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Archive for April, 2006
Artwork, duplication and printing, pressing and distribution deals, press agents and pluggers, download and filesharing websites, merchandising, make your own video.
If you’re anti-establishment or if you can’t find the right label to release your music, there is always the option to do it all yourself. This can work well if your music is part of a scene; some scenes are based on the DIY ethic and have a good support network (eg. art punk and hardcore). Sometimes the DIY approach can be a good way to start and lead to label interest later on. Basically you will have to do everything that a record company does so it will mean lots of hard work. The advantage is that you won’t get ripped off by a multi-national corporation!
If you’re going to DIY, a website is absolutely essential (see HOW TO GET STARTED) to promote and sell your music and maintain contact with fans.
I have already covered some aspects of DIY; things like setting up your own event with like-minded bands and printing stickers (see HOW TO PERFORM LIVE) can help to get a scene going and get your name around.
Assuming you have a good quality recording ready to go, the next thing you need is some artwork for your cd cover. You can easily do this yourself with software like photoshop or ask an artistic friend to help. If you have money to spend there are graphics companies who will do artwork for you; if they like your music they may do you a cheap deal. remember that complicated pull-out pages are going to cost you more to print so try to keep it simple.
When your recording and artwork are finished, you have 3 options. The first is to do the duplication and printing of the cd’s and covers yourself at home on a computer; this is by far the cheapest method but will look the least professional. The second option is to pay for duplication and printing; some small studios have facilities to do this for you or there are designated duplication companies. The cost is likely to be in the region of £500-£1000 for 1000 cd’s and covers.
The third option involves getting a pressing and distribution deal with a distribution company. Independent labels use distribution companies to get their records into the shops; they have a network of independent record shops who they regularly provide stock to. A pressing and distribution deal means that the distribution company will pay to duplicate your cd and print the artwork and then take a percentage of the sale price to recoup their costs. If you have already duplicated the cd yourself you can just get a distribution deal. However, the distribution company is more likely to work hard to get your cd in the shops if they have expenses to recoup. Check out the covers of your favourite indie bands to find distibution companies to approach or ask in your local indie record shop.
All record companies use press agents and pluggers to get their releases in the press and on the radio; majors tend to have in-house press and plugging departments whereas indie labels often use independent press and pluggers. A press agent can charge from around £2000 per month for their services but as with most aspects of the business, they are likely to do favours or at least reduce their fee if they like you; if a press agent thinks you’re likely to succeed they’ll help you at the start on the understanding that you’ll pay them properly in the future if your career takes off. The same can be said of pluggers. Both are pretty indispensible; reviews of your release and gigs and radio play will help to sell your music. There is no set way to find a press agent or plugger; try asking other up and coming bands to introduce you to theirs. You can try doing your own press; if you have a good telephone manner you may be able to get music magazines to review your single or album. If you can’t get a plugger, approach independent radio stations (like XFM in london) who regularly play new and unsigned bands. Radio stations now tend to playlist tracks up to 5 weeks in advance of their release, so start working on this as early as possible.
There are other ways to sell your music; you can sell physical cd’s or downloads direct from your website or contact download and filesharing sites. These often offer a deal whereby you pay a small fee to put your track on the site and then you receive money every time someone downloads your track. This has proved to be so popular that some record companies are now offering download only deals. Some sites will count towards chart placings so it’s now possible to get in the charts without having a cd in the shops at all. If you’re using peer to peer sites where downloads are free, it’s a good idea to make a couple of tracks available to generate interest in your music, then sell additional tracks or whole albums through your website.
Another good source of income for DIY bands is merchandising (see HOW TO PERFORM LIVE). As well as selling t shirts, badges, posters etc at gigs, sell them through your website. This is even more important if you’re putting your music on a free peer to peer website where you won’t make money from downloads, but you will be getting your name known and creating a demand for other products.
If you’re taking the DIY route, it’s helpful if you can make your own video. Again, this is now easily achievable on a small budget if you have a digital video camera and software like imovie. Alternatively, try to find students doing video courses who will be able to use college equipment and edit suites. An interesting location will help to make a cheap video look classy; if you can’t afford lighting equipment, shoot it outside in daylight for more professional-looking results. Try shooting several takes of the whole song so you can keep editing to a minimum. TV stations like MTV2 sometimes play videos by unknown bands provided your track is being released and you have some press; it helps if you can give the video in person to someone who works there and talk up your band. If you can’t, send it in with press cuttings, a biog and info on the band, and details of your release.
Get a record or publishing deal, A&R men, cliches about A&R men, send a demo, invite an A&R man to a gig, put on a showcase, record companies; majors and independents, publishing companies, PRS.
Ah! The elusive deal! Yet again, there is no guaranteed way to get a record or publishing deal, although if you’re genuinely really good at what you do, you put the work in and persevere, there’s a good chance you’ll get some kind of deal eventually. When it comes to getting signed and becoming successful, timing is everything. Unfortunately being in the right place at the right time happens mostly by chance but you can at least maximise your chances by doing everything you can.
The first thing you have to do is to attract the attention of some A&R men; all publishing and record companies have A&R departments… the initials stand for artists and repertoire and an A&R man is someone who scouts for bands at gigs, finds bands he/she thinks would be good to sign and puts the case for signing to the label. Then they become your liason at the company; at the record company this means overseeing decisions on what songs to record, when to release them and how much money to allocate to promoting your release with press, plugging and touring. Your publishing A&R man can help to push your songs for tv and movie soundtracks and advertising. Unfortunately, at major record companies A&R staff tend not to keep their jobs for a long time so you can find yourself signed to a label where the A&R that signed you has left and there’s no-one to fight your corner.
There are lots of cliches about A&R men; some say you can spot them at gigs because they always carry a shoulder bag and coat (they don’t use the cloakroom so they can make a quick getaway if they hate you), they never applaud and always drink expensive bottled lager! Others say A&R men were all bullied at school and are exacting revenge by making everyone suck up to them! They notoriously won’t say they like you unless someone else does first; there’s even a joke about that… how many A&R men does it take to change a lightbulb?… I don’t know, what do you think? Whatever the truth is, you need them on your side to get a deal. Most A&R have seen hundreds of bands and are consequently fairly critical. They have a mental checklist when they see you play live; do you have strong songs? Can you sing/play/perform well? Are you contemporary/do you fit into a current scene or pigeonhole? Do you have X factor (sex appeal, star quality, massive charisma etc)? And above all… will your music sell? If the answer to at least 4 out of 5 of these questions is yes, then you’re in with a chance, especially if it’s the latter three!
When trying to impress A&R, there are three lines of attack; play them your demo, invite them to a gig or do a showcase. You can send a demo in the post or try and give it to someone personally if you meet them at a gig (try and get a contact number or email so you can chase them up) or preferably, get someone else to give it to them, eg a promoter… they’re more likely to take it seriously if someone else is pushing you. When A&R men listen to your demo they may only listen to the first 30 seconds before chucking it in the bin so try and make sure the first track on your demo does something exciting within this time to make them listen to the rest of it!
Assuming they like your demo, you can invite an A&R man to a gig. Bear in mind that if they see you play first on at a dodgy venue to three men and a dog you aren’t likely to impress. Getting a happening vibe going is crucial to how they will perceive you; they might try and tell you different, saying they just want to hear the live sound and don’t worry about how many people are there etc… DON’T LISTEN TO THIS! It will matter so make sure you pull all the stops out and make it a happening gig.
If you can’t guarantee that a gig will be exciting enough to convince them, another option is to put on a showcase. This involves hiring a decent rehearsal studio with a good pa and inviting A&R men to see you play a few songs in this more controlled environment. You can invite them to come one at a time by appointment or make the showcase into a small intimate gig by inviting a few friends. Keep in mind the fact that A&R don’t like to be the first to commit themselves, invite anyone else in the industry who already likes you, eg. promoters, journalists who have reviewed you favourably etc.
There are two types of record companies; majors and independents. Both have advantages and disadvantages that if you’re lucky enough to be in position to choose between them, need to be considered.
Majors have a huge international machine at their disposal including their own press, marketing and plugging departments so if they’re really into you they can get maximum exposure for your music. The downside is that this comes at a price! A major record company is likely to offer a 5-7 album deal; they will pay you an advance (usually ranging from £50,000 to £250,000 for an unknown band) for the first album. When your record begins to sell, your share of the royalties will be somewhere in the region of 15-18%, out of which you have to pay back the advance plus any other costs like tour support and recording costs. Only when the advance is fully recouped do you start to see any income. When your second album is ready, the major will have an ‘option’ to release it on the condition that they give you another advance, The size of which could be more or less than the first one depending on how much you recouped the first time around. Major record companies used to give a band time to develop over 2 or 3 albums but now they’re likely to drop you if the first album is unsuccessful.
It’s an unfortunate fact that major corporations need a ‘tax loss’ from time to time so bizarrely it’s sometimes in their interest for you to fail… hence the numerous stories of albums being made and insufficient copies being pressed or releases not being promoted with any marketing or tour support. The only precautions you can take against this situation are blind faith, a good manager and an experienced lawyer!
Independent labels are generally what they sound like; privately owned small companies usually started by an individual who takes a hands-on approach to finding and signing music they like. However, during the last 20 years, major corporations have bought some indie companies, financing them whilst allowing them a degree of independence so they can maintain their credible status. These companies are known as subsidiaries. An indie deal can be for anything from one single/ep to 5-7 albums. They are likely to offer no advance at all or a much smaller one than a major, eg between £10,000 and £100,000. They will still usually pay recording costs and allocate a budget for paying an independent press agent, radio plugger and some tour support. On the plus side, once your record begins to sell there is less of a debt to recoup and they will pay royalties at a higher rate, sometimes as much as 50%. On the negative side, an independent label will have to make licensing agreements with small labels in other countries in order to release your music abroad so you aren’t guaranteed international exposure when you first sign the deal. Also an indie can’t usually afford quite as much money for marketing and tour support as a major so it might take longer to raise your profile.
At some point you will also need a publishing deal. Publishing companies control the rights to the copyright of any material you write while you are signed to them and they will continue to control those rights for a term of up to around 25 years after you cease to be signed to them. (see HOW TO GET STARTED to see how to divide publishing splits between band members)
Publishers basically collect any royalties you are owed from pressing of records/cds (mechanical royalties), public performance, radio broadcast and cablecast (performance royalties), sale of printed music, use of music on film or tv (synchronisation royalties), use of music in theatre and ballet (grand right royalties), ringtones and downloads. Then they will take a percentage of these royalties and pass the rest on to you. The usual rate is in the region of 65-80% to the artist, 20-35% to the publisher… the term and the rate depend on the contract you negotiate with them. Some publishers act purely as administrators, passively collecting royalties. A good publisher can assist your career by to developing your band, helping you to get a record deal if you haven’t got one already and by seeking out licensing opportunities eg. getting your music on film or games soundtracks.
Like record companies, publishing companies can also give advances and sign you for several album’s worth of material. After the first advance, the next one will be subject to you having fulfilled the minimum comittment, which means getting your first album released on a major (or established indie) label. The advances are again recoupable so must be paid back from your earnings before you receive any royalties.
You can sign a publishing deal before or after a record deal; if you sign before the record deal you are likely to be offered a smaller advance (around £10,000 to £50,000) but you can use the advance to help develop your band eg. buy better equipment, pay for rehearsals or tour support for gigs. The fact that you are signed by the publishing company should help to raise your profile in the industry and gain you a better record deal. Your publisher may even help you to find the right record company. If you sign the publishing deal after your record deal, the advance is likely to be larger because the publisher has some guarantee that you will get your music released and generate them some income. If it’s a good record deal then the sky’s the limit as far as your publishing advance goes… anything from £100,000 to £1000,000 is possible!
Just when you thought you’d got your head round all this information, there’s one other thing you need to know about; collecting societies like the PRS (performing right society) work in conjunction with publishing companies to administer the distribution of royalties. As a songwriter it’s in your interest to join the PRS who are responsible for collecting royalties from public performance of your music ie. gigs, pubs, clubs, shops, restaurants, radio and tv. If you have a publishing deal, 50% of this income will come direct to you from the PRS and the other 50% will go to your publisher who will deduct their percentage and recoup any outstanding advance from your share.
Managers; get a manager, sign a management contract, manage yourself, get a music lawyer, get an accountant.
Managers are a strange breed of person; I guess you have to be a bit strange to want to look after a bunch of adults and get none of the glory for yourself! It’s often been said that managing a band is like being a parent… only worse! Still, getting a good manager is important if you’re serious about making a career out of your music. These days, many record companies are only interested in signing acts that already have management. A good manager will save them a lot of work by liasing between the band and the record company, lawyer, press, tour managers, accountants etc. There are different styles of management from highly visible, hands on managers who shape the artist’s career, often taking on completely unknown acts and grooming them for sucess, then planning every move like a military campaign for world domination. Others adopt more of an administrative role and leave all the creative decisions to the artist, acting more as liason and as an enabler of ideas.
Once again, there are no set rules on how to get a manager or on what qualifications/experience they should have. Anything can work from a friend of the band who develops alongside them to a big company. A manager can be successful with one act and fail completely with another. A good guideline with bigger management companies is; even if they have successful acts, how far down the pecking order will you be? Where are you on their list of priorities and will they have enough time to devote to your career? The best way to get a manager is by the elusive word of mouth technique… try asking a producer, lawyer or promoter to get a manager interested in you. If you can’t find an established manager, consider asking a friend who is into your music, enthusiastic and who has some basic business knowledge.
Most managers will want you to sign a management contract agreeing that they will receive 20% of your earnings. Some have been known to get as much as 40 or 50% depending on how indispensible they are. Make sure you don’t sign anything without legal advice, and if a manager is interested in you, they should be prepared to do something for you before you sign as a taster of what they’re capable of.
The chances are you won’t be able to find a manager straight away; until you do you’ll have to manage yourself; some acts have found that this works perfectly well and prefer not to get one even when they are offered management. The advantage is that you won’t have to give away 20% of your income but the disadvantage is that you’ll have to organise everything yourself. Your band will have to agree to you making decisions and if there’s a dispute, there’s no objective outsider to put the options to the band. Basically you’ll be adding to your stress levels and workload which may not be conducive to creativity!
Whether you have a manager or are managing yourself, you’ll need to get a music lawyer to represent your interests and negotiate contracts. Some self-managed bands have been able to do so because their lawyer is willing to be very hands-on. Some lawyers will even try to help you get a deal if they like your music by recommending you to record companies they have established a relationship with through other clients. Your lawyer will explain what the legal jargon in your contracts means and try to negotiate changes on your behalf. They can also help you draw up a band agreement between yourselves. Remember though that they charge from around £200 per hour upwards, so don’t waste consultation time or phone calls with your lawyer on trivialities or you’ll end up broke! Having said that, don’t try and cut corners by getting a normal solicitor to negotiate your contracts; music related contracts are a specialised field and you need a lawyer who is experienced in the music business. Negotiating a record or publishing deal can be a lengthy process and is likely to cost a minimum of £2000, but this is money well spent if it saves you from trying to get out of an unfair contract in the future.
As soon as you have any significant income from your music, you will also need to get an accountant with experience in the music business; whether you have management or not, you are responsible for your finances as far as the inland revenue is concerned. In fact, in a band situation, your are all individually liable for any debts or unpaid taxes. Unless you are a solo artist, you will need to set up a partnership and get a joint bank account; all things your accountant can andministrate and advise you on.
Home recording, software, choosing a studio/engineer, find a producer, production deals, choose which tracks, preparing for the studio, in the recording studio, mastering.
When you want to record your music it’s worth considering a few points. Firstly, whether you’re going to record a demo or something good enough to release, remember that you will get much better results if you’ve already performed the material live. Lots of people make the mistake of recording first and then discover that the arrangement can be improved upon after gigging it a few times, or that a song you thought was amazing isn’t working live. Acts often try to record songs before they’ve put the live band together and then find that the musicians they are using live are fine-honing their parts and could have done a better job in the studio.
The next thing you need to consider is whether to go into a proper recording studio or to do some home recording, or indeed, a combination of both. With current computer technology, its possible to get good results at home as long as you have professional standard microphones (shure sm57 and sm58 mics are a good place to start), decent amps and a good mixer (the price of an adequate mixer eg. a soundcraft spirit starts at around £200).
Software like logic, pro-tools and cubase have already become industry standards and are now used in most studios; if you’re going to invest in software to record at home it’s a good idea to get logic or pro-tools as you’ll be able to work on stuff at home that you recorded in a studio and vice versa. If you want to record live drums you probably need to find a recording studio with a ‘live’ room that has good acoustics so you can get some ambient drum sounds. Then if you’re on a tight budget, do the rest of your track laying and mixing at home. The advantage of going to a recording studio is that as well as a live room, they will have a greater selection of professional microphones and some ‘outboard’ gear such as vintage effects units which can help to get more interesting sounds.
When choosing a studio and engineer, word of mouth is the best way to find out whether they’d be the right ones for you. If you don’t know anyone who can recommend a place, most studios and engineers will be able to play you a showreel of material they’ve recorded to give you an idea of what they’re capable of. Cheaper recording studios will charge between £100 and £500 per day which usually includes the services of an engineer. You’ll need a minimum of 2 days to record and mix 2 or 3 songs to a good standard.
If you’re really broke or on a tight budget, look in your area for colleges that teach studio engineering; they will often have a fully equipped studio and students that need bands to practice recording with. You may not get releasable results but you should get a reasonable demo at least.
Another option is to try and find a producer to record your stuff. The difference between a producer and an engineer can be a bit of a grey area; some people call themselves producers when really they are just good engineers, and some engineers are able to make good suggestions for production. The main distinction should be that an engineer is a technician who will enable you to get the sounds you want whereas a producer will have an overall direction and style in mind and may make changes to arrangements and parts of a song. Producers are expensive but if you can find one that likes your stuff, they may be prepared to work for nothing provided they are re-imbursed should their recording make you any money in the future. If you are working with a producer they will probably have a preferred studio where they are familiar with the engineer and equipment. Producers can be instrumental in getting you a record deal; many have established relationships with record companies and can introduce you to an appropriate label.
Some producers, recording studios and management companies offer production deals where they will work with you for free provided that you sign some sort of contract with them, guaranteeing them a share of your future earnings and some rights to your recordings. They can help to promote your band and get your music to the right people BUT be careful and never sign anything without legal advice as this type of deal can sometimes have hidden penalties.
Assuming you’re ready to record, the next thing to do is to choose which tracks will best represent you on a demo, or which songs would be best to release. A general guideline is to attempt to record 2 or 3 songs in one session; 2 should be your catchiest songs which are typical of your style and that go down well live. The 3rd should provide a degree of contrast, eg. a ballad or slower song to show your diversity. Even if you want to record a whole album, it’s best to start with 2 or 3 songs; you’ll learn so much from the first session that you’ll be really on the case next time.
The more time you spend preparing for the studio, the less time, money and patience you’ll waste when you get there. Spend a couple of rehearsals trying different arrangements and working out parts for things like guitar overdubs and vocal harmonies. Take as many different instruments and amps with you to the session as possible so you have lots of flexibility when you’re getting sounds. Take spares of everything with you so you don’t have to waste half your recording time going to a music shop to get stuff during the session. Try and write down all your ideas for a track including how you want the overall sound to be and what parts you want to put on it. Take cd’s of other bands that have sounds you like to the studio for comparison. Write out the lyrics for each track; this will be useful if you need to ‘comp’ the vocal (edit several takes into one rather then do a whole live take). Invite the engineer or producer who is going to be working with you to a rehearsal so they’re familiar with your live sound before they record you.
When you’re actually in the recording studio, allocate your time in advance; for example, if you have 2 days for 3 songs, allow half a day for drums, half for bass and guitars, half for extras and vocals and half for mixing. Stick to this like glue, otherwise you can end up spending a whole day perfecting a guitar solo and run out of time! Most things can be fixed in the mix if you’re using logic or pro-tools and it’s amazing how insignificant a tiny mistake can seem when all the parts are completed. In other words, don’t sacrifice the whole for the sake of a minor detail. If your band is tight enough, try and record bass and drums at the same time so you get a bit of a vibe on the recording. Generally you’ll notice there’s a difference between the take with the vibe and the one that’s technically perfect but has no vibe.
Double-tracking the guitars (where you record the same part twice) can help to make a big sound; double tracking vocals will smooth out the tone and help with tuning imperfections. If you’re a guitar band, try not to load up your song with too many obvious parts that can’t be replicated live so people aren’t disappointed when they see you after hearing the recording. Finally, try and avoid the tendancy to demand ‘more me’ in the mix; listen to the overall sound rather than just your own part or you’ll end up confusing the engineer, fighting with your band and coming away with a bad mix!
If you’re intending to release your recording yourself, you’ll first need to get it mastered. Mastering is basically applying equalisation and compression to the finished stereo mix, to make the overall level equivalent to other released cd’s. It irons out any odd frequencies and make the whole thing sound louder and clearer. Entire studios and engineers are dedicated to the process of mastering and you can spend lots of time and money on it if you’re a perfectionist. However, there is now affordable mastering software available so you can get passable results at the recording studio or at home. If you’re doing the mastering yourself or at the end of a studio session rather than at a designated mastering studio, always use a favourite or appropriate cd as a comparison to check that your eq is well balanced.
Form a band, advertising, auditioning, poaching a musician, session musicians, band agreements, decide publishing splits, become a dj/mc/dance act, choose a name, write songs, rehearse, get a website, get some photos.
As with practically every aspect of the music business, there are actually no rules whatsoever; anything can happen in any way, shape or form and absolutely nothing can guarantee success or ensure failure. however, there are general guidelines and tried and tested methods which can maximise your chances and help you to avoid mistakes. The main thing to remember is don’t s**t on people on the way up coz you might need them on your way back down
The archetypical band consists of a bunch of mates who met at school or university and decided to form a band. This has its advantages in that there is likely to be a strong bond of trust between the members which will help to withstand any pressures later on; it’s almost more important that you like the people you work with than all having identical musical tastes as musical differences can be resolved or compromised on if you trust and like each other.
Not everyone is lucky enough to find themselves at school/uni with people able or willing to collaborate, but luckily there are other ways of finding people to work with. Try asking around at gigs, clubs and pubs, and tell all your mates to spread the word that you’re looking for people. Many successful bands have found members by advertising in the press (nme, kerrang, loot and the stage are the usual ones to try) or on rehearsal studio noticeboards. This can be disheartening but amusing at the same time; you may have to audition up to 50 people to find one with exactly the qualities you are looking for but at least you’ll meet a good cross-section of the musicians available in your area and this may prove useful later on… don’t forget it’s a small world and you never know who someone might be in a couple of years! The best approach with auditioning is to save time and expense by meeting up and playing each other some music (your own or your favourite bands). Try and find out if there’s enough common ground or chemistry to make it worth trying out in a rehearsal room.
Another option is to try and poach a musician from another band; if you’re at a gig and you see a musician playing who you think would be perfect, ask them if they’d be interested but be subtle! Some musicians and bands have a policy of being faithful to one project at a time; others are more flexible and prefer to play with as many people as possible. The latter type may well be session musicians and may require payment (rates can vary from around £50 a gig to hundreds) but some session musicians will play in your band if they like it on the understanding that you’ll pay them if you start to make money in the future.
When you’ve got your band together it’s a good idea to have a discussion about responsibilities, rights and finances very early on. It may seem premature but it’s best to get everything straight from the start so you can avoid arguments down the line. if the band takes off its a good idea to have a band agreement drawn up by a lawyer but initially you should have a verbal agreement covering things like; who owns the band name in the event of a split? Who is going to pay for rehearsals, equipment etc? How will you split the publishing money if and when you get a publishing deal? Who makes the decisions? Is it a democracy or does someone have the final say? Which musicians are full band members who will sign any future record deal and which are session musicians who will be on a wage rather than a split of advances and royalties?
Arguments about publishing splits have torn numerous bands apart; drummers and bass players often feel hard done by because the traditional way of dividing publishing money is 50% for the melody and 50% for the lyrics. This seems extremely unfair in a modern band set-up where everyone in the band contributes to the finished song and can result in members losing interest and the incentive to give their best. A good general guideline that many bands follow is to give every essential permanent non-writing band member a basic percentage (10-15% is usual) which will cover any small suggestions or arrangement ideas and then divide half the remainder amongst whoever wrote the music and half for the vocal parts.
If you’re trying to become an mc, dj or dance act, a huge record collection is essential consisting of both contemporary material so you’re up to date with the most recent styles, beats and production tricks, and obscure rare stuff to use as a source of inspiration. Once you’ve got your rhymes down or your mixing skills up to scratch the most important thing is to make contact with your local dance/club scene. Check out independant record shops where local dj’s source their material, look out for new clubs and open mike nights. Mc’s need to find dj/producers to work with to help with original backing tracks. Dj’s and dance acts can often work alone but will sometimes need mc’s, musicians and or dancers to collaborate with or to do live p.a.’s. These can all be found in similar ways to band members.. to find dancers, try putting ads up in dance studios.
When you’ve got your project together, obviously you need to choose a name. Sometimes this can happen spontaneously and naturally with everyone agreeing instantly that it’s the right name. If you’re having trouble you’re probably thinking too hard… unless it’s truly dreadful, most names become less important once people start to hear your music. Often the first decent idea is the best. It can be helpful to stylise the name into a logo or use a particular typeface to help give you an identity. If you want to check your name isn’t being used by someone else, you can go to www.bandreg.com to see if it’s been registered, or do an internet search to see if any band websites come up.
There are no set rules on how to write songs, a multitude of different approaches can get good results. Some bands find it easiest to write together in a rehearsal room by jamming out riffs and chord sequences; others prefer to work out the majority of a song before rehearsing with the band. It’s practically impossible to make every part of a song completely original as we all have to work with the same 12 note scale. The originality comes more from the arrangement, style, attitude, delivery and lyrical content.
Some writers, especially dance acts, often sample whole parts from other recordings and place them in a new context; others are more subliminally influenced by what they hear or copy the flavour or arrangement of someone else’s song. If you do sample another artist’s work, bear in mind that you will have to get ‘clearance’ for the sample before you can release your song; this can be expensive and cost thousands so make sure it’s worth it! Sometimes you may unintentionally rip off another song; many acts have been sued for royalties by artists claiming they have been plaguerised. The general rule is if a sequence of 8 notes or more is identical to someone else’s, it’s a rip off. Anything less can be said to be co-incidental. If you’ve never tried to write a song before, a good place to start is to examine one of your favourite songs by another artist. Notice how many different parts there are, how many bars to each section and the structure of the song eg. intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, middle 8, chorus. Then use this structure with your own riffs and chord sequences.
When you’re ready to rehearse, you need to find a suitable rehearsal studio. These can range in price from £5 per hour to £100 per day ‘lock out’ for a top of the range studio. Most of the cheaper studios expect you to book 4 hours at a time and the price includes the vocal p.a. and mics but no drum kit or amps. Some smaller studios do ‘all in’ deals where backline of a kit, 1 bass amp and 1 guitar amp is included. Make sure you know in advance what to take so you don’t end up having to hire backline on the day. Some rehearsal studios have storage cages to let (minimum £15 per week) so you can keep all your gear on the premises and save hassle.
If your band is very commited and you all have the time to rehearse lots, it’s worth looking around for a small studio or industrial unit where you can have your own room permanently and perhaps share it with one other band eg. one of you has weekdays, the other has evenings and weekends. This can be quite expensive but can be worth it if you’d be spending lots at a rehearsal room. Look in nme, loot, yellow pages and music shops to find rehearsal studios in your area. Lots of bands treat rehearsals as a social occaision involving beer etc; while it can be productive to rehearse in a relaxed atmosphere and have a laugh, try and spend the majority of the time actually playing.. you can always go for a drink together afterwards to discuss your social lives!! You can accelerate your progress by recording rehearsals on a mini-disk, lap-top or 4-track and giving copies to the band or getting together to listen to and discuss the results. Generally speaking, it’s a good idea to try and cultivate a good social relationship with your band; if you get somewhere you’re going to be spending a lot of time together so it helps to be friends!
It’s practically essential these days to get a website up and running as soon as possible. If you can’t do it yourself, try and find a friend who can do it free or cheaply; you can always improve and add to your site in the future if you start to get some income from your music. Make sure you have a mailing list section so you can notify fans and friends of forthcoming gigs, include lots of information about your band and photos if possible. Links to other sites relevant to your band are useful, eg. to on line reviews and gig promoter’s websites. A forum where fans can discuss your music is a good idea, as is some way of users being able to hear a small piece of your music or download a song. You can also sell t shirts, cd’s, badges etc through your website; if you want to do this you’ll need to figure out a payment method via credit/debit card or get a po box… don’t put your own address and phone number on the site!
At some point you’ll need to get some photos of you or your band to put on your website and/or to send with your cd if you’re trying to get industry interest. While it’s not essential to pay loads for a top photographer, they do need to be of reasonably good quality or else they’ll diminish rather than enhance your chances. You can get good results with a digital camera; try getting a friend to take some shots of you live on stage or in a cool outdoor location. If you don’t have a friend with a good eye, try contacting students on art or photography courses who will do photos free or cheaply if they need material for their portfolio.
When it comes to your image, the golden rule is; never wear anything on stage or for a photo shoot that you wouldn’t wear walking down the street or when you go out to a club. In other words, natural is best unless of course it’s part of your whole concept like slipknot! Finally, whether you’re a musician, dj, mc or dance act, one of the most essential things is… don’t be lazy! it’s a very tough competetive business and if you’re determined to make it you need to practice your craft as much as you can and if possible make sure you have good reliable equipment and instruments.
Fiona… perfecting her bowstrokes!
When you’re watching Top of the Pops and one of the main acts appears with a glamorous, blonde, all-girl string section in the background, the chances are that one of them will be Fiona Brice. Fiona is an orchestral arranger and violinist, who works mostly for pop, rock and indie bands and also does occasional theatre work. She’s played for loads of famous bands including Sugarbabes, Ronan Keating, Kanye West, Enya, Sophie Ellis Bexter, Boy George, Spiritualised, Harry Connick Jnr, Westlife, Simply Red, Russell Watson, and Gorillaz at the Brits 2006… the list is endless! She also does string arrangements for artists in the recording studio and has recently worked on albums with Placebo and Ed Harcourt.
SISSY: What training did you do?
FIONA: Initially I did all the grades up to grade 8 on violin and piano and I did theory as well. Then I did music A level and from the age of about 10, I always played in local orchestras at a Saturday school. I went on from school to do a Music and German degree at King’s College, London in conjunction with the Royal Academy of Music, for three years.
SISSY: How did you go about finding work?
FIONA: Well I’d always written music for the piano ever since I was a child, and when I was at college I was a bit disillusioned with the course I was doing; it was a composition course predominantly with performance aspects as well, but the teachers didn’t seem to be interested in you doing original music outside of their classical curriculum. Then just because I was in London, I met a load of different, interesting people outside university and that was how I started playing for bands.
It almost happened by chance; a friend of mine had a boyfriend who was in a band and asked me to play violin for him. It was a complete change from the classical world I was used to; playing rock music!
SISSY: Did you join any type of agency to get session work?
FIONA: When I graduated I just needed to earn money and I’d never really understood how I could earn a living through music, so for a while I just did temporary office work and played gigs with friends in the evenings. Finally I couldn’t handle that anymore so I took a bit of a leap; got a loan and started really concentrating on trying to work as a musician. Then I sent CV’s, photos and CD’s to anyone in the music business that I could think of who might get me work playing violin. Luckily I got taken on by someone I still work for… it’s a company called Wired Strings run by Rosie Danvers who’s a cellist. She puts together or ‘fixes’ string sections for all the TV shows like Top of the Pops and CDUK. I also occasionally do work through an agency called Session Connection… in fact I probably get TV and touring work through about 5 different people.
SISSY: How can someone starting out find these agencies and get work?
FIONA: The best place is to look on the internet. A lot of the agents, like Session Connection for example, operate in a similar way to modelling agencies; they only open their books once a year for new people so you have to send your details in at the right time.It depends on what you play as to whether they take you on; if it’s a more unusual instrument or something they need a lot of you’re more likely to get taken on, for example there’s not many viola players around. If you’re a male guitarist it’s hard to get on someone’s books because there’s so many of them but if you’re a female harpist… you might be the only one and you may be able to find a niche!
SISSY: Can you tell us about a typical session on Top of the Pops or CDUK?
FIONA: The first time you do it, it seems really fun and glamorous but after you’ve done it a few times, the novelty wears off a bit! You usually get the booking about 4 or 5 days before the shoot and you get sent a CD; you never get sent sheet music even though we can all read it and it would make things easier! You have to pick out your part by ear. Even though you’ll probably be miming on the day, as a string player you have to co-ordinate all the bowing with the other players so it looks right on camera, so you do have to actually learn it properly.
If you’re doing CDUK it’s a really early start; you get to the studios at about 8 in the morning, then you do a camera rehearsal, which takes about 15-20 minutes. Then there’s 4 or 5 hours to wait around until you’re actually on camera. The main artist we’re playing for will generally be there for the rehearsal unless they’re someone really big and they’re too busy doing interviews or something. The purpose of the camera rehearsal is to get all the shots lined up so they know who is doing what at each point of the song. When you turn up, you’re expected to look all glamorous even though it’s early in the morning but before the take you have to do your hair and make-up and change into whatever clothes they’ve asked you to wear… basically it’s hours of preparation and waiting around followed by the actual shoot which is 3 minutes of intense activity, then you go home!
Top of the Pops is similar, except sometimes the camera rehearsal is the day before the shoot, which is ok because you get paid for two days!
SISSY: Do you always mime for these TV programmes or do you sometimes play live?
FIONA: It’s usually a mime although I have done it live as well. I’ve done a lot of work with Kanye West recently and he insisted on us playing live… we’d learnt the part anyway so we may as well! It’s just more hassle for the soundmen in the studio and they generally prefer not to do it. It does give it more of an edge if it’s live because you want to perform well; that’s what you’ve been trained to do so you feel better about it. When you’re miming you don’t really feel like you’ve done a gig.
SISSY: Do you know all the other session string players in London from working on the same jobs?
FIONA: I do now. There are a lot of string players in London because there’s quite a lot of work but you do tend to see the same faces over and over again. With the TV work, there’s a pool of about 20 or 25 people I would expect to see over the year, plus the odd new face here and there.
SISSY: Is the session work well paid?
FIONA: It’s not a good as people think! For an appearance on Top of the Pops or CDUK you might get around £160. And although that’s for a 3 minute performance, if you bear in mind that you have to be there for about 7 hours of the day it doesn’t work out as that much per hour. People might think that you must be rich because you’re on television but it doesn’t work like that.
SISSY: Can you tell us about your touring jobs?
FIONA: I’ve toured with lots of indie bands, which usually means getting in a splitter van and travelling around on a really low budget. But I’ve also done some big tours, like the Sugarbabes, and I’ve just finished doing a three-month tour with Simply Red, which is the other end of the spectrum with a really big budget.
SISSY: Can you tell us more about the Simply Red Tour? And have you got any gossip about Mick Hucknall?!
FIONA: He is a very good performer; charming onstage but not charming offstage! I can say that now because my contract’s finished! He has a bit of a reputation, which is fairly valid in my view! On the tour, we started off in the UK and Ireland doing arena size gigs, which were an average of 10,000 capacity. Then we went to Europe and did Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Hungary, The Czech Republic; it was quite a long tour and a bit tiring on the travel front, but loads of fun!
It was a really big band; it’s quite unusual to tour with a band that size. It was a 12-piece girl string section plus the band itself, which was about 9 or 10 people. So there were at least 20 of us on stage! Plus there was a huge entourage; we had 5 tour buses just for the band and entourage, and a whole convoy of lorries with the set, the stage and all the equipment.It was all brilliantly organised though. When I saw the schedules I couldn’t believe how someone had sorted out the logistics of a tour that big.
SISSY: Who are you playing for at the moment?
FIONA: I’m playing violin for Vashti Bunyan who’s a cult folk singer. She’s a really interesting woman with an amazing story: In 1968 she was a young singer/songwriter; she had songs written for her by the Rolling Stones; she was produced by Andrew Loog Oldham and she released a record which went nowhere. So she got very disillusioned with the whole thing because the style of music that was taking off was rock and roll, and she was writing fragile little songs. She made one album, but then she basically packed up and left to go travelling for the next 20 years in a caravan. She shunned the music industry completely because she wasn’t interested in it.
Then a few years ago, the master tapes of her original album were found in a cupboard at a record company and got re-released. There was a resurgence of interest in her and she’s just released a new album. I have done a few live gigs with her before, including the Barbican, and now we’re going to be doing some European shows. She’s got a cult following here and in Europe; apparently original copies of her first album sell for around £900… it’s so rare that I don’t think even she has a copy of it! I think it’s brilliant that she’s re-starting her career now, in her 50’s. She’s been through so much in her life that she doesn’t care about the bullshit; she’s just carried on doing her music through everything. And she’s a lovely person to work with.
SISSY: Are you currently working on any arrangements?
FIONA: I’m doing some string arrangements for a couple of bands, and I’m writing my own string quartet. It’s classical, but a bit more like film music because that’s what I’d like to do next; write for films.
SISSY: Who do you admire in the world of composing for films?
FIONA: Michael Nyman is a good composer who has crossed over to the medium of film scores brilliantly. I also admire the big names; John Williams, Danny Elfman.
SISSY: Can you tell us a bit more about composing and arranging… how you got started and who you’ve worked for?
FIONA: One of the things I learnt for my degree was how to read an entire orchestral score, and how to write for every instrument. I mainly write for strings because that’s what I play but I have written for brass on albums in the past and I can write for anything if necessary.I’ve recently worked on Placebo’s new album and done some tracks for Ed Harcourt. I’ve also just written some arrangements for the Feeling who are a new band on the scene, and I worked on Clearlake’s album… they’re signed to Domino Records.
SISSY: With pop, rock and indie bands, do you get string players in to record the parts or do you do it on keyboards with string samples?
FIONA: Mostly we get musicians in. With the Placebo album, I wrote string arrangements for 4 tracks and I had quite a lot of freedom in what I came up with. The band had to approve what I’d written so I did demos on computer using a programme called Sibelius, which is for classical scoring. Then I had to fix the players that I wanted to do the session and get them ready. We recorded it at a big studio called Angel studios in Islington. We had 18 or so players and I was conducting, as I don’t actually play on a session like that because I’d be wearing two hats; it’s best to concentrate on the overall thing. It basically involves being the musical director; it’s my responsibility to work with the producer to get the sound he wants in the allocated time. One of the tracks I worked on is going to be released as the European single, which is great!
SISSY: How do you get paid for working on an album? Do you get ‘points’ (a percentage from sales) or a fee?
FIONA: You’ve got to be super-famous to get points on the album. Again, it’s actually not very well paid compared to how much the band are going to earn out of it. For string arranging, you can get paid between £500 and £1500 per track depending on how much work you have to do. I know quite a few arrangers and the going rate seems to be going down lately! If you’re the musical director on a session you will get some royalties as well through MCPS but the players just get the musicians union rates which is £110 for a 3-hour recording session. If the track they play on is released as a single, they also get what’s called a buy-out fee of about £500. But if you think, the record might sell 2 million copies and the players only got a hundred quid, it does seem a bit unfair!
SISSY: I know it used to be essential to be in the Musician’s Union before you could do TV or recording work. Is that still the case?
FIONA: No, you don’t have to join but it can be worth it. They have improved over the last few years; I used to think they were a bit of a dinosaur and completely out of touch but recently I’ve found them quite useful. On jobs where I’m arranger and I have to fix the string section, I’m liable to the musicians for their fees so if the record company doesn’t pay me I could be in trouble. The MU gives me access to legal help to protect me in these situations. And they’ve got some good schemes like free equipment insurance.
SISSY: What are your favourite composers?
FIONA: On the classical side of things, my favourites are probably mostly modern composers like Bartok, Shostakovich, Lennox Berkeley as well as older classical composers like Mozart… my tastes aren’t particularly avant garde. Lots of film music nowadays is influenced by Bartok and Shostakovich.
SISSY: How do you start a composition?
FIONA: I don’t write in a particularly organised way. I might sit down at the piano and come up with an idea, then I’ll use the academic skills I’ve acquired to develop that idea. Sometimes it ends up being rubbish, sometimes not. When it’s good I get a really good feeling about it, it’s a very instinctive thing. If the idea is working, I write quite fast.
SISSY: Do you think that knowing lots of music theory can sometimes inhibit the creative process or the ability to improvise?
FIONA: When I was at college they always said you have to learn all the rules before you can break them and I did find that a bit limiting. While I was there, I stopped writing songs for 3 years because the skill involved in writing songs wasn’t valued at all; they only valued classical composition skills. I think that now, most people would recognise that writing a hit song is actually quite a difficult thing to do and is worth just as much as an art form.
SISSY: Which of the acts that you’ve played for have you enjoyed doing the most?
FIONA: I really enjoyed playing with Kanye West, because it was such an unusual combination of musical styles. I worked on a DVD for him called Live From Abbey Road which was just Kanye with a 17-piece string section. I was involved with the scoring for that as well and it was really exciting because it felt like we were doing something new.
SISSY: With the compositions you are writing now, how will you go about getting interest in your music? Is it very different to the process involved in pushing your music if you’re in a band?
FIONA: A lot of composers just write for the sake of it; they don’t try and push their stuff to get released or make money, they write because they need to write. So I started writing because I wanted to, but now I’m looking around for funding or some kind of Arts Council grant. It’s hard because not many people are interested in giving me money to write a string quartet. So what I’m going to do is, I have lots of friends who are very talented string players and I’ll get a quartet together to record the work. I’ll pay them out of my own pocket because I believe players should always get paid. Then I’ll take the recording and do almost the same thing a band would do; shop it around and see if I can get some interest or some funding for a bigger project. One thing I hope it will achieve is I’m looking for a manager at the moment; I’m at a level now where I need to do that for the writing and arranging side of things, not the session playing… if I had to give someone a percentage of my session fees I’d end up with nothing! And I’d like to aim for getting some film and TV work if possible.
SISSY: Are there many people who work as arrangers and musical directors?
FIONA: I know quite a few people who do what I do but we all have slightly different styles; in fact Ed Harcourt’s new album is a really good example of that because he used 4 or 5 different string arrangers on the album. I did 2 tracks and at first I thought there would be too many strings on the album but because we all have very distinct different styles of writing, you can hear the diversity. I should mention that the string-playing world is a very competitive world, it’s not easy and people will steal jobs and take your credit if they can, just like in any business, but I’d like to think there’s room for every one because we all have our own different styles.
SISSY: Do you think it’s true that there will always be a certain amount of work for string players because it’s less subject to the whims of what’s fashionable than other styles of music?
FIONA: There does always seem to be work around if you look for it. It can be very diverse things, like for example last year I was asked to write some incidental music for the stage production of Billy Elliot, and then I was back doing sessions on CDUK. Or I might get asked to arrange music for someone’s wedding… it’s a really weird range of work! One thing that isn’t so great is you often don’t get the budget to do exactly what you’d like to do. When you think back to the 60’s, most tracks were recorded with a big orchestra… there are loads of string players on things like the Beatles because that was the done thing. Now there’s a lot of cutting corners, like having less players and double-tracking them. You’ve got to be working for a really hot selling band to get the funding agreed for a big string section or orchestra.
SISSY: Has the internet and computer technology had any effect on the world of classical music?
FIONA: I think so, because people have access to so much more music now. There are things you only come across because you can hear it on the internet. For classical music, it’s meant that distribution costs are less so classical artists can sell CD’s over the internet and it’s more cost effective for them, especially as they don’t have big marketing machines behind them most of the time. There is some great software that’s helped with writing classical music; the music publishing programme Sibelius is brilliant because you write the music in a score, similar to using Word for writing letters. It produces scores to publisher standards and you can hear back what you’ve written. They’ve just improved the programme so now you can sync it up and listen to the score over a track you’re writing for. The orchestral samples it uses are a little limited, but at least you can hear what you’re doing, and print the finished scores. I think lots of schools are starting to use it now for GCSE and A level music. If I need to do anything more complicated, I use Logic or Pro-tools. Even Garageband is useful, because I can quickly hear what I’m doing and add reverb to the strings so it sounds better when I play it to someone.
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Fiona has to leave us at this point; she’s off to the gym to keep fit for her busy schedule. We wish her luck with her composition work; hopefully she’ll have something on line soon for everyone to check out!
Kieron… people wonder where he gets his boots from!
Kieron Pepper is a multi-instrumentalist who’s been playing drums for the Prodigy for the last 8 years. He’s previously had various recording and publishing deals with a couple of his own bands and also does some production work. He plays drums, keyboards, bass, guitar and sings; in his current band he plays bass and sings dual lead vocals. Sissy hooks up with Kieron in Camden Town just before Christmas 2005, in between the London Prodigy shows and a quick jaunt to Italy. He asks our advice on a fine pair of green boots… we agree he should buy them. Boots successfully purchased, we retire to the pub to ask him a few questions:
SISSY: How did you get started playing music?
KIERON: My grandma gave me an old reed organ when I was 9. It had this really bad thumping noise when it started… a bit shoddy but I loved it. I actually only got rid of it recently when I moved and I was gutted to lose it! That was the first instrument I ever played on.
SISSY: Did you have any music lessons?
KIERON: I had about 5 piano lessons but I had to stop because I was cheating! I wasn’t reading the music properly, just reading it once very slowly and learning to play the pieces by ear. The only thing I actually learnt was how to hold my fingers correctly on the keyboard. I used to do it during lunchtime at school because it got me out of doing sport! I was always hanging around the music block at school, playing keyboards. I decided to form a band at 15 with my mates and no-one was playing guitar, so I picked up an acoustic guitar and worked out what the strings were, what the notes were and using my knowledge of the keyboard figured out which were the black notes and white notes, then I could work out chord shapes myself. A year later I bought a guitar chord book and gave myself a pat on the back because I’d worked out the chords correctly!
My first band was The Changelings with my best mates, who I still hang out with! We were very inspired by the Velvet Underground, the Doors, the Cure and The The. It had this very strange sort of 80’s and 60’s thing going on… 10 minute psychedelic guitar solos with Casio keyboard in there. So I was playing guitar and keyboards and singing. Halfway through the band, Dan who was the drummer, decided he wanted to sing and play guitar and I was more into just being in a band rather than cause friction so I said ‘ok, we’ll swap round, I’ll be the drummer and you be the singer.’ So that’s how I got to play drums!
We carried on doing the band through the 6th form. We played our first gig in 1989 at the YMCA in Chelmsford. We were doing lots of gigs around the area but I don’t think we ever actually made it to London, although we were really ambitious!
SISSY: I guess that’s kind of cool in a way; you learnt to play all the instruments by necessity?
KIERON: Yes and I loved playing the drums. I’d originally got Dan into playing the drums at school but when we swapped he had to teach me how to do it properly because I was playing open handed with my left hand doing the high hat.
SISSY: What band did you play for next?
KIERON: After the Changelings I went into a band called Garp, which featured lots of samples and beats so I learned how to play to a click. I was their third drummer; I took over from a guy called Julian who used to drum for Nitzer Ebb. At the time I was into bands like EMF and Jesus Jones, but my transition into the electronic and dance world came via the Soup Dragons, I was a massive fan of theirs. They went through all these different changes; like they were a garage band, then they had a 60’s phase, then they started using loops.
SISSY: Did you get signed?
KIERON: Yes, Garp released a single and a couple of EP’s through a small label called Sugar Records.
SISSY: Can you give any advice or tips on learning to play to a click?
KIERON: Persevere! And don’t say that you’re a drummer who doesn’t need to learn to play to a click; if you want to get work in a band whether you’re sessioning or if it’s your own band, playing to click will save time in the studio that costs money. Especially now that editing is done on things like pro-tools, you need to have everything to a click so you can chop it around. With the Prodigy I don’t use a click live, I play along to sequenced stuff and I can stay in without a click because I’m so used to it!It’s best to choose something high-end that cuts through for a click sound; whether it’s a rimshot or a bell doesn’t matter. When you’re tight with it, the click sound seems to disappear. It’s something you kind of settle into and eventually you get a natural click in your head. When you’ve been playing for a long time you can experiment with playing behind the click or in front of it so you get a sense of being laid back or pushing the feel. Also you have to maintain a groove with the band and make it work with the click.
SISSY: I’ve noticed that when a drummer plays to a click, the bass player has to fit to him rather than them grooving with each other. Do you think that’s a bad thing for the feel of a song?
KIERON: It depends on the band. If the bass player and the drummer have been playing together for a long time they get this affinity and strength of timing that becomes second nature; they lock in so you have to be careful not to let the click destroy that.
SISSY: What other bands have you been in?
KIERON: Garp finished and myself, Jay on guitar and Johnny on bass broke away to form Real TV with Fraggle from Back to the Planet playing guitar and our mate Robin on keyboards. Real TV was more organic; we wanted to break away from all the loops and samples because by the end of Garp we were using them so much that it took away from the actual songwriting process. We liked bands like Compulsion (the band that Jacknife Lee used to be in) and anything punky or funky. We were part of that early 90’s hip hop-rock scene with bands like Skunk Anansie, Rub Ultra and Dub War. We were into jamming our songs out and changing stuff. We went through lots of phases over the course of the three years we were together; we lived in a house together and maybe spent too much time in each other’s pockets. It got to a point where we’d been trying to get somewhere for a long time; we were all skint and it was hard work. We didn’t get signed but it was strange because as soon as we split up, loads of offers came in! We were the only unsigned band to play Phoenix festival in 1996; we were on around 6 in the evening so it was a great slot and a bit of a coup at the time!
SISSY: You obviously had a big live following so why do you think you didn’t get signed?
KIERON: Because of the songs. We were a great live experience… Jay the singer (who later joined Grand Theft Audio) would get up on tables and go mad; really explosive stuff but we never made any decent recordings because the songs were too anarchic and there weren’t too many hooks in there. You’ve got to have a combination of both; lots of energy live and great songs to record as well.We decided that Real TV was going to end, and around the Christmas of ’97 we were going to do our local venue as a farewell gig, so we had in our minds that we were going to do something different within ourselves. Once we’d booked this gig we were rehearsing for it and in the November I got a phone call saying ‘do you want to drum for the Prodigy?’
SISSY: Did you already know them?
KIERON: I’d met Liam through living in Braintree in Essex. I had the little mini-album Real TV had recorded on DAT and I wanted to listen to it. I bumped into Keith Flint in town and asked him if they had a DAT player and if it would be possible to bounce it down onto CD for me. He said it would be cool because he’d heard of Real TV through the local circuit. So it was cool, I went round and met Liam and we got on straight away; we became mates and used to hang out a bit… we discovered we knew lots of the same people from the area. I think because we got on, he felt at ease with asking me to play drums for him rather than trying to work with a stranger. He took a bit of a risk as well, lots of people like the crew were all saying ‘it’s a really bad idea to have live drums, it’s never going to work, we’ll have to change the whole set up on stage.’ But Liam had faith in it and when I was given the opportunity I thought I had to make it work… I knew I could do if I had the chance!
When Liam called me about playing for them, I offered to go round to his house to learn the stuff but he was in Germany. So he flew over the next day with the songs and I learned the set for two weeks. The next thing I knew, I was on stage in Newcastle in front of 9000 people!
SISSY: What other projects have you been involved with?
KIERON: Since I started playing for the Prodigy in ’97, I’ve always continued writing my own stuff on guitar and programmed pieces on my old Roland W30 workstation, which is the same as what Liam used to use originally. And in 1998 I played keyboards and samples for tech-rock crossover band No Santa, which was bass player Charlie Beddoes’ band after she left Rub Ultra.
I’ve done lots of other bits and pieces, but I’m currently forming a new band with Jim Davies who played guitar for the Prodigy and for Pitchshifter. It’s essentially a rock band but there’s beats and loops and stuff going on. Our original demos came out sounding quite metal and when we went out live playing ten dates around the UK with Bullet for my Valentine, just to find out how it would sound, it was great fun. Jim and I are both on vocals and he plays guitar. We have another guitarist called Paul Fletcher and our drummer is Jason Bowld. I’m also playing bass guitar and using a vintage 1970’s keyboard called the Firstman Bass synth, which is like the pedals from an old Wurlitzer organ, but I play it with my hands through a Black Cat distortion pedal.
We’re really excited about the fact that the songs are really good, very strong. Jim wrote lots of the music just with guitars, beats and simple bass. He did it on Logic Audio, which I hadn’t used before; I had a go and started flying on it! I ended up producing the demos for our band, just the instruments and then I started hearing really catchy melodies for 3 or 4 choruses so then we sat down and came up with the lyrics for the verses which in turn gave Jim the confidence and inspiration to write his own melodies and lyrics.
SISSY: Have you got a name?
KIERON: At the moment we’re called the One Condition. We’re not sure if we’ll keep it though because at the moment everything’s in a transitional period. Once we’d done the gigs and realised that we were leaning a bit far to the metal side, we wanted to bring the emphasis on the beats back up… it’s still early days so we’ll see.
SISSY: Is it true that Jim stopped playing for the Prodigy so he could concentrate on this band?
KIERON: Yes, he’s got total faith in this, that it’s time for him to do his own thing.
SISSY: What are your plans for the project in the near future?
KIERON: To basically continue working on the recordings, because the songs aren’t going to go away so we’re using the vocal melodies and reworking some of the parts. With the musicians we have we could play any style so we just have to make the recordings sound fresh and relevant, then reproduce that live.
SISSY: Can you offer any advice to people who are starting a band?
KIERON: If you’re forming a band, the most important thing is to find good people, who can do their job better than you could. Communication is a key thing, being able to talk about things you aren’t happy with. Don’t waste time burying your head in the sand just for the sake of harmony. If your mates in your band are as serious and committed as you are then they’ll understand if you want to question things to make it better. It’s the same in life generally, communication is so important.
SISSY: What about advice on sessioning?
KIERON: Learn to appreciate every style of music; you might not like something but learn how to play every style so you’re adaptable. And don’t settle for what you think is good enough, because someone might want you to try playing something in lots of different ways. It’s essential that as a musician or as a singer you can do everything really tight so rehearse to a click. And be aware that a producer might want to push your boundaries and expect a lot of you.
SISSY: Can you remember the first proper gig you saw? And what your early influences were?
KIERON: I think it was U2; they were definitely an early influence. And early 80’s bands like the Cocteau Twins, the Human League, Adam and the Ants and Blondie. I think the first single I bought was the Eighth Day by Hazel O’Connor, which was a bit strange for a little kid! I used to get off on the sounds that were used on records and the flamboyant style everything had in the 80’s. Although I don’t feel the need to have big hair and big production on the things I do! But maybe the melodies influenced me; I’ve always been into darker melodies. The minor melodic scale plays a big part in a lot of things I do. When the Queens of the Stone Age album Songs for the Deaf came out I was actually gutted because there were a lot of riffs and tunings (like tuning down to C) that were like some of my ideas.
Sometimes I wish that I’d pushed my own thing a bit harder rather than concentrating on the session side of things; time is precious when you’ve got something to prove and you’ve got songs that you think are relevant. Soon enough you’ll hear someone else playing something like one of your riffs on the radio… there’s only so many notes you can use so it’s bound to happen sooner or later!
SISSY: So would you say that while being a session player is great and you get lots of experience and good times, at the end of the day you’re not going to get any long term security out of music unless you co-write a successful song?
KIERON: That’s true, but it could turn out that you have a really good relationship with the person you’re sessioning for and end up writing with them. For example, I did some sessions playing guitar with DJ Hyper where I made some suggestions for parts and I ended up with writing credits on two of the tracks.
SISSY: What equipment do you use?
KIERON: These days you can do everything on a computer but I think that’s lazy. The only advantage it gives you is that you can save sounds. But there’s something about an old keyboard, especially the old Roland keyboards, that sound great. When I could afford it I bought some retro synths like an SH 101 and a Jupiter 8; that’s how I make my sounds.Since I’ve been playing for the Prodigy I’ve been using Mapex drum kits; they’re phenomenal kits, made of maple. The kit I’m using at the moment is the top of the range one called the Orion Classic. Their best starter kit is called the Venus… or the Mars; they’re all named after planets! The Mapex Mars kit is a bit similar to a Pearl Export, which is a good basic kit.For recording guitars I still use my old Peavey T60, which I think is the first guitar Peavey made. Generally I’m into Gibson sounds; I was never into the more twangy Fender sound at all although I do like the Nirvana Jagstang sound because it’s sort of in between a Fender and a Gibson. The Peavey T60 is a bit like that in that it has a sound of its own. It’s heavy but also quite bright. There’s enough different configurations on the knobs and switches to get a range of sounds out of it. When I’m writing I tend to use an Epiphone semi-acoustic guitar. It’s a really slim one that I bought in Australia and I love it. The neck is nice and thin like an electric so it’s easy to play.
With basses, I play a Fender Jazz and an Ibanez, which is a very metal bass; it’s got a slim neck and active pick-ups. For recording I mostly like to use the Jazz because it’s got an old school sound. My favourite pedal for bass and keyboards is the Black Cat distortion pedal I mentioned earlier which is made by a guy in LA. I heard he did a runner or something due to financial difficulties so it’s really hard to get them now. I bought one in a little place down Sunset Boulevard. The first one I had, I was doing a session for Sergio Galoyan who wrote the Tatu stuff and I left it in my car with a rare Spectre bass guitar while I went for a quick drink and when I came back someone had broken into my car and stole the bass and the pedal! The next time I was in LA I went to the same shop and luckily they had one Black Cat pedal left. Spectre basses are quite metal; kind of between a Musicman and a Fender… I really loved that bass!My favourite guitar pedal is a Hughes & Kettner Rotosphere that simulates a Lesley cabinet but for distortion I tend to use amp distortion… the best thing to get a wicked guitar sound is to get a good old amp like a Vox AC30 and crank it up. With amp distortion you can still hear the strings whereas if you’re recording with a distortion pedal it just adds noise and fuzz and you can lose definition.
SISSY: Can you give any good tips on getting sounds in the recording studio?
KIERON: For drums, get a good drum sound from the room; it doesn’t have to be close miked or it can just sound like you’re hitting cardboard boxes. Although if you’re recording on computer you can make a good sound out of anything! But if you want to go for an old school recording technique, I just use three mics positioned left, right and above which is good for that Beastie Boys retro sound. If you want to get a bit more involved then you can close-mic the bass drum and the snare so you have more control in the mix. PZM mics are really useful for ambient sounds and Neumann mics are great for vocals. Also there’s a great new microphone called the Blue Baby Bottle, which is good; you can really shout and it still sounds great because of the compression on it.
SISSY: It’s been great to talk to you, to finish can you tell us any rock and roll stories from your travels?
KIERON: Unfortunately not! All my stories are X-rated or barred!
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We finish our drinks and head off to do some last minute Christmas shopping in Camden market.In between touring with the Prodigy and his own band, you can sometimes find Kieron teaching a Live Performance Workshop at Brighton Institute of Modern Music where they do excellent courses for drummers, bass players, guitarists and singers. As well as tuition on their chosen instrument, part of the syllabus is about getting the students to come together to learn how to be in a band. The topics covered include everything from the economics of the music industry to learning what constitutes a good song and how to construct one. All the lecturers are top-notch musicians with experience in well-known bands. Check out www.bimm.co.uk for details.
A couple of months after this interview, we hear from Kieron again… he’s joined new band Dead Kids whose first single has been released on Fierce Panda records. You can check them out at www.myspace.com/youaredeadkids We asked Kieron for a few words on how it all happened and this is what he said…
‘got asked to join dead kids end of march in a phone call from adam (bass) player, i said i’d think about it once i’d heard the trax. put the phone down. 5 mins later phone rings. it’s eddy temple-morris from xfm, and he asks if i’ve joined dead kids. i say i dunno, then he goes into a rant that lasts about 10 minutes, saying i’d be perfect and this was an opportunity not to be missed. i put the phone down, ear glowing and heart racing. hadn’t been this excited since howlett asked me to join prodigy. you have mail. the mp3’s of 2 dead kids trax arrive on my computer. i listen. i listen again. i’m hooked. i’m in. two days later we rehearse. a week after that, we tour. i’m home.’
Nick on sabbatical
Over the last fifteen years Nick Moore has at various times successfully occupied many different roles in the music business including promoter, manager, consultant, founder of the Barfly organisation (now called Channelfly) and he’s also run his own label. Nick is a somewhat maverick entrepreneurial character who constantly seeks fresh challenges. Despite the slight cynicism that inevitably accompanies his extensive knowledge and experience of the music business, Nick retains an enthusiasm and passion for the industry, and whilst being fully versed in the ‘old school’ approach to building a band’s career, he’s always been quick to embrace new technology and new ways of doing things.The Barfly has consistently provided A&R men with an easy option for the last ten years; until he left recently to travel the world for a year’s well-earned sabbatical, Nick and his partners’ good taste, commitment and hands-on approach have ensured that the barfly has almost always been the first to back new talent and give them exposure to the industry.
SISSY: How did you get started in the music industry?
NICK: I was always in bands as a kid, playing guitar and keyboards. I started promoting when I was 16, just sorting out our own gigs. I realised that if I booked the other bands as well then we’d pull more people. On my first day at college we had a guy from the student union come and talk to us… he said he was the Entertainments Officer and he booked all the bands. I said to my friend, ‘that sounds like a job for me!’ In 1990/91, I became Ents Officer for the student union at Wolverhampton Poly which is now Wolverhampton University, then I promoted gigs for a year at clubs and pubs in Wolves. In those days I was putting on bands like Ocean Colour Scene, Blur, the Manic Street Preachers, the Shamen and Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine when they were on their way up; one Blur gig was the night before they went top 40 for the first time.
SISSY: What prompted your move to London?
NICK: My friend Ace, who later became the guitarist in Skunk Anansie, phoned me up and said ‘what are you doing Nick? My band (called Big Life Casino) are getting stuff together and we’ve just started a club called the Splash Club’ so I came to London to help them with that; there were four of us involved; myself, Ace and his other band members Julian Wright and Ben Jammin. We started doing nights at the Water Rats in Kings Cross which is a pub owned by the Grand Order of the Water Rats, a kind of Masonic lodge for entertainers!
SISSY: Did you have any kind of goal or manifesto in mind when you started the Splash Club?
NICK: Back in those days most of the small venues operated a ‘pay to play’ policy where a band had to pay something like £30 each to play a gig so that the promoter was guaranteed income without having to make any effort to promote the night. So our main objective was to stop the whole pay to play rip-off and coming from a musician’s background we had the ethos that we wanted to make sure there was a decent PA and lights and that the bands were treated properly. The Splash Club actually took off pretty quickly because everyone wanted to play there. I was very fortunate in that this was around 1993 so I stumbled upon the start of the Britpop/britrock scene. You could say that the Splash Club helped to break bands like Kula Shaker, Skunk Anansie, Rub Ultra, Feeder, the Bluetones, Echobelly, Gene, Travis; Oasis played their first London show at the Splash. The club was very much geared towards getting bands to come down and see other bands; we thought that was pretty important to get the scene going. I think at the height of the Splash Club you’d see a lot of ‘faces’ in the audience so suddenly it became the place to play if you wanted to get noticed.
SISSY: What made the Splash Club leave the Water Rats and change its name to the Barfly?
NICK: Eventually the Grand Order of the Water Rats perceived that we had ‘outstayed our welcome’ due to a series of controversial events! One incident that contributed to us leaving was that we allowed notorious queen scene impresario Matthew Glamour to host a night called the ‘Mint Tea Rooms’ that was pretty outrageous; two guys were on stage ‘wearing’ a double ended dildo and someone from the News of the World was there. They ran the story and alleged that there had been 16 year olds in the audience. Then one night we put on an anti-nazi gig and loads of skinheads turned up to hijack the night and a fight kicked off. So the Water Rats people said they had problems with some of our more ‘avant garde’ evenings!
We moved to the Falcon in Camden and Ben Jammin who had ended up being my key partner in the Splash Club decided to do his own thing. So I started the Barfly with Jeremy Ledlin and Be Rozzo as partners, and we also started the Fly magazine (which is still going strong) to do reviews, features and interviews with the bands playing at the Barfly.Around this time I also set up Blue Dog records which I ran but was funded by V2 and signed the Crocketts (now called the Crimea) to the label. The Barfly eventually outgrew the Falcon and took up residence at its current home, the Monarch on Chalk Farm Road. Now there are 5 other Barflys around the UK, all aspiring to perpetuate our original ideal of treating the bands well and maintaining high standards.
SISSY: What prompted you to branch out into managing bands while you were promoting and booking at the Splash Club?
NICK: Primarily an eclectic hip-hop/art rock band called Rub Ultra. We’d given them a few gigs and they were inundated with interest from the record companies. I had met their bass player Charlie Beddoes a few times at the club and she would ask my advice on dealing with the industry. It seemed like a natural step when they wanted me to become their manager.
SISSY: What attracted you to Rub Ultra?
NICK: They were a wicked live band, really powerful and chaotic on stage so you never knew what would happen next! Will Matthews the singer had this way of talking where you never quite understood what he was saying but you felt like it must be really cool anyway! For example, he would describe Rub Ultra’s music as ‘bubble over crunch with a cosmic fruit centre’ or ‘testosterone crackle with a feminine underbelly’!
SISSY: Who else did you manage?
NICK: My partner at the time, Kate Dale and I also managed bands called Goya Dress and Elizabeth Bunny. Rub Ultra and Goya Dress both signed their first deals in the same week so that was a good week for me… I suddenly had more money than I’d ever had in my life before! Elizabeth Bunny got signed as well but then their record label folded so nothing happened for them. Later also on I co-managed Talvin Singh with Sarah Withers.
SISSY: Did you prefer the experience of managing bands to promoting?
NICK: It was all good fun at the time; it was such a rollercoaster ride, the scene was really happening at the start and there were lots of ups and downs!
SISSY: Speaking as a promoter, manager and label, what qualities do you look for in a new band?
NICK: It’s got to be something that excites you musically, something you want to work with. It’s hard to quantify why you like one thing and not another. The best advice that I could give a new band trying to make it is to try and look at themselves objectively, step outside their role in the band and try to see the overall thing how someone else would see it. Bands often make the mistake of thinking that they’re being obvious about what they want to convey when the reality is that it’s very unclear to everyone else. Sometimes the simplest, most obvious songs will be the ones that define your sound and identity. It’s a good idea for a new band when they first form, to sit down and say ‘what are we trying to do?’ and agree on a direction or recipe for the music. Otherwise they can end up trying to cross over too many elements and confusing people. Its not that you have to be tied to one direction for life but you should be focussed. Problems can arise when there’s more than one key songwriter in a band; the musicians need to work to get a good balance and blend the different elements convincingly. Bands need to establish their own democratic process and all have a clear understanding of their objectives to prevent falling apart further down the line.
SISSY: Obviously the music industry is undergoing some major changes at the moment. How do you see things progressing in the future?
NICK: I actually think that the costs of recording and making videos have come down so much that it’s allowing the record companies to become the marketing companies they probably should have been all along. Bands along with management and production companies will effectively make an album before they even approach a major label. I think the future is very few A&R people looking for acts; there used to be about 40 A&R scouts but now there’s only about 10, partly because there used to be 7 major record companies but what with recent mergers and buy outs there’s only 4… everything is owned by either Warners, EMI, Sony/BMG or Universal.
SISSY: Is it true that the major companies are waiting to have a lot of the early stages of the work done for them instead of developing a band?
NICK: Absolutely; there’s no such thing as a development deal any more. Most people can raise enough money to get some songs recorded and in fact there’s plenty of examples of people recording albums in their bedroom on their computer. You can now release material and promote it through the internet. This can only be a good thing for music, because A&R departments in this country for the last 50 years have been run by middle class public school boys with a narrow view of what should sell and a lot of more cutting edge artists have come through in spite of, rather than aided by this fact.
The internet has allowed the music business to become a more democratic system, rather than an act becoming known because a major company has assigned them a huge marketing budget and to an extent manufactured their success.The old system seemed to work for many years because a lot of people were making a lot of money from it. Now that there’s less money to be made, companies can’t afford to be as wasteful as they were in the past. Now, A&R departments are more likely to look at a band to see what kind of profile they have already; have Radio One or XFM picked up on them, are they being written about in any music papers and most importantly, what’s the web presence? How many hits are they getting on websites and how many downloads have they had. The majors are monitoring peer-to-peer sites and if a band gets a significant number of fileshares, the record companies will be all over them. In a way that’s not that different to 50 years ago in the USA when early rock and roll artists would sell records in one state and the majors would view local success as an indication that an act was worth signing and releasing nationally.
SISSY: Who are your heroes, both musical and business?
NICK: I grew up listening to the classics… the Stones, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, the Who, the Clash, the Pistols etc and I saw a lot of Jazz gigs as a child because my dad was into Jazz. When I was at college I was really into Billy Bragg and the whole idealistic political thing. I probably saw him play more times than anyone else, other than the bands I’ve managed.
When it comes to business, I’ve always loved Fiction records and admired Chris Parry who founded it. He previously worked at Polydor and when he was there, signed Sham 69, the Jam and Souxie and the Banshees so he had great taste. He originally signed the Sex Pistols but lost them due to Malcom McLaren’s shenanigans! He left when Polydor wouldn’t let him sign the Clash and started Fiction records where he signed the Cure and the Rebel MC amongst others. He also helped fund other projects; I believe he helped Derek Birkett with funding for One Little Indian records when they wanted to release the Sugarcubes, and he helped Neneh Cherry get started on her solo career. Chris was a real music fan and he was brave enough to take risks on things he really believed in and help them to develop without interference.Andy Ross who ran Food records is another proper music fan… he signed Blur, Jesus Jones and Shampoo. He’s got his own label and management company now called Boss.
SISSY: What are you up to at the moment?
NICK: I recently started a management company with my brother Dan called Moore Bros Music. We’re currently managing up and coming indie rock band Seeing Scarlet and a singer songwriter called Jack Rubinacci. Various people employ me as a consultant and I also have a ‘behind the scenes’ interest in a record company and publishing company.
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Whatever path Nick chooses to pursue, we’re sure he’ll be at the centre of things for a long time to come. Like his heroes, Nick’s a genuine music fan and innovator. Co-founding London’s top underground venue has given him an excellent reputation but also a lot to live up to in the eyes of those who grew used to looking to him to recommend ‘the next big thing’. Let’s hope he can meet the future challenges that this pressure brings!
Fritz… auditory visionary!
Fritz from Unit 11 studio design has been designing and building recording studios, both professional and amateur for about 20 years and has become an expert in all aspects of soundproofing and internal room acoustics. Fritz is an extremely intelligent guy who approaches each project as a personal vision. He works on every aspect of each job himself, from designing to building to choosing the décor and is reluctant to delegate anything in case the quality of the results should be compromised. Sissy interviews Fritz over a pint at his local pub in north London after a hard days work on his latest commission; a studio at Westminster University.
SISSY: What led you to become an expert in this field?
FRITZ: As a teenager in New Zealand I was playing in bands and couldn’t afford to go into a recording studio so I built my own! And then I became interested in the physics of it. The science of sound is fascinating, all about waves and nodes and interference patterns.
SISSY: Did you need to learn any specific skills?
FRITZ: Yes, I had some training in building skills which is an advantage otherwise you have to employ someone else to do it for you and there’s certain aspects of soundproofing where you really need to know what you’re doing. It’s no good simply chucking stuff on the walls; you have to think about the structure.
SISSY: What’s the best way to soundproof a room?
FRITZ: With soundproofing, you can either build a massive structure which is very expensive and impractical or you can use the ‘room within a room’ technique which is sort of opposite to what most builders are used to doing; they want to make things rigid and structurally sound but the idea of a ‘room within a room’ is that soundproofing is achieved because there is no physical or mechanical connection between the inner and outer rooms. You have to ‘float’ the floor on insulating materials and then work upwards.
Air is the best thing for sound insulation… the bigger the cavity between the external and internal rooms the better. You need a minimum gap of at least 2 inches otherwise the trapped air in the cavity effectively becomes solid, so you get the mechanical transmission of sound. When floating doors and walls, high-density rock wool is ok or there are other products available like neoprene and rubber balls and different types of suspension but it’s so expensive that the client would be better off moving to the countryside with no neighbours and no need for soundproofing! In London or any big city, people are living like colonies of ants stacked up above each other, which is why I constantly get work soundproofing. If you have the luxury of space then all you have to worry about is the acoustic side of things.
SISSY: It sounds like there’s a lot of demand for your services?
FRITZ: Yes. I’ve done some work building studios for big companies like Sanctuary and Warners but what with modern recording techniques, computer hard disc recording etc and the cheapness of everything I’m more in demand by private individuals wanting to build a home studio set up. You can get all the equipment for a professional sounding studio for very little money now which is why lots of big expensive recording studios are going bust or closing down. In a way it’s a crying shame because the quality of the rooms was much better, they had well designed live rooms and the control room was big enough to get good acoustics.
SISSY: Is it possible to get good results in a home studio?
FRITZ: In your average spare room, which is, say 11ft square, there is something called a standing wave whereby the physical size of the room relates to the wavelength of the sound that the room resonates at, in the same way that an organ pipe resonates at a certain frequency depending on its length. With a smaller room, assuming it is soundproofed, the walls will reflect most of the sound energy back into the room and you end up with a situation where if you play a low note, there are areas where you can’t hear it and areas where it’s really booming. The room needs to be large enough to conform to certain ratios; Bolt’s ratio (like the Golden Ratio in geometry) whereby the height isn’t a multiple of the depth, which isn’t a multiple of the length of a room. Basically, if your room is a cube, that will suck! It’s a bit of a fallacy about having weird angles or splayed walls because all that does is skew the standing wave in an unpredictable way. A random oblong or L-shaped room can work best because at least that is predictable and you can design in acoustic treatments to accommodate those predictable problems.
SISSY: Are there many people in your field doing the same job as you?
FRITZ: No, there’s hardly any. There’s a bunch of main companies who do larger venues, famous companies that have been going for years like Monroe, AKA, Recording Architecture but there’s very few who caters to the smaller market, i.e. Programming suites and home studios. Those jobs aren’t profitable enough for the big companies… the most I’ve had as a budget for a domestic job is in the region of £30,000.
SISSY: What advice could you give someone wanting to build their own studio?
FRITZ: One important thing to consider right from the very beginning is air conditioning or a fresh air supply. If you build a soundproofed room, you’re building a really good oven! Sound insulation provides heat insulation as well so it’s a big concern. Air conditioning can be very expensive so you need to include extra costs in your budget for it. Also you will need to consider the fact that air conditioning can make noise and account for that.
SISSY: If someone wants to build their own studio in a bedroom or garage, how much would it be likely to cost?
FRITZ: That’s very hard to say because it depends entirely on the amount of acoustic and soundproofing problems they are going to encounter. Also there are degrees of how far you can take the whole thing. If you want to build a basic room within a room of around 10ft by 16ft using a fairly lightweight shell with 2 or 3 sheets of plasterboard, with high density rock wool as insulation, doors that are properly sealed and windows that are correctly glazed, all the materials you need to use can be bought from your local builder’s yard for between £3000 and £4000 but then you need to build it yourself or allow for labour costs on top. When I take on a job my price can vary enormously because all the problems relating to ‘will it be properly soundproofed and is it going to sound good’ vary so dramatically.
Recently I designed and built a room for a band with a large PA system and drum kit that was on the other side of a wall about 4 ft away from where someone had to sleep and couldn’t be disturbed which was a challenge! We used about 8 tonnes of materials for a 4m X 5m room. If someone says they want absolute silence outside the structure, you get diminishing returns; The basic soundproofing cost around £5000 but we had to spend another £10,000 just to eliminate that last little bit of extraneous noise. You can get quite good results reasonably easily but getting total silence is very difficult as sound is such a pervasive medium. Think of it this way… if you lie awake in the dead of night when everything’s completely silent, you can hear a sparrow fart in Hackney!
SISSY: Can you explain how to get the right acoustics for a control room and live room?
FRITZ: You mustn’t confuse the soundproofing with the room acoustics. Internal room acoustics is treating a room to make it sound the way you want it to sound… for a control room that would normally be ‘flat’ with no big lumps or peaks as far as the EQ is concerned. That is to say, if you record with a microphone in a live room, the thing you are recording is the exact thing coming out of the control room speakers with no added acoustics.
The ear perceives as natural a sound with a small amount of room reverb, as opposed to a completely dead room with no reflections, known as an anechoic chamber. These were popular in the 70’s; if you walk into an anechoic chamber it’s like stuffing your head into a pillow, which is no good for a control room where you’re monitoring sounds and listening to the mix. To a certain extent the ear relies on some reflections in a room; if you put an amplifier in a field, suddenly you can’t hear anything unless you crank it right up, because there are no reflections.
If you have a glass window in your control room, you need laminated rather than normal glass; normal glass pings if you tap it where as laminated just thuds so it’s less reflective. You also need to angle the glass away from you so the high frequency reflection doesn’t bounce straight back in your face! When building a control room, the ratios I mentioned earlier are the most important thing. Then you need to suspend bass traps from the walls or ceilings to take out any harsh frequency reflections… you can buy stuff off the internet like ‘Studio in a Box’, products that use things like foam or Oralex, a whole plethora of stuff you can buy off the shelf and stick on the wall with Velcro and it will do mid-range to high frequency attenuation on the room. It’s the same if you hang duvets on the wall… or the old favourite, egg boxes! The cheapest, most effective method I have found is to use Rock wool covered with fabric. Don’t confuse any of these acoustic treatments with soundproofing… they’ll do little to stop the neighbours complaining!
Something that’s become increasingly popular is RPG systems. Basically it involves attaching slotted boxes to the walls, which resemble bookcases. The theory is based on thinking of sound as being like a ray of light, and the boxes radiate the wave in a diffuse pattern, like if a mirror is covered in dew, you can still see reflections or patterns when you stand to the side of the mirror, not just directly in front of it. The effect sonically is of diffusing or ‘smearing’ the sound across the bandwidth. You can buy these off the shelf and they do have some merit. In a small room they can make it seem as though the walls are further away than they are.
When it comes to recording, making a good live sound requires a more artistic interpretation of a room, and to some extent it’s a question of taste. For a live room where you do want natural reverb, you need to think about the materials you use for the surfaces of the walls as the absorption coefficient determines what frequencies will be bounced back. Some people love the sound of bathrooms because the shiny surface of the tiles reflects all the frequencies back into the room.
Personally I like the sound of good quality wood floors with some carpet to take out the harsher top-end frequencies. On the walls, tongue and groove panelling can sound really good; the small grooves in the wood resonate in a pleasing way because it’s an irregular, chaotic surface. For a drum booth, you need character and flavour. A hard irregular surface like slate tiles or concrete is good with areas of absorption like fabric or carpet panels to control high frequency reflections.For recording vocals you do need a very dead room or anechoic chamber so that you can control and add your own reverbs afterwards.
SISSY: If someone wanted a career designing and building studios, what’s the best route to follow? Are there any courses available?
FRITZ: As far as I know there are no real courses for the structural side of it; Guildford University does a course in Applied Acoustics which teaches some of the scientific and mathematical principles involved, but I don’t know of anywhere that specialises in the musical side of acoustics. There are some good books that you can use to teach yourself; How to build a Recording Studio by Paul White is a good place to start. Try looking at Studiospares.co.uk or in music shops. Obviously some building experience is useful but other than that you just need a feel for the subject and an interest in sound. Go into a room and put a sine wave on your stereo, then walk around and listen, use your ears and you should be able to hear the nodes or peaks and troughs of the sound waves as you walk around. Then you’ll know where in your room the sound is ‘true’ and where it’s being corrupted by reflections. You can also buy room analyser kits, which you plug in to your system and they will work out how your room is behaving, but they won’t tell you how to fix it… that’s where I come in!