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If you have song ideas and want to capture them, there’s no need to be timid. We offer good advice on getting started and achieving early success.


OK, quiz time... are you a songwriter, beat-maker, or composer, desiring to share your music with the world? Do you imagine recording yourself, but you have no idea where to start or what to buy? Have you acquired some recording gear, mics, or workstation software, but are intimidated and/or frustrated by the technology and can’t seem to actually make music?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you are a candidate for one of the most satisfying hobby-careers of the modern world: the recording songwriter. Now is the time to dive in, overcome whatever has stopped you to date, and unleash the creativity within!...

Read more in the March 2010 issue of RECORDING!

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One-man creative operations must juggle inspiration and preparation. Here’s how to make sure your muse doesn’t get lost on the way to the recording session!


If you were lucky, as a kid you did the Hokey Pokey. To me there was always a certain profundity in the idea that moving your feet and hands in the described manner, and then turning yourself around, was “what it's all about”.

Take a look around you. Is anyone watching? If not, just for old times’ sake try doing the Hokey Pokey again. Go ahead, it won’t hurt. But this time, while you’re doing the prescribed motions, try expounding on one of your most creative, original ideas. Describe your idea in great detail and even try to enhance it, all the while moving your right foot in, right foot out, etc. This is what it’s like when you’re recording by yourself.

Wearing many hats in any creative endeavor—especially modern computer-based recording, with its eclectic mix of right brain/left brain activity—can be a difficult challenge. On the other hand, there’s an intense personal satisfaction that comes from nurturing a creative idea from conception to fruition all on your own. While it’s true that many ideas can benefit from the perspective of another person, it’s equally true that creative concepts can get watered down when compromises are made....

Read more in the March 2010 issue of RECORDING!

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It’s breath-taking, and a bit frightening, to see how many changes a basic demo can go through as it becomes a finished piece. This step-by-step example shows how musical decisions meet technical limitations and result in a great song.


Anyone who’s ever tried to write music in any form, from the classic 3-minute pop song to a full-length score for a feature film, knows that the finished form of the work often barely resembles its humble beginnings.

Along the way, from rough idea to polished master, a musical composition typically undergoes many changes, in every aspect—words, melody, harmony, rhythm, arrangement, production, mix. Any number of creative types may get their hands on it and exert influence, direct or indirect, on the final result. And sometimes, unrelated extramusical circumstances can push the music this way or that.

Creative studio personnel know this arc well—the path to the finished piece may be fairly straightforward or tortuously indirect. This article is meant to chronicle one such development, a simple pop song which was subjected to various musical, production, and technical massaging on its way to the goal line. Long-time songwriters most likely will find this all too familiar, and anyone just embarking on a musical/creative path may get a taste of the winding road that (typically) lays ahead....

Read more in the March 2010 issue of RECORDING, and lick the links below for short audio excerpts of parts of the song described in the article!

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Are you convinced that a polished production can never match the magic in your first demo? Don’t worry, help is on the way.


Matthew Good’s definition of demoitis is “what happens when you listen to one version of something so much that when it’s properly recorded it’s difficult to accept.” Most recording songwriters are afflicted by the epidemic of demoitis. If you’re one of them, then an inexplicable attachment to the original “demo” version can have you running in circles trying to re-create “the magic”, despite efforts to re-record the same song with better equipment, more experienced players, or a bigger-name producer.

This sentimental attachment to a particular way you’ve been used to hearing the song can be tough to shake, but why is that such a bad thing? Well, it can be destructive to the music-making process, alienating you with your affliction from other musicians and recording professionals. So if you’re planning on taking your demo to “the next” level and record your song in a pro facility, beware! You’re a prime candidate for contracting demoitis; in fact, you may already be a carrier of the virus and don’t even know it! The good news is that with treatment, those with demoitis can live relatively normal lives and even have successful careers....

Read more in the March 2010 issue of RECORDING!

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In the first instalment of our new series on the basics of protecting your output, an entertainment lawyer lays out the basics of copyright law.


From Lorenz Rychner's introduction to the series:

"Making music is a lot of fun—but if you do enough of it, there comes a time when it should pay for itself. No matter what your involvement is—songwriter, performer, composer, recording musician—you have rights, risks, and obligations, and knowing what they are can make you—and save you—a lot of money.

We’re starting a new series that will spell out in great detail what those rights, risks, and obligations are. Frequent contributor Bruce Kaphan, who runs his own studio and has written, played, recorded and produced music for a living for many years, and Todd Gascon, Bruce’s longstanding entertainment lawyer who specializes in this business we’re in, collaborate to bring you the legal aspects and the musician’s reality. Use the information in this series as a guide, and always remember to discuss your specific situation with a lawyer of your own choice.

In this issue that is mainly dedicated to songwriters, we meet Todd Gascon who brings us the legal definitions of copyright. Next time we’ll meet Bruce Kaphan, who will discuss the musician’s practicalities (and difficulties) of going through the copyrighting process. That’s only the beginning; in the months to come, Todd and Bruce will address the entire range of legal and business concerns that can turn your musical activities from an expensive hobby into a profitable career."

Read more in the March 2010 issue of RECORDING!

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Robin Trower, Tommy Emmanuel, and Steve Vai understand the value of good dynamics control in their guitar recording chains. Now you can, too.


Compression can be a very subtle effect, or it can be used in extreme fashion, especially on guitar. There are many things to consider when using a compressor on a guitar. For instance, on a tube amp that is overdriven, the tubes are actually compressing the signal, so when you mike an overdriven tube amp there is really no need for you to compress when recording. On the other hand, when an acoustic guitar is recorded with a mic there are many sound transients of uneven levels that affect the dynamics of the guitar strings. Hence compressing the track helps to control the musical integrity of the performance to your recording source. I sat down with three distinctly different gunslingers to discuss their take on compressing guitar...

Read more in the March 2010 issue of RECORDING!

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A track on the new Celldweller album has an amazing variety of vocal tricks. Here’s what you’re hearing and how it was done.


My approach to the new Celldweller album has been different than any other prior to it: I decided to track all my vocals before I did anything else. This would enable me to build my songs around my voice, instead of my typical approach, which is to build dense musical tracks and try to cram vocals in there somewhere.

The song “Louder Than Words” is a good example of this concept working in a real-world scenario. When the vocals where finally edited to death (more on this later) there wasn’t much room left for my typically dense musical production, so I was forced to be selective with how I built the track.

I knew I wanted the verse vocal to retain its melodic elements, but I wanted to glitch and process it in all kinds of ungodly ways to make the vocal more interesting. I wanted the vocal to almost have a rhythmic quality on its own. In this Vocal Column, I’ll break the song down from top to bottom to show how I ended up with the glitched-out verse vocals, and you can hear the results on my website...

Read more and get the site links to the song (and to audio you can try remixing yourself!) in the March 2010 issue of RECORDING!

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The Ukulele Factor.


As I type this in January 2010, the NAMM Show has been over for just a few days, and in my post-show musings I’ve made some observations that I’d like to share. They relate to one of the intangibles of a trade show that you can’t get from a press release or photo or video—the mood of the show...

Some would argue that no sensible manufacturer would admit to having a bad year, so no matter how bad things are, people will always smile and say they’re peachy. Maybe so. Maybe the cautious enthusiasm I felt in every corridor and exhibit hall at NAMM, a marked contrast to the bravery-under-the-blitz attitude of last fall’s AES Convention, was nothing more than a collective hallucination, and all the statements of “my orders are up for the first time in a long time; last spring looked horrible but we’re seeing strong sales at long last” are exaggerations to bolster sagging confidence. But there are other ways of seeing that things are turning around. One could, for example, look at the ukuleles...

Read more in the March 2010 issue of RECORDING!

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