conversation in which Travis made his suggestion, in the
exciting hush just before their album Example was due to drop, the
four band members and their tour manager were driving their van
from New York to Florida when they had a blowout. I'll spare you the
(literally) gory details. Three of the five died, drummer Jack Griego survived with a broken neck, and Travis ended up with a broken arm
and glass embedded in him. (Sony released one single, which made
it into the Billboard charts: http://bit.do/ForSquirrelsMightyKC links to
the video on YouTube. It's been 20 years, and it still haunts.)
Except for the drummer, those guys didn't really know how to
play when they started out. They taught themselves, wrote and
focused on their own songs without gimmicks, and became one of
the hottest things out there at the time. Knowing the power of teaching oneself with a strong sense of purpose, Travis suggested from
his hospital bed that the young man learn to play guitar... and so
I began. I was already classically trained on piano, but didn't
know how it would go.

http://www.bit.do/NOTHING http://www.bit.do/ForSquirrelsMightyKC

Recording - April 2015

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