Bought a CD lately? Neither have I. But this story starts long before everyone was downloading music, before, as one record company executive put it, on seeing Napster for the first time, “The record industry was over.” This is about how the record industry, today known as “The Big Four”, drove the stake into their own heart.
The basic problem, as I see it, is that the record industry stopped respecting the record buying public at some point around the late 1980’s. Let’s talk about the “Single” also known by the names “7 inch”, the “Cassingle”, or my fav, “The Maxi- Single”. The record companies starting getting hot again for the single around the time of the original Boy Band regime. Singles like New Kids On The Block’s “The Right Stuff”,sold millions. Why market an entire album, when there’s only one good song, and the rest is filler? This business model worked brilliantly in the ‘60’s when you had bands like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and The Beach Boys, putting out gem after gem. And then they had full length albums behind them with little to no chaff. But not so much anymore.The record buying public are consumers, but they’re not stupid. I believe this was the real beginning of the end for the album as concept. The Rock album being one of the record companies mainstay products throughout the 1970’s 80’s and ‘90s.
But oh yeah, what about that thing I was talking about how the record industry stopped respecting us at some point? Let’s look at two very successful artists of the last quarter century. Let’s start with Bruce Springsteen. If Bruce had released his first album in 2003, instead of 1973, you might be asking Bruce Who? His first album sold 25,000 copies its first year, not a hit by yesterday’s standards or today’s. It wasn’t until Bruce’s third album, “Born To Run”, that his career really took off, making the cover of Time and Newsweek. The point is that no artist is given the time to develop any more. It takes a while to rev up your engines, and get going. If you don’t shift a couple million albums or singles right out of the gate today, you get dropped, and the label goes searching for the next Johnny come lately. U2 on the other hand, didn’t start their million/billion selling selves until their fifth release, “The Joshua Tree”, which is arguably the first million seller in the CD format. I just can’t imagine an environment, in which sales is the only motivator. Who do we have today, that’s carrying the torch for artists like these? I guess we have The Killers. Lucky for them and thanks to an insane marketing blitz by Island Def Jam, sales for their debut album “Hot Fuss”, were well past the million mark.
What happens when you realize you no longer need the middle man? That’s what the record companies are in essence. The band or artist, creates and records the “product”. The label then manufactures and distributes that product to stores, whether they be brick and mortar or online. Home recording equipment became affordable and readily available sometime in the late 1980’s. A whole army of people who rolled out of bed and recorded in their pajamas bloomed and blossomed. A lot of these people had no chance of ever being signed to a major label recording contract. They sent their cassette tape or burned CD’s off to small independent labels. They embarked on small yet often profitable tours around the country. A lot of these people also started their own record labels, and here’s my point. Why let someone charge you for something and take your money, when you can do that thing for yourself? These independent, or Indie labels as they were called, often had a knack for connecting the music to their niche markets, and making their music readily available to their fans. A lot of these labels, survive to this day, in part because they were able to see the future before the old dinosaur major labels were. A lot of them made their catalogs available online as soon as they were able to. So while Warner Music Group is locked in battle with Youtube, about why they can and can’t show their artists’ videos, your neighbor down the streets record label, put all their bands videos up on Youtube, and just sold their first thousand copies.
So, it would seem when you have made it obvious that you are horribly out of step with the times, have made yourself obsolete, and no longer have a finger to the pulse of what is truly cool or cutting edge, you get to show yourself the door.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Interview with F.M. Cornog of East River Pipe
Reprinted from Guitargeek.com
The inseparable duo of F.M. Cornog (a.k.a. East River Pipe) and Barbara Powers (a.k.a. Hell Gate Recordings) has been quietly recording and releasing some of the most sincere and heartfelt music since the turn of the decade. F.M. does the recording and Barbara does the releasing. As always, the curious staff here at Guitar Geek wanted to know just how they do it. In all the years we've been interviewing home-recordists this interview stands out as one of our favorites. F.M. and Barbara's enthusiasm and do-it-yourself work ethic should rub off on you by the end of this wonderful chat.
Guitar Geek: FM why do you record yourself?
FM: It's just the way I've always done it. I can't explain it. I've always liked tape recorders and I guess I like the control element of it also... Hey can I scratch that answer??
Guitar Geek: Yeah, sure start over...
FM: It's just like as opposed to what? I mean I record myself because this is very relaxed atmoshere here in the apartment and Tascam mini studios are the easiest things to use in the world. I don't have to go into a real recording studio and spend 25-50 bucks an hour. I can do it whenever I want to, I can wake up and go, "Hey I'm gonna do a song now>" I don't have to book time in a studio.
Guitar Geek: So as soon as inspiration hits, it can be on tape within minutes?
FM: Yeah, I like to record my stuff right when it's happening. Like right when I write a song. I don't do demos or anything, I just kind of go, "Oh geez, OK, this is kinda like a song here, so I'm gonna do this right away." And I just do it right at that moment. That's the other advantage of the mini-studio I guess the average band would ahve one guy who would write the song, he would have a rough little demo of it, bring it to his buddies, teach them the song, book some studio time, go into the studio and then watch this clock hanging over their heads. Then they have to think "Oh geez, do I want to keep this guitar part, or this one? That's too complicated for me , y'know, all that stuff. I like the immediacy of just one person. I don't collaborate with anybody, I go in, by myself, and get everything done whenever I want to.
Guitar Geek: Have you had any bad experiences in "pro" studios? Did that fuel your desire to want to record by yourself?
FM: I've actually only recorded one song ever in a "real" recording studio, so no, not really, no bad experiences. That was a long time ago. Basically I've always been into recording. Geez, when I was a kid I would get two little Panasonic tape recorders and bounce stuff off them. I'd play a piano part, record it. Then play the other tape recorder, while recording on the other, as I play another part over that one. I'd have another double track piano part I'd bounce and record again; real messy fidelity-wise, but who cares? I liked liked the fun off messing around with tape recorder and seeing what it sounded liked.
Guitar Geek: Are some of the reasons you record solo due to finances?
FM: Of course. It is so cheap to do it by yourself with just a mini-studio. You just need to come up with the money for the original investment of the mini-studio itself, seven hundred bucks or whatever.
Guitar Geek: What type of mini-studio do you have right now?
FM: I have a Tascam 388, it has eight tracks, but only six of them actually work. The two channels on the end are messed up, so it's really just a six track!
Guitar Geek: Is it one of those old 1/4 inch decks?
FM: Yeah, outside of that, all I have is really cheap stuff. The whole East River Pipe studio thing is that I don't have any expensive rack-mounted stuff. I only have cheap guitar pedals, I never used big named brands like Boss or something like that. Everybody uses those! I use cheap effects stuff, just so I'm not using the same pedals as everyone else Some pedals I play guitar through, or sometimes I even sing through them. What else do I have? Mmm, a cheap ESP Telecaster, an old Gibson bass, a little Peavey 50 amp, a cheap microphone, a few drums, a drum machine, a lot of percussive instruments, a few cheap keyboard-synthesizer type things, and that's about it. It's a simple set-up. I like that best. I like to concentrate on the song and the performance rather than the gear. If I had some expensive rack-mounted reverb unit, I'd be fiddling around with that trying to decide what kind of reverb I wanted, room size, or whatever complicated setting I should put it on. I like to plug the f***ing guitar in and play the song y'know? That's what all these East River River songs are, just very spontaneous things.
Guitar Geek: Is your technical knowledge of the recording process great, or do you just strictly go by what sounds good?
FM:I follow Ray Charles technique. His advice to people recording is: "As long as it's not distorting, it's fine." Obviously, he can't see the needle going into the red, so, if it's not fuzzy, leave it. Next to an engineer that works in a 24 track studio, I'm sure I don't know anything, but it doesn't matter how you record a song. Whether it's at home or in a super-deluxe studio is not important. What is important is that you have a good song and a good performance. That's what matters.
Guitar Geek: A lot of people get hung up on the techincal side of things, I guess.
FM: People tell me, "Oh, oooh, you're LO-FI, you're sooo D.I.Y." I'm not into LO-FI, I just don't want to spend fifty dollars an hour to go into some studio. I can do it right here, no pressure, no clock hanging over me, and do it whenever I want. I'm getting redundant now, but I'm not going for some lo-fi asthetic, it's just the way I've always done it. This is the natural way for me to do it. Other bands go into big studios and that's natural for them. I've been doing it this way for fifteen years.
Guitar Geek: I think a lot of people have purposely taken that route just to fit in with some lo-fi movement, but some people, myself included, have gone into studios and come out with nothing but horror stories. Y'know wasting tons of money, having some goofball for an engineer, or whatever. Experiences like that have driven lots of people into getting their own small recording set-ups and just doing it themselves.
FM: True. One time I had this old song of mine that I'd already recorded, but we didn't have anything to mix down to, like to two-track stereo. So we took it into this actual recording studio. This Tascam I have is incompatible with with anything, so you just have to take the whole board in. You can't just take the tape, because no studio has an 8 track 1/4 inch that fits with this deck. It's not like it's this big cumbersome thing, but we didn't have a car or anything. So we loaded it in this taxi and went to the studio. We get there and this studio guy decides he's going to mix my songs. The way he mixed my song and the way I would've mixed my songs are two different things. Recording wise too, there is a big difference in the way I would record and the way a studio guy would. A lot of my methods production-wise are much like Phil Spector or Brian Wilson. I double track a lot of guitars, whereas a lot of people would say, "buy this fancy guitar thing, like chorus pedal and that's kinda like double tracking in a way, plus it'll free up an extra track." But it's a totally different thing if you don't use that gizmo, an you actually sing or play it twice. It's a completely different feel.
Guitar Geek: Plus you'll get some inconsistencies, that sound more natural.
FM: Right, it just... sounds... better!
Guitar Geek: Run us through a typical recording session. Where do you start?
FM: I'll use a drum machine as either an actual drum thing or a click track device and play guitar and sing. That's it. So I lay down a drum thing, a guitar thing, and a vocal thing, first run through. Then I just add and subtract tracks from there. Sometimes I add percussion tracks on top of that and then maybe drop out the drums. It can happen a million ways.
Barbara: What is consistent though, is he usually maps out ahead of time how the song should be structured and arranged; what kind of guide track to lay down.
Guitar Geek: With 8 tracks, it can be brain racking deciding where to play everything, when to bounce tracks, or laying down select guitar part on the same track where the vocals are, but when they aren't singing, junk like that.
FM: I can usually see this road map in my head; when to do this part first, that part second, verse here, back into this, and I know it'll end up at 2-3 minutes. It's hard to explain it 'cause I can't intellectualize it. It's intuitive. I just do it and I still haven't gotten used to people asking me how I record. People think there's some kind kind of secret recipe and I just don't know. The great thing about recording at home is you can listen back to your songs over and over again and see how it sounds. You can drop out a guitar part and make it a keyboard song, anything. Unless your the Beatles or Fleetwood Mac, with a billion dollars to throw away, you can't give that kind of attention to the songs, unless it's at home. You have the free time to sit back and listen to it at length. Think how long it takes just to mix one song...
Guitar Geek It takes hours!
FM: Minimum! You can take longer mixing it than actually recording it . To think of doing that at a "real" studio is mind boggling. I mean the fidelity in places like that is cool and everything, but if I were to ever go into one again it would have to be with someone I really trusted and who wouldn't charge me tons. That's a utopian scenario, but it would have to that kind of thing or hey, I'll just do it here at home. Maybe I could even upgrade my studio...
Guitar Geek With some Boss pedals!!!
FM: (laughs) Yeah, just splurge! My big thing would be to buy a guitar pedal that costs over a hundred dollars! But for now all my guitar pedals must be made of plastic!
Guitar Geek: I know it's hard to explain how the recording process works, and that's not really the main point I wanted to make. I would like to stress that all this can be done. A lot of very amazing bands and musicians are intimidated by the whole process of recording and releasing songs. To some people it seems unapproachable, almost like this huge wall, whereas people like Barbara and yourself have done it. The whole fallacy of getting signed to a big label, recording with a huge budget, blah, blah, blah. Yes, that is one way to do it, but you two have proven there is another route, another pathway to take. It's like you have sidestepped everything ridiculous and got right to the core of what needs to be done.
FM: Wow! That will look good in print. I wish I'd have said that!
Guitar Geek I could always switch the names! Barabara Oh yeah, and mmm, then FM said...
FM: The main thing is (in a mock British accent) you've just got to do it! You buy the machine, then poke around with it. Geez, go to any art gallery and you'll say, "That painting sucks, man! Why is that hanging on this wall?! I could do better than that!" That's the thing, you could! Buy some paint and canvas, go home and paint a picture. Then you'll have it hanging in Soho someday! It doesn't cost that much to record yourself, at least not compared to paying for time in a big studio. Buy a mic, plug your guitar into track and just see where it leads you. That's it! That's the secret. You can't be afraid. You can't say, "Oh, this doesn't sound as good as a Sebadoh thing, or a Ween cut, Guided By Voices," or whatever. Take the leap. The only difference between me and a lot of people out there is I have the will, bought the equipment and then actually recorded the songs
The inseparable duo of F.M. Cornog (a.k.a. East River Pipe) and Barbara Powers (a.k.a. Hell Gate Recordings) has been quietly recording and releasing some of the most sincere and heartfelt music since the turn of the decade. F.M. does the recording and Barbara does the releasing. As always, the curious staff here at Guitar Geek wanted to know just how they do it. In all the years we've been interviewing home-recordists this interview stands out as one of our favorites. F.M. and Barbara's enthusiasm and do-it-yourself work ethic should rub off on you by the end of this wonderful chat.
Guitar Geek: FM why do you record yourself?
FM: It's just the way I've always done it. I can't explain it. I've always liked tape recorders and I guess I like the control element of it also... Hey can I scratch that answer??
Guitar Geek: Yeah, sure start over...
FM: It's just like as opposed to what? I mean I record myself because this is very relaxed atmoshere here in the apartment and Tascam mini studios are the easiest things to use in the world. I don't have to go into a real recording studio and spend 25-50 bucks an hour. I can do it whenever I want to, I can wake up and go, "Hey I'm gonna do a song now>" I don't have to book time in a studio.
Guitar Geek: So as soon as inspiration hits, it can be on tape within minutes?
FM: Yeah, I like to record my stuff right when it's happening. Like right when I write a song. I don't do demos or anything, I just kind of go, "Oh geez, OK, this is kinda like a song here, so I'm gonna do this right away." And I just do it right at that moment. That's the other advantage of the mini-studio I guess the average band would ahve one guy who would write the song, he would have a rough little demo of it, bring it to his buddies, teach them the song, book some studio time, go into the studio and then watch this clock hanging over their heads. Then they have to think "Oh geez, do I want to keep this guitar part, or this one? That's too complicated for me , y'know, all that stuff. I like the immediacy of just one person. I don't collaborate with anybody, I go in, by myself, and get everything done whenever I want to.
Guitar Geek: Have you had any bad experiences in "pro" studios? Did that fuel your desire to want to record by yourself?
FM: I've actually only recorded one song ever in a "real" recording studio, so no, not really, no bad experiences. That was a long time ago. Basically I've always been into recording. Geez, when I was a kid I would get two little Panasonic tape recorders and bounce stuff off them. I'd play a piano part, record it. Then play the other tape recorder, while recording on the other, as I play another part over that one. I'd have another double track piano part I'd bounce and record again; real messy fidelity-wise, but who cares? I liked liked the fun off messing around with tape recorder and seeing what it sounded liked.
Guitar Geek: Are some of the reasons you record solo due to finances?
FM: Of course. It is so cheap to do it by yourself with just a mini-studio. You just need to come up with the money for the original investment of the mini-studio itself, seven hundred bucks or whatever.
Guitar Geek: What type of mini-studio do you have right now?
FM: I have a Tascam 388, it has eight tracks, but only six of them actually work. The two channels on the end are messed up, so it's really just a six track!
Guitar Geek: Is it one of those old 1/4 inch decks?
FM: Yeah, outside of that, all I have is really cheap stuff. The whole East River Pipe studio thing is that I don't have any expensive rack-mounted stuff. I only have cheap guitar pedals, I never used big named brands like Boss or something like that. Everybody uses those! I use cheap effects stuff, just so I'm not using the same pedals as everyone else Some pedals I play guitar through, or sometimes I even sing through them. What else do I have? Mmm, a cheap ESP Telecaster, an old Gibson bass, a little Peavey 50 amp, a cheap microphone, a few drums, a drum machine, a lot of percussive instruments, a few cheap keyboard-synthesizer type things, and that's about it. It's a simple set-up. I like that best. I like to concentrate on the song and the performance rather than the gear. If I had some expensive rack-mounted reverb unit, I'd be fiddling around with that trying to decide what kind of reverb I wanted, room size, or whatever complicated setting I should put it on. I like to plug the f***ing guitar in and play the song y'know? That's what all these East River River songs are, just very spontaneous things.
Guitar Geek: Is your technical knowledge of the recording process great, or do you just strictly go by what sounds good?
FM:I follow Ray Charles technique. His advice to people recording is: "As long as it's not distorting, it's fine." Obviously, he can't see the needle going into the red, so, if it's not fuzzy, leave it. Next to an engineer that works in a 24 track studio, I'm sure I don't know anything, but it doesn't matter how you record a song. Whether it's at home or in a super-deluxe studio is not important. What is important is that you have a good song and a good performance. That's what matters.
Guitar Geek: A lot of people get hung up on the techincal side of things, I guess.
FM: People tell me, "Oh, oooh, you're LO-FI, you're sooo D.I.Y." I'm not into LO-FI, I just don't want to spend fifty dollars an hour to go into some studio. I can do it right here, no pressure, no clock hanging over me, and do it whenever I want. I'm getting redundant now, but I'm not going for some lo-fi asthetic, it's just the way I've always done it. This is the natural way for me to do it. Other bands go into big studios and that's natural for them. I've been doing it this way for fifteen years.
Guitar Geek: I think a lot of people have purposely taken that route just to fit in with some lo-fi movement, but some people, myself included, have gone into studios and come out with nothing but horror stories. Y'know wasting tons of money, having some goofball for an engineer, or whatever. Experiences like that have driven lots of people into getting their own small recording set-ups and just doing it themselves.
FM: True. One time I had this old song of mine that I'd already recorded, but we didn't have anything to mix down to, like to two-track stereo. So we took it into this actual recording studio. This Tascam I have is incompatible with with anything, so you just have to take the whole board in. You can't just take the tape, because no studio has an 8 track 1/4 inch that fits with this deck. It's not like it's this big cumbersome thing, but we didn't have a car or anything. So we loaded it in this taxi and went to the studio. We get there and this studio guy decides he's going to mix my songs. The way he mixed my song and the way I would've mixed my songs are two different things. Recording wise too, there is a big difference in the way I would record and the way a studio guy would. A lot of my methods production-wise are much like Phil Spector or Brian Wilson. I double track a lot of guitars, whereas a lot of people would say, "buy this fancy guitar thing, like chorus pedal and that's kinda like double tracking in a way, plus it'll free up an extra track." But it's a totally different thing if you don't use that gizmo, an you actually sing or play it twice. It's a completely different feel.
Guitar Geek: Plus you'll get some inconsistencies, that sound more natural.
FM: Right, it just... sounds... better!
Guitar Geek: Run us through a typical recording session. Where do you start?
FM: I'll use a drum machine as either an actual drum thing or a click track device and play guitar and sing. That's it. So I lay down a drum thing, a guitar thing, and a vocal thing, first run through. Then I just add and subtract tracks from there. Sometimes I add percussion tracks on top of that and then maybe drop out the drums. It can happen a million ways.
Barbara: What is consistent though, is he usually maps out ahead of time how the song should be structured and arranged; what kind of guide track to lay down.
Guitar Geek: With 8 tracks, it can be brain racking deciding where to play everything, when to bounce tracks, or laying down select guitar part on the same track where the vocals are, but when they aren't singing, junk like that.
FM: I can usually see this road map in my head; when to do this part first, that part second, verse here, back into this, and I know it'll end up at 2-3 minutes. It's hard to explain it 'cause I can't intellectualize it. It's intuitive. I just do it and I still haven't gotten used to people asking me how I record. People think there's some kind kind of secret recipe and I just don't know. The great thing about recording at home is you can listen back to your songs over and over again and see how it sounds. You can drop out a guitar part and make it a keyboard song, anything. Unless your the Beatles or Fleetwood Mac, with a billion dollars to throw away, you can't give that kind of attention to the songs, unless it's at home. You have the free time to sit back and listen to it at length. Think how long it takes just to mix one song...
Guitar Geek It takes hours!
FM: Minimum! You can take longer mixing it than actually recording it . To think of doing that at a "real" studio is mind boggling. I mean the fidelity in places like that is cool and everything, but if I were to ever go into one again it would have to be with someone I really trusted and who wouldn't charge me tons. That's a utopian scenario, but it would have to that kind of thing or hey, I'll just do it here at home. Maybe I could even upgrade my studio...
Guitar Geek With some Boss pedals!!!
FM: (laughs) Yeah, just splurge! My big thing would be to buy a guitar pedal that costs over a hundred dollars! But for now all my guitar pedals must be made of plastic!
Guitar Geek: I know it's hard to explain how the recording process works, and that's not really the main point I wanted to make. I would like to stress that all this can be done. A lot of very amazing bands and musicians are intimidated by the whole process of recording and releasing songs. To some people it seems unapproachable, almost like this huge wall, whereas people like Barbara and yourself have done it. The whole fallacy of getting signed to a big label, recording with a huge budget, blah, blah, blah. Yes, that is one way to do it, but you two have proven there is another route, another pathway to take. It's like you have sidestepped everything ridiculous and got right to the core of what needs to be done.
FM: Wow! That will look good in print. I wish I'd have said that!
Guitar Geek I could always switch the names! Barabara Oh yeah, and mmm, then FM said...
FM: The main thing is (in a mock British accent) you've just got to do it! You buy the machine, then poke around with it. Geez, go to any art gallery and you'll say, "That painting sucks, man! Why is that hanging on this wall?! I could do better than that!" That's the thing, you could! Buy some paint and canvas, go home and paint a picture. Then you'll have it hanging in Soho someday! It doesn't cost that much to record yourself, at least not compared to paying for time in a big studio. Buy a mic, plug your guitar into track and just see where it leads you. That's it! That's the secret. You can't be afraid. You can't say, "Oh, this doesn't sound as good as a Sebadoh thing, or a Ween cut, Guided By Voices," or whatever. Take the leap. The only difference between me and a lot of people out there is I have the will, bought the equipment and then actually recorded the songs
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Beatles Re-Mania
I just watched the trailer to The Beatles Rock Band again.
And yes, i do think its awesome. It looks literally like they just animated photographs and movie reels of exact moments in the beatles career. And oh yeah, it comes out today!! I just read how Bill Wyman, former bass player of a little band called The Rolling Stones, thinks rock band is a bad thing. He thinks it encourages kids to not play real instruments. I must disagree with Bill. As a guitar teacher, i have actually gained many new young students specifically from Rock Band and Guitar Hero. What it really does is not really about the video game at all. It takes music, in this case the beatles catalog, and exposes it to a new generation. Where else are these 9 and 10 yr olds gonna hear this amazing music? And the kids who are motivated to learn an instrument, were going to go ahead and do it anyway. I can't imagine a driven kid who would get the game, who might be musically inclined , getting good at the game and then having it end there.
This is the future, get with it, or get left behind.
And yes, i do think its awesome. It looks literally like they just animated photographs and movie reels of exact moments in the beatles career. And oh yeah, it comes out today!! I just read how Bill Wyman, former bass player of a little band called The Rolling Stones, thinks rock band is a bad thing. He thinks it encourages kids to not play real instruments. I must disagree with Bill. As a guitar teacher, i have actually gained many new young students specifically from Rock Band and Guitar Hero. What it really does is not really about the video game at all. It takes music, in this case the beatles catalog, and exposes it to a new generation. Where else are these 9 and 10 yr olds gonna hear this amazing music? And the kids who are motivated to learn an instrument, were going to go ahead and do it anyway. I can't imagine a driven kid who would get the game, who might be musically inclined , getting good at the game and then having it end there.
This is the future, get with it, or get left behind.
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