Budgets pt 2 – number shock!
December 6th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Scenario 1: I can’t afford to spend 100k on my album like my favorite artist did.
Answer: Not many can. I’d be really curious to see the budget breakdown for an album like that, because you never know how much was actually spent on the essentials. How much was the great musician budget? How much spent on quality people for the recording side? Was it mostly photo shoots, dinner, and marketing?
The truly salient question: how many songs on this record are actually worth anything? If you’re in love with 2, then you’re only dealing with a 20k budget. Perhaps they wasted 80k.
That math is funny, but it really distills what our goals are. I don’t know about you, but my goal is never to spend money by itself. It’s usually always that tough door to walk through in order to get somewhere we wanna go. But this is the world of faster, cheaper, better. Sort of.
So back to our magic number: 310. In our last post, we looked at the budget breakdown values. Contentious, sure, but let’s keep going. Out of that 310, over half of that has very abstract values. You can’t put a price on songwriting, unless you’re buying songs, and then you better really be a good performer. Same with arranging. You could probably negotiate with a producer that sees value in you for a royalty based on sales for most of the fee, you’re left with a weird number of 150. Otherwise, it’s 210.
Maybe you’re the next Celine Dion or a performer that at best will co-write the songs when they’re not paying for them outright. For every dollar you invest on a 310 format: (On a 10k budget)
32% is songwriting (3200.00)
19% is arranging (producer budget) (1900.00)
13% is musicians (1300.00)
6% is recording (!!!!!) (600.00)
3% is mixing/mastering/post pro (300.00)
1.5% is photos/minimal duplication/distro (150.00)
24% is marketing. Should really be more. (2400.00)
210 format:
28% is arranging/production (2800.00)
20% is musicians (2000.00)
10% is recording (1000.00)
5% is mixing/mastering (500.00)
2% is photos/distro (200.00)
35% is marketing. Still should be more. (3500.00)
Wow. Fascinating. Maybe that’s yet another reason to do things one song at a time….. Food for thought there! tbc….
jrj
Jordan Rory Jackiew
Resosound Productions
www.resosound.com
Budgets pt 1 – and the most colorful math you’ll ever see
December 6th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Here’s some truly wacky math for you:
Let’s say it takes
A great song (A)
a great arrangement (B)
a great performance (C)
a great recording (D)
a great finishing touch (E)
a great delivery format (F)
a great marketing effort (G)
So… A+B+C+D+E+F+G= best chance at success you could ask for (X).
Are all those values equal? Certainly not. And in most cases, besides the first few, you can either convert money into time, or coast until you’ve got the most important parts covered.
So…
A great song (A) is what it’s all about. Something someone wants to hear. We have to like it. It costs us nothing to get unless you’re buying someone else’s, it’s just work ethic. Go write songs until your head spins and you’re great at it. It’s worth 100. Don’t even start until you have songs. No songs, nothing to spend money on. Don’t waste your time.
a great arrangement (B) puts the song into the way you could play it 100 times and have it rock every time. Great ideas. Adds to the song, puts it out there in a flattering way for yourself to present it. Get a producer. Pay her/him whatever they need, work out the arrangement. It’s worth 60.
a great performance (C) is done by truly passionate and skilled musicians/programmers. Pay them whatever they need. They’re awesome. Worth 40.
a great recording (D) doesn’t sound bad. It doesn’t get in the way of all the work before it, and it even can enhance the feeling of what’s being laid down. Here’s where so many things go wrong; it either derails here, or starts here without any work on the song/arrangement/musicians. Oops. It’s worth 20.
a great finishing touch (E) is like the mixing and the mastering. Important, but completely dependent on so so many things already. Pay for skill, not for hype, don’t make it worse. With a ‘slight’ amount of work you can find absolutely awesome people for dirt dirt cheap. The important thing is: don’t make it worse! If you do it yourself, and you’re not good at it, it’ll be worse. It’s worth 10.
a great delivery format (F) is nice artwork, a nice packaging idea or online look, something easy for people to access and enjoy. Once again, pros are better than people that suck, so unless you rock at it, don’t make it worse. Pros are still found cheap, don’t overpay. It’s worth 5.
a great marketing effort (G) is….. well…. kind of your only option for people to hear you. Doing gigs is marketing. A website is marketing. Holding up a sign on the side of the road is marketing. With no marketing, you don’t exist. I’d rate it at 100 except for the fact that sometimes great music sells itself, except there’s so much music out there, we’ll settle for whatever jumps in front of us. It’s worth 75, cause song is king, but… really. Huge. I probably shouldn’t have even said that whole ‘good music markets itself’ stuff because everyone already thinks everything they do is great. Fact is, most people need an honest and sober look at who likes it, and how it obviously isn’t marketing itself. If you need marketing, because people aren’t jumping in front of you to shower you with success, you probably need marketing ‘and’ song/arrangement/performance help.
So 100+60+40+20+10+5+75= X
The best chance of success you can get is a number: 310.
Think about that…. tbc
jrj
Jordan Rory Jackiew
Resosound Productions
www.resosound.com
Starting your career – Nobody owes you anything
November 11th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
***Warning*** Sober topic****
We just hit the 5th job inquiry this week. The grade 9 student doesn’t really count, but they were smartest about how they approached me. Asking for career advice is tough to turn down, asking for money…. well…. don’t be surprised if that comes up short!
We all want to do well. We all make this our career, and call this our livelihood. But as musicians…. we don’t compare to the car salesman and lawyers. It’s a better phrase ‘having a career in music’ than saying ‘musician’. When people ask what I do, I really try not to hesitate or use the M word, and reply ‘Music Producer’. It sounds organized and aggressive enough to merit some respect, and is still vague enough to not be put in the same category as ‘power-broker’. It’s a funny brand, a musician. It means we’re just trying to get a gig. And then another one. And another. It’s about ‘that’ organized and thought-through. Living day-to-day, seizing opportunities and scraping by. Just about zero planning. Kinda depressing…
Ok, so if we don’t pick up an instrument and look for performing gigs and tours, then we must be ‘industry’ people. We look around for ‘work’ in our field, whatever role…. and it’s the same thing. Get a gig. Do it. Do another one. Zero planning. Time is like a big straight line…. from the start to the end of our ‘career’, same thing with some ups and downs. But ultimately going nowhere.
I can hear what you’re saying. “Nope, not me, I’m totally going somewhere. I’m awesome!” And there, lies the sober lesson for us all: Nobody owes us anything.
Regardless of talent, there are no guarantees. Nobody has to like your voice, nobody has to like how you play, no one has to like your song, no one has to get you a gig, nobody has to recognize your so-in-with-the-times creative genius. A sober subject for sure!
I know a singer with an amazing voice, walked in to a regular corporate gig I do with a rotating door of frontmen. By and far she was the most difficult to work with, showed up late, unprepared, and had attitude. Great voice! Never hired again by the client. A while ago they also invested in a few original tunes for her and hired a producer and the whole deal… songs turned out great…. and went nowhere. She just couldn’t believe that once they were on iTunes, nobody bought them. Nice voice! Anyone that’s worked with me: haha no it’s not you! This person wouldn’t ever make it to this blog. They left town and went traveiling, disillusioned that their talent wasn’t recognized. If you only remember one piece of career advice it’s this: don’t leave town and disappear right after finally releasing some music. Lol. Fact is, no one knew she was even on iTunes, or when she was gigging, or that she was awesome. And she wasn’t in the mind space to let anyone know, either. Without a label, it’s next to useless. But the real fact is that the labels are the ones looking for eager people who can take care of themselves! Most of the bands I’ve seen signed or even approached were done so because they made their own scene.
Talent isn’t enough. It takes work ethic. The world’s full of people loaded with talent and lazy as….ya, and with crazy hard-working ambition yet zero aesthetic qualities. Another world-class singer showed up to the studio last night for a money-gig and had no idea what they were doing. Zero work ethic. Around-in-circles they go. Do you think they need an investor or a lottery or piles of gear so they can get their project done? I guarantee you, equipment will get them nowhere. Equipment will get us all nowhere. Our problem is not budget. It’s never budget. Budget determines the car we drive, not how well our careers go.
I get emails all the time with resumes and offers to take work off my hands or to hire them, as if one random encounter merits and exchange of funds. We haven’t even put the word out we’re hiring. But someone believes they’re awesome somewhere, or they’ve gone to school for it, and they believe they’re owed gigs and recognition for what they’ve done. That’s not how the world works. Nobody owes us anything. If the company we work for can’t afford to keep us on, or we’re no longer able to benefit the whole, they let us go. When they need people, they ask. They still take what they think is the best candidate, based on ‘their’ idea of what rocks, regardless of resume. Those who are invaluable, stay invaluable. Those who aren’t, really need to ‘make’ themselves invaluable to someone, because that’s all that pays. If your songs make people feel so good they’re willing to pay for it, great! If your engineering talent helps out a producer so much they can’t live without you, great! If not, you’re going to have to prove it to a lot of people before they’ll value you enough to pay you. And there it is. It’s self-employment. No steady cheques. Go out there and get it. Prove it. Nobody owes you anything. Doesn’t matter who you are. You have to become valuable.
jrj
Jordan Rory Jackiew
Resosound Productions
www.resosound.com
Assimilating Free Spirits – Get a Rig
October 27th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
If you’re not recording yourself at home, you’re really missing out. iLife ’11 came out yesterday, shipping with every new Mac, and the improvements to Garageband give just about anyone who can own a (pricier) computer the ability to make their own grooves, add keyboard parts, and record anything with a mic. Basically, your own recording studio with almost any instrument at your fingertips.
Will it sound like the latest major-label release? Well… sorta actually. It’s still one of the best ways to use samples and add artificial sounds if you like.
It’s the easiest and most portable way to record a demo when an idea comes to you, document songwriting sessions, and even have fun making up random stuff with sounds you”ll nevvvvver release to the public. It’s creativity, just get it out there and see what happens.
The important thing is having control. When you have the mic AND the tape recorder, you pick whatever you record. No producers, engineers, buddies, family, gnomes, enchanted unicorns interfering with your whole color-thought process and inspired music making. It’s your sanctuary, where no one ever has to hear what you lay down or say or sing or play, and you can try anything. That’s right: all you folkies can get your dance on, and techies can get your granola on.
You learn the art of self-producing, which, of course, everyone is a genius at already, haha.
But if you don’t have your own avenue to just get whatever you feel on tape and document it, like a napkin from the future, your journey just won’t go as quick. A singer came in the studio a few years ago, played piano and sang over top, and their jaw dropped when I added some bells (christmas song) and another little tinkly thing. They emailed back, and wanted me to send them a list of every sound I had so that they could know their options and come to the studio better prepared…… yikes.
So what does it take? You might have a rig already, but the magic is in the application. You know what the best rig is? The one that’s the quickest and easiest to use. Get music done. You shouldn’t have to turn a crank, press a button, pray to the technology gods, sprinkle a powder and do a take hoping it doesn’t crash.
You want to lay the idea down. Focus on the songwriting, on the part, on the hook, on the feeling, on the point. Don’t try to win a Grammy for engineering. You don’t have to yet. If you lose the whole self-producer mentality, you’ll absolutely love recording yourself and getting your ideas down. If all you can think of is wishing you had preamp X, you’ve got the same attitude as an A&R guy. Wrong team, lol.
Do the stuff that makes you unique, your song and your performance. Document it, evaluate it tweak it, retrack it. Then, when you’ve got a ton of ideas down that you absolutely love, you’re ready to record for real. Whole other ball game.
jrj
Jordan Rory Jackiew
Resosound Productions
www.resosound.com
Career Booster – 15 minutes
October 15th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
As independent artists, we either get out of bed one day or we don’t. If we do a gig, people hear us. If we book a gig, we do a gig. If we fish for bookings, we get some. If we look for fans, we’ll find some. If we…
If it happens.
It’s very natural to stick to what you do well. Just write songs, play shows, make music, cool hangs. But if you’re doing things on your own, or with very few people behind you, things just won’t move unless you do some things that feel annoying, uncomfortable, and just plain make you want to stay in bed all day.
I just wrapped up a new project for a client who I think has a lot of talent, and already has a fan base. You could tell though that they were experiencing the ‘end of the creative part’ blues; with all the fun of making music over with, there was nothing left except marketing the heck out of it, booking shows, and being a communications wizard.
Normally we have managers and staff that take care of those kinds of things. Hopefully, one day you will. But the beginning artist is on their own, whether singer, band, instrumentalist, producer, engineer…. and it’s a crucial time where you either make something happen enough to keep going at it, and one day feel a sense that you’ve won, or you don’t even start.
What I recommend is to take a friend or family member, someone you get along with and could also talk in a semi-formal context, and ask them to have coffee with you once a week, just to talk about yourself. It’s to keep the momentum, to come up with new ideas, and to get a gauge of how your career is moving forward, if at all, week to week. If you show up and your friend asks how the week went, and you haven’t done anything besides make music, you’ve basically gone and contributed to the notion that there is no shortage of talent in the world. There certainly isn’t. We could be missing out on the next Beatles, Nirvana, Busta, Prince or whoever, because they sprung for the law degree instead. What makes you different is that you didn’t. You’re here. You’re making music. Full time, or close. To work on your talent. But it isn’t just about talent. We would never have heard of our heroes had they not taken at least a few steps in the direction of the self-employed and got out there.
I feel for my client because I had a lot of fun working on the music. I think the people that hear it are going to like it. I think it has an excellent chance at not only breaking even, because the budget was as low as we could do, but sustaining their career for the next while and being an excellent step forward. It’s sad when you have a good thing but you lose steam and leave important things to never get done.
This fits in with just about everything else in life, and something we as the artistically-inclined frequently fail at: balance.
Just 15 minutes. Write in your blog. Update your twitter. Make a video. Network. Write an email. Schedule a coffee. Book a gig. Put out a feeler email. Post something somewhere that will take the burden off the unbearable act of careeer admin just a little bit. Just a tiny bit a day. Every day. Like breathing.
You might find getting all those horrible things done is a lot simpler than you think.
You can tell I’m an idealist at heart here, all these posts with overly simplified truths.
They work.
jrj
Jordan Rory Jackiew
Resosound Productions
www.resosound.com
Seasons Change – Being Inspired
September 9th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Windows, trees and seasons. That’s how I measure time. The look of the wind rustling the leaves, and how outside everything is quite occupied doing very little. Sun, cloud, wind, rain, snow, ice, melt, warm, cool, repeat. We’ll keep witnessing it until our time here passes. I share a small field of land in the middle of nowhere with my family, it used to be my favorite place in the world. It’s been vacant and abandoned for just over 15 years. If I leave a chair out in the open, it stays there. The grass grows, the chair ages, but little changes. The biggest impact that field will have is when a person walks into it and does something, like place a chair, cut the grass, make a fire, put up a building, plant or cultivate. Otherwise, time just passes, and does its own thing.
My good friend and rad producer Adrian Bradford and I would wander the city and philosophize in our youth. We talked about the idea that time passing can either be a good or bad thing, depending on how you’re inspired. If you see things like the chair in the field does, you’re only going to get older, and only look forward to avoiding calamity, hoping that someone visits and makes something different. It’s easy to get tired and treat our careers like that, hoping that someone will come and make something happen with our music. Or if you’re a producer that you’ll meet that awesome band or artist and that’ll be your big break. We’re all hoping for that big break.
See, nature has something on us. Just as it’ll slowly age and breakdown that chair invading the field, and the vegetation will gradually overtake it, it also works to overtake everything else we put out in the open, one day at a time. Our streets crack, weeds grow, trees let loose seeds into the wind and start new ones… life keeps going on pursuing its own agenda. No matter how big the parking lot we build overtop the soil, things will begin to grow under and eventually break free.
Our own agenda? The big break. The one thing that raises us up above everyone else. Our lottery ticket out of normality. The easy way.
Take it one step at a time instead, one day at a time, one hour at a time. Do what you do. Writers, write songs. Producers, make beats, arrange tunes, share with artists. Players, practice, play, share, gig. Make everyday a slow and steady step towards where you want to be, and don’t worry about growing a tree’s height in one day. Let it take a while, but don’t worry.
Seasons change, and we all feel differently with time. Sometimes we’re happy, sad, afraid, excited, cynical, elated, depressed, euphoric. Creative people run the whole wheel of emotions in a day. What days those are! Go with it. Write depressed songs, make a downer beat, explore the dark side of life, and come back out and go the other way as your mood changes. When the leaves change colour, let your attitude change; don’t fight everything to hold on to your frame of mind. If you’re working hard, you’ll have thoroughly mined the creativity out of one season so when it passes, you can embrace the change and move on. Move ahead. People look to us to lead their emotions.
I had a unique experience a few years back reacquainting myself with a very good friend. He asked me to pick up someone on the way to our meeting, someone I hadn’t seen in a very long time, and didn’t really care to see. We spoke in the car about our professions, and turns out he was earning his doctorate in physics, specifically enhancing MRI machines. I thought so highly of what he did and asked him questions, letting him know my admiration, but all he wanted to do was talk about music. He replied, “But you make people happy.”
There’s entertainment, there’s our song-and-dance, and there’s art. You say something, play something, record something, and it touches someone. They relate, they agree, they disagree, they love, they hate; they feel. They live. We’re more alive with music. To make music, and to spend our lives making music is something special, and it’s funny that to even our greatest champions on this earth in science, industry, business, athletics, what we do is magic. That’s gotta feel good. There’s hope in that. Don’t lose hope.
jrj
Jordan Rory Jackiew
Resosound Productions
www.resosound.com
