The creative side of sound engineering

In a previous post I mentioned Jim Sullivan, recording engineer at The Hideout Studio, and promised to write more about him in the future.  Since this will probably be my last blog post, at least in this particular forum, I wanted to make sure he isn’t left out. 

Jim said he started as a musician, and became interested in recording at an early age because of the possibilities of multi-tracking and layering of different sounds.  “I kinda got hooked on it,” he said. 

“A lot of engineers have a creative side,” he said, “while some others are more technical.”  Jim says he debates in online forums about technical expertise versus creativity.  What makes Jim’s approach to recording so interesting is that he approaches it less as a nuts-and-bolts craft and more as a creative art. 

He said one of his favorite things to do is to “go out there instead of reaching for a canned effect.  That stuff stands out.” 

To give an example of what he means, during one of our recording sessions I asked Jim if we could get some “robot sounds” for the introduction to a song.  Jim recalls enjoying the process of going around the room looking for sounds, rather than using whatever pre-recorded samples might have been available. 

We ended up with a montage of a grinding refrigerator ice machine, a cymbal stand being hit with a screwdriver, and chopsticks being scraped across a speaker grill.  It worked great. 

“I’m really hands on,” Jim noted. 

Tribute bands, meet Jack Summers

The tribute band I’m in played shows in November at the Big Easy concert houses in Spokane and Boise.  Resting backstage in our dressing room, enjoying complimentary fried chicken and beer, I had a chance to reflect on how far we’d come.  A year ago, give or take, this same band was playing in piss-soaked dive bars in Everett for no money.

We’re better now than we were then, but not that much better.   We owe our success to the people we’ve met along the way.  And the man who made this fall and summer so fun and lucrative for us was Jack Summers of Entertainment Services International.

Jack told me he got involved with a promoter 19 years ago and subsequently decided it was what he wanted to do with his life.  He said he handles all the venues west of the Mississippi, and currently works with The Guess Who, Rare Earth and lots and lots of tribute bands.

I asked him to tell me what he looks for in a tribute band he’d like to work with.  He said, “They have to look like and sound like the real deal.”  He also said they have to be reliable, arriving on time at the venue for equipment load-in and sound check.   “I want to book a band and know there won’t be any problems.”

He also said he wants bands that do not drink prior to shows.  I think two beers are probably OK, but that’s me.

A better blog than my own

When I met with Kevin Jablonski, he told me about the Web site of a friend of his, Christopher Knab. You can find it here. Actually, the site is called “Music Biz Academy.com,” and Christopher is one major contributor of several.

Christopher has worked in the music business for more than 40 years. He owned a record store in San Francisco in the 60s, started his own record label and worked as a DJ and station manager for several radio stations, including the UW’s station KCMU in the late 80s and early 90s. Currently he is an author, lecturer and consultant in Seattle.

The site is impressive. It will take me some time to get through it: There are hundreds of articles, about everything from record label deals to how to not get stiffed at live shows.

The centerpiece of Christopher’s page seems to be his FourFront Music Marketing Concept. It’s a do-it-yourself guide divided into four sections: Artist and product development; promotion; publicity; and performance.

Not only is this interesting and useful, I find it timely as well. Many of the things Christopher explains are tasks that would have been handled by a large record company in previous decades. Now, of course, changing technologies have given us the opportunity to do these things on our own. This is the true “independent” music industry.

“Independent” has unfortunately become a buzzword for a genre of music—“indy,” or “indie” (I’ve seen both, and the AP style guide is no help). What people seem to have forgotten is that even if you wear second-hand clothes and emphasize the diphthong when you sing, if your record label is owned by Sony BMG, you are by definition not independent.

Many of us hold out hope that a generation of do-it-yourselfers will be able to show music consumers a few things about real artistic independence. That’s my two cents.

The Jablonski Law Group

When Ed Dekema put a copy of his standard agreement in front of me to sign, I turned to Kevin Jablonski of the Axios Law Group. He charged me for an hour of his time and talked me through every point in the contract. Without going into details, Kevin gave me a list of important changes I should ask for, and Ed agreed immediately to almost every one. It was quick and easy and, since the contract dealt with ownership of the copyrights to my music, it was absolutely essential to get it right.

When I spoke to Kevin again recently, he said he has left Axios to start his own firm, the Jablonski Law Group. Citing an overly competitive environment at Axios, Kevin also said he’s in a better position now to shape what he does.

“While I do do patent law, I want to refashion my practice towards musicians,” he said.

I asked Kevin if there’s any advice he frequently gives to aspiring musicians. He said musicians should make sure they’re doing things correctly when they agree to license their music, and they should ask themselves how they can be a good business person in the music industry.

Kevin said some of what was common sense in the past no longer applies. “Before, the path to success was with a major record company,” he said. “But there are too many stars being made these days.”

He suggests that young musicians, guided by a faith in their talent, use tools made available by the internet to promote and distribute their own music.

“A shrewd business person can come in and say ‘I don’t need some A&R guy to make me a star,” he said.

The Return of Dekema

Ed Dekema started his own record label, Dekema Records, in 1991. He said he “ended up” in Seattle just when the music industry was taking off here. “It was easy to jump on the ship,” he said.

The label was noteworthy for releasing an EP by the group The Fire Ants, which included former Nirvana drummer Chad Channing. The legendary grunge music producer Jack Endino produced the EP, which was named “Stripped.”

Ed abandoned the label a few years later. “I put things on hold because I started having kids,” he said.

Recently, Ed decided to start the label up again. Right now he divides his time between his family, his day job at ShareBuilder, an online share-trading Web site with offices in Bellevue, and the label.

“In the 90s I had to work with the local scene,” Ed told me, contrasting the earlier work he did with the label with what he’s doing now. He said he now prefers long-distance relationships with his bands.

“It’s time consuming to have a personal relationship with the band,” he said. “Now there’s no pull to go out to the clubs.” New technology allows him to promote and distribute music from bands from all over the world without leaving his desk.

“Promonet” is a software package that independent record labels can use to promote their music on internet radio stations, online magazines and online music stores such as iTunes and Rhapsody. Ed said he’s been using Promonet, but since he’s had a lot of trouble getting anyone at the company to return his phone calls or emails he’s looking into some of their competitors, such as Tune Core.

Full disclosure: Dekema Records is releasing a single for my band, White Helicopter.

The Hideout

I spoke with Alan Chizmar, owner and operator of The Hideout Studio, earlier tonight.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have worked with Al before on recording projects. Most of the people I will write about in this blog were introduced to me in the course of my musical work. I hope this will serve to illustrate the importance of networking, and how it is done, but I will always let you, the reader, know about my connections to these people so you can make up your own mind about my objectivity.

The Hideout has been in operation for three years, since Al moved to Seattle from Arizona. His experience as a performer and sound engineer goes back more than 20 years.

“Something I learned about 10 or 15 years ago, sometimes I can apply that knowledge to a project we’ve got here,” he said.

“Money’s always a concern—it’s a struggling thing,” he said. Although the returns on recording projects are not usually great, Al said it’s “a passion for creating” that drives him. “I like sharing my knowledge,” he said.

Right now the studio is outfitted with an ADAT HD24 for the actual tracking, and the music is dumped into a computer running Adobe Audition for automated mixes.

“Everything is gated and compressed at the front end, which makes clean up easier,” Al added.

In addition, the studio just acquired a Tascam ATR-60 analog tape machine, which is used during the mastering phase to add what Al calls “presence and depth” to the computer mixes. Basically it gives the music a vintage ’70s or ’80s sound, he said.

The studio’s chief sound engineer, James Sullivan, has been “monumental,” Al said, both in terms of choosing equipment and knowing how to make the sounds work the way the musicians want them to.

Al will be judging a battle-of-the-bands contest this weekend as a way to help increase the exposure of the studio. “Basically what builds a great studio is reputation,” he said. Roy’s Rehearsal Studio is sponsoring the contest, and Roy is friends with James Byler, a local promoter who first introduced me to Al. I’ll probably write more about James later on.

Pleased to meet you.

Seattle is a city that gives itself a lot of credit for its music scene. It nurtured the careers of Quincy Jones and Ray Charles. Jimi Hendrix grew up here, and even though Kurt Cobain was from Aberdeen, people all over the world still associate Nirvana and the grunge music of the ’90s with Seattle. Kenny G attended the University of Washington (he majored in accounting), and in our decade Seattle has become an important center for a new genre, indie.

My name is Milo Anderson. I live in Seattle too, and in this blog I hope to give you, the reader, some news and information on some of the important people and places in Seattle’s music industry, told from the point of view of a cynical underdog.

I am a musician who moved here four years ago from Alaska to seek my fortune. I was a music theory and composition major in college before I switched to journalism, and in fact this blog will satisfy a major assignment for one of my reporting classes in this, my last quarter at the UW.

In addition to attending classes full-time, I also play in several bands here in Seattle–you can find their Myspace pages at www.myspace.com/americannight and www.myspace.com/whitehelicopter–and this has put me in touch with a multitude of characters. I have met many other musicians, sound engineers, nightclub owners and bouncers, intellectual property lawyers, agents and people from record companies.

This blog will provide an inside look at the people who make things happen in the music industry here–and the people who are all talk.  I hope this information will be useful to other musicians who, like me, are trying to find success here, but I also hope it will interest music fans who want to know more about how, and why, music is made.