Reflection

The research I have undertaken in this blog has given me a better understanding of the current developments of the music industry and the strategies I might want to employ in the future from the perspective of both a musician and a producer. 

The music industry is currently undergoing a process of transformation, in which standards and expectations are gradually changing to reflect the current decentralisation and democratisation of the music business in general. Technology granted the independent musician the tools to make the independent model a viable option and changed the market and the balance of power in the music industry. Not only are there opportunities for self-promotion and self-distribution, but it is expected of the artist to make use of them; otherwise, in the overcrowded medium where everyone has the capability to make and distribute music, creative voices who do not have the other non-music-related skills to make themselves heard, might be left behind. As an independent musician, I found that I am struggling with this issue; being in charge of all aspects of production, from writing, arranging, mixing, mastering, artwork, publishing, marketing and promotion (including filming and video editing for Youtube videos) can prove to be very difficult, for the very reason that it is time-consuming. Through my research I discovered that I am not alone in the situation and even academics have investigated the danger of musicianship being superseded in importance by the business skills the musician possesses, when it comes to building a career as an independent musician.

This assignment has encouraged me to explore many of the articles I found while working on my bibliography for the first Research and Inquiry assignment and to compile useful information from different sources in the mini-articles that I posted on the blog. Of course, there are interesting areas that I have not written about, because of time constraints and the academic nature of the assignment (I have tried to keep a sense of unity throughout the blog); however, I discovered that I enjoy writing and I am considering continuing this blog and expanding it, to encompass views and opinions of fellow musicians; possible future topic could be music publishing, production tutorials, interviews with musicians and sound engineers or simply presenting and promoting new bands and artists. 

The development of the music industry is a fascinating topic and extremely relevant to my professional practice. I found that keeping a blog is an excellent way of tracking my progress. It is easy to remember new ideas when you write them down and to also build upon old thoughts or strategies when you can go back to them at anytime. It can also be very useful to retrace steps and analyse results, with the purpose of trying different approaches in the future. I now feel more confident in the path that I have taken and the research and reflection in this blog helped me clear up some preconceptions and encouraged me to shape a future strategy for pushing further my music career.

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Power to the ‘middle-class’ musician. Heading towards a musical socialism?

In 2011, the American band Cake released their sixth album, ‘Showroom of Compassion’ on their own label. With only 44,000 copies sold in the first week, it broke the record for the lowest-selling No.1 album. When asked in an interview about his views on this dubious record, the band’s frontman, John McCrea, said: 

I see music as a really great hobby for most people in five or 10 years. I see everybody I know, some of them really important artists, studying how to do other jobs (Bylin, 2015).

While it is true that sales of music records decreased, the music business is still in good shape, it is only the record business that is suffering (Kusek, Leonhard 2005, p. 6). The same opinion is reflected in a thread of comments in response to McCrea’s statement quoted above, such as:

Rather than echoing the sentiments of the big fish over and over and over, how about covering some of us little guys who are making it happen and living the dream? The music industry may be dying but the MUSIC is alive and well.

(Posted by Jason Parker | 03/04/2011 at 04:55 PM)

or

Artist that deliver great music while building a True Fan base can make a decent living in music. Earning a living depends on how many customers you can attract to you and your products. Perfect your music and work on building your fan base each minute of the day.

(Posted by: KSE | 03/08/2011 at 09:19 AM)

Such voices can be heard in different parts of the Internet, suggesting that things are not so bad or so different for the ‘middle-class’ musician and that the decline affected mostly the top.  

The research I have done so far with books and articles and my own experience as a songwriter/producer seems to lead to the same conclusion: small, independent artists have now the power to perform activities which in the past were only possible through record labels, such as recording, distribution and promotion. Independent musicians can put their music in the same online stores alongside superstars. Artists can get direct funding from their fans for albums, tours, music videos and the likes. Niche musicians can easily reach audiences from all over the world. The Internet seems to be a blessing for the small artists, offering tools for many of them to reach audiences and sell music and merchandise. 

This unprecedented freedom levels the music industry in a way that wasn’t possible before and diminishes the power and influence of record labels, which are more aware of the risks and tend to invest less in new talent. 

But this new situation raises questions: as more and more artists will use the tools that technology made available, will the record labels decline to the point of disappearance? How ‘big’ can an artist become without a label? It seems that musicians who have had great success under the independent model (such as Amanda Palmer, or Radiohead) were already famous or had been signed to a label in the past. In a future where labels disappear, what will happen when the last generation of ‘superstars’ vanishes? Will the Internet be able to replace them with online new-found stars? If so, will their careers be ’15-minute-of-fame’ sensations quickly replaced by others? 

Could we be heading towards a form of musical socialism in which stars will disappear and all musicians will be independent, relying on small communities of fans? This is certainly a possibility. It is also possible that record labels might find new ways of maintaining their supremacy, as they have had for decades or that new gatekeepers will rise. One thing is certain: the change is happening and nobody knows where it leads. There is no recipe for success; but there is potential to try out an infinite number of strategies and see which ones work for each particular artist. This a topic of future reflection for me, but it is encouraging to think that, even though the possibilities of getting signed to a big record label are slim, there are still ways to use the internet and build a sustainable fan base. 

References

Bylin, K. (2015). Will Music Be A Hobby in 5-10 Years?. Available at: http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2011/03/will-music-be-a-hobby-in-5-10-years.html (Accessed 30.12.2015).

Kusek, D.and Gerd, L. (2005) The Future of Music: Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution. Boston, MA: Berklee Press.

Interview with a fellow independent musician/producer

Today I felt like trying out a different type of 'research' rather than reading journals. I thought it would be interesting to hear from someone who is in a similar situation with me - another musician/producer, so I asked one of my course mates from my undergraduate degree (Creative Music Technology) to send me written answers to a few questions.

Kye Voce plays guitar and synths/launchpad in a band called Stitch and is also in charge of production/mixing the band's music. Currently the band live together in Bournemouth, taking a year off after graduation to just write music together, record it and post videos on youtube.

This is a video of the band that they re-posted on Facebook a couple of days ago and, after watching, I decided to send the questions to Kye:


Here are the questions and answers:

1. You (not sure if just you or all Stitch members) produce your band’s music. Could you please comment on how you feel about being a musician/producer (is it liberating - you can allow yourself to be creative without limits, is it too time-consuming? how much time do you spend on production as opposed to writing/performing music)

I find that whilst it is liberating and exciting, it is equally daunting and stressful due to the fact that it is only myself and the other members of Stitch making all the creative and non-creative decisions. Because of this, I feel as though our judgment and creative decisions can become stagnated within the triangle of us three - we are our own creative team and therefore 99% of decisions come from within the band. This means that there is no set of ‘fresh ears’ to come in and provide an external outlook at the song writing, production or mix. We are therefore reliant upon our own self-judgement from the initial writing to the release of a track, which can make it very difficult to make critical and un-biased decisions. This can lead to doubting and second-guessing some decisions, which can become very time consuming as you can easily start going round in circles. I find often than not, that initial idea is the best and that I eventually end up going back to it.

2. How do you maintain an online presence? Have you got any future plans or strategies to gain more fans? We are quite rubbish at keeping an online presence across the main social media platforms. We primarily use Instagram for regular casual photo and video posts, whilst our ‘serious’ posts, these being the release of originals, covers and announcements, are released on YouTube covers and then shared via Facebook and Blogs. We occasionally tweet, but we really dislike Twitter’s format - it’s so cluttered and demands so much constant attention to keep up with everything. Our future strategies include releasing and getting our music reviewed through pre and post release blogs.

3. If you were to choose between: being independent or being signed with a big label who takes care 
of all aspects for you (legal&copyright, booking&management, distribution, promotion, recording and production, etc.) at the cost of losing creative control over your music, what would you choose?

My preference would be to stay independent, so as to keep the primary creative control, however to increase the size of our team to include knowledgeable external team members. This would be in the form of producers, mix engineers, videographers, marketing, management, legal, distribution etc., as this would allow Stitch to focus more time on practicing and performing. However, this of course all requires money and funding, and to acquire this team would most likely require either a) Stitch becoming financeable profitable through our current course of action (Stitch doing all the work), b) finding external investor (i.e. a label), or c) pot luck in finding a team willing to do all this for very little initial money!

4. What’s your main DAW and three favourite plugins? 4. Logic Pro X is my main DAW and my three favourite plugins in no particular order are: Waves EMI TG12345 Channel Strip Waves H-Reverb Waves S1 Stereo Imager

Further Thoughts on Mastering

I have just downloaded Bob Katz's 'The Art of Mastering' and I intend to read through it. Chapters 9 and 10 which deal with dynamics in mastering sound particularly interesting. I have started reading chapter 9 and I already have some observations that I noted down!

Katz recommends avoiding multi-band compressor, unless one wants to change the mix. A multi-band compressor splits the audio information in several bands, so one band will not be affected if another is compressed. For example, in my track, I can use less compression on the high end in Waves's UltraMaximizer, to avoid the aforementioned sibilance. An interesting fact is that TC Electronics was among the first who introduced multi-band processing with their M2000 Effect Processor and, later, with the Finalizer - which I used to master the first version of 'Glass Sky'.

Katz recommends not using bus compression when mixing! which is something I have been doing in the past; recently at work, I started mixing without any bus compression and only adding it at the end, to emulate the mastering stage and make any changes that become apparent to be problematic at a mastering stage.

I also found out that the 'lack of breath' in my final product is caused by hypercompression. Hypercompression leads to lack of dynamics, loss of transient information, track sounding fatiguingly loud at all times, sounds ‘squashed’; the loud bits sounding ‘wimpy’; instruments that are meant to be in the background becoming loud and upfront.

For 'invisible' compression, Bob Katz recommends a light ratio of 1.01 to 1.1 (compression ratios most common used range between 1.5 and 3.0) and a very low threshold; larger ratios can reveal breathing, pumping or other artefacts (for example, in my track, sibilance). Another way of achieving transparent compression is parallel compression, furthered detailed in chapter 10 - which I haven't read yet, but I intend to do soon and put into practice - most probably after Christmas, as I don't have proper monitoring at home. 

References
Katz, B. (2008) Mastering Audio: The Art and the Science. Oxford: Focal Press

EP-related work: Mastering 'Under The Glass Sky'

My experience with mastering is limited; even though I had done it in the past, I seldom managed to to achieve the loudness of commercially released recordings. In fact, the only time I managed to do it was recently, with 'Lotus Flower' (I wrote about it here).

As I have been posting earlier, I recently started working on a database of Youtube and SoundCloud channels to which I will submit tracks for reposting, for promotional purposes. One of these channels is Mr Suicide Sheep, a channel that publishes a variety of electronic music, with a preference for slower genres. When I wrote 'Under The Glass Sky', I wrote it with the thought in the back of my mind that it would be a suitable track to submit to Mr Suicide Sheep for consideration.

However, comparing to other tracks on the aforementioned channel, I realised that, in terms of loudness, my track was much inferior to everything else published there. Therefore, I spent my weekend trying to remaster it and make it as loud as possible, without clipping.

This first version was mastered with outboard effects, using a Lexicon 300 Digital Effect Processor and the T.C. Electronics Finalizer, on PMC LB1 Passive Studio Monitors at the Royal College of Music, London:
Now, the issue I have is that I am unable to access the original mix, so I am trying to increase the loudness of a track that has already been mastered! This, of course, is a practice which is not recommended, but I particularly like the warmth of the Finalizer and the EQ-ing I did with outboard, and I have no means of going back to the College and re-use the equipment anytime soon.

After the success with 'Lotus Flower', I thought I could use the same processes and plugins to achieve similar results. But, as Glenn Meadows said, I found out that:

“There is no magic silver bullet. There is no one magic anything that will be the ‘best’ in all situations. The ability of the operator to determine what it is that needs to be done and pick the best combination of tools is more important than what tools are used.” (Meadows, quoted in Fenn, 2014)

The most notable change I made with mastering 'Glass Sky' was to introduce two new plugins that I've never used before: IK Multimedia's T-Racks (soft clipper) and DUY Wide (stereo imager). Both plugins were recommended in a Youtube tutorial that I watched and I decided to download the demos and try them for myself.

I am absolutely blown away by both of them. Unfortunately at the moment I don't have the money to purchase them after the demos expire, but they're definitely on the bucket list.

DUY Wide is the best stereo imager I have ever tried - I am comparing it to Waves S1, with the stereo imagers included with Logic or Pro Tools and with the imager function in Izotope Ozone. DUY Wide seems to widen the stereo field without losing the center and creates the illusion of the sound being pushed to the left and right beyond the speakers!

T-Racks is a soft clipper. Clipping is a form of distortion which appears as a result of attempting to raise the level of the audio over 0dB. The sound becomes squashed as the waveform turns into a square waves, leading to distortion. What a soft clipper does is cut momentary peaks out of the waveform, so the overall level can be raised. I found it very useful when mastering 'Glass Sky', because it meant I could push up the level a bit more without clipping.

Another new technique that I used was a light side-chain compression to tighten the low-end, with the settings as shown in the picture:

I tried different plugins with different settings and ended up with 11 different masters! 

Below is my final version of the track, however, I am still not happy with it! I finally managed to reach the loudness of the tracks I was comparing with, but

I am aware of the fact that it sounds over-compressed, with no dynamic and (for me, at least!) it is fatiguing to the ears.
 

I have given up for the moment and try again later. I am considering completely remixing the track and start a fresh master. I will also search the online library for Bob Katz's 'The Art of Mastering', which was recommended by Bruce Aisher in one of our lectures and see if I can find some helpful advice in there.


References

Fenn Audio Mastering, (2014). Mastering Process Technical Essay. [online] Available at: http://www.fennaudio.com/news-reviews/2014/12/29/mastering-process-technical-essay [Accessed 18 Dec. 2015].

A musician/producer/creative entrepreneur: Jack Conte

According to Scott (2012, p. 238), independent DIY musicians who create and perform music, as well as self-manage the construction of a musical career, are typical cultural entrepreneurs. Musicians are encouraged more and more to think of their music as a startup business. At the early stage of their careers, musicians face many of the challenges and constraints of entrepreneurs in other settings, such as situations where they have to find ways to finance, budget, brand and sell. Hracs (2009, p. 458) also observes how the working lives of the contemporary independent musicians are moving away from “artist” or “bohemian” models of creative production to encompass a more professionalised entrepreneurial model.

Styvén (2007) investigated music intangibility in the internet age. She identified problems resulting from music dematerialisation and provided solutions from the marketing literature on how to deal with them. Many of her suggestions can be found in the concept of music as a service, such as the idea of gaining access to music for a monthly fee as one does with water.

In 2013 Jack Conte created a platform based around the same idea; Patreon is a website where content creators are paid by their followers per piece of content or on a monthly basis. It functions as a fundraising website, but instead or raising funds for a project, content creators generate a regular stream of income. Unlike Kickstarter, which is meant for on-off projects, Patreon is a tool for people who generate content regularly. Fans can pay a subscription of as little as $1 and in exchange they have access to the artist’s ‘stream’ and to different rewards, depending on their payment. Recently Patreon reached 250,000 patrons giving out a monthly total paycheque of $2 million to the content creators they support. 

Jack Conte is a content creator and musician himself. Pomplamoose, the musical duo he’s part of, has a popular Youtube channel with over 500,000 subscribers and over 1 billion views. While the music is quite simple, the videos often feature intricate decors, projections and complex editing with visual effects (for example, ’Pedals’ by Conte, the first piece of content posted on Patreon, features real robots). 
Conte is a multi-instrumentalist and he records and produces his music - yet another example of the modern musician being a jack-of-all-trades. And, with Patreon, he is the very example of a musician entrepreneur. 

His ‘About’ section on Patreon sounds like a condensed manifesto of every modern independent musician:

I make music in my home studio and post it on YouTube and SoundCloud for you to enjoy. No labels, no publishing companies, no intermediaries. Every dollar you pledge gives me the freedom and ability to maintain my independence and make the art that I want to make, so I really appreciate the support!

As an ‘Internet musician’, Conte’s problem was not where to find an audience, but how to get paid. Youtube videos can be monetised via ads, but artists earn only if the adverts are clicked (which means stealing focus from the video in the first place); the earnings are very small - tens of millions of views needed to make a living. On Patreon, Conte is earning $5,328 per video. Walk Off the Earth, a five-piece band with another popular Youtube Channel, make $15,832 per music video. Amanda Palmer, who joined in April 2015, is already making $30.000 per song posted, at the time of the writing. 

Conte devotes Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays to writing and recording. He is also the CEO of a business. ‘It’s a difficult balancing act’, he admits. But despite it, Pomplamoose still managed to release 14 videos in 2014 (Dredge, 2015).

Not only that Patreon helped boost Conte’s career as a musician, but it also allowed thousands of artists to receive steady income from patrons who, by supporting the artist, do not buy a certain product, but a service. Patreon is proof that musicians can make a living off music in the online environment and that Internet provides unlimited opportunities and alternatives to try; and if the alternative is not yet out there, as Conte showed, it can be created.

As part of my future strategies of building a career with music, I have created a Patreon account. The account is still empty at moment. I have investigated other Patreon accounts and it becomes apparent that I need to take care of a few things before inviting my followers to join me on Patreon: 1)I need to write a script and draft a presentation video in which to explain how Patreon works and convince people to support me 2) I have to decide on a reward system and write descriptions of the rewards.
I also think that I should wait a little longer before inviting my followers on Patreon and create more content in advance, so I don't run out of content and disappoint my monthly paying followers. On the other hand, I am thinking of running a Kickstarter to fund my album (which I intend to release in the summer and possibly make it my final project if this masters degree) and I'm not sure if followers would be willing to contribute on Kickstarter if they already support me on Patreon. Nevertheless, I believe Patreon is the future of independent musicians, and I will definitely use it in the near future; I might just need to wait a little bit longer and gain more fans in order to make it viable.

References:

Dredge, S (2015) As Amanda Palmer joins Patreon, CEO Jack Conte tells us why. Available at: http://musically.com/2015/03/03/amanda-palmer-joins-patreon/ (Accessed 20.12.2015)

Jack Conte, (2013). Pedals Music Video (featuring REAL robots) - Conte. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZ02alEkbLw [Accessed 20.12.2015].

Hracs, B. (2012) 'A Creative Industry In Transition: The Rise Of Digitally Driven Independent Music Production’ in Growth Change 43.3 (2012): pp.442-461. Available at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2257.2012.00593.x/pdf (Accessed 18.12.2015)

Scott, M. (2012) 'Cultural Entrepreneurs, Cultural Entrepreneurship: Music Producers Mobilising And Converting Bourdieu's Alternative Capitals'. Poetics 40.3 pp.237-255. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2012.03.002 (Accessed: 18.12.2015)

Styvén, M. (2007) ‘The Intangibility of Music in the Internet Age’, in Popular Music and Society, 30:1, pp.53-74. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03007760500503442 (Accessed at: 18.12.2015)

Recording the UH Big Band

On December the 12th, the University of Hertfordshire Big Band had a concert in the Film, Music and Media Building (room B01) and I decided that this would be a great opportunity for me to practice live concert recording, while simultaneously getting a feel for the new recording setup and the space's acoustic. This was a great opportunity for me to practice my recording skills and learn the SoundCraft in the control room, all preparation for hopefully running recording sessions in there with the nice mini grand piano and maybe filming some of my performance videos with some of the university cameras.

In order to fully prepare myself, I attended one of their rehearsals prior to the concert. I introduced myself to the musical director, made note of how many players there were, where they were sitting, and most importantly, I had a listen to them play from the audience seats. Immediately I realised that there was a significant problem in the balance of the ensemble, and so I planned my microphone placement and choices accordingly. Firstly, the drum kit was far too loud. The drummer, who was mainly playing with sticks, would undoubtedly bleed onto all the other microphones. Secondly, the piano, electric guitar and flute were very quiet. While I was considering using a microphone on the guitar amp as well as a DI, I knew that I would need to push the mic too much in order to bring it forward, and since the guitarist was sitting right next to the drummer, this was not an option. The flute was given a dedicated microphone, so that I could bring it out nicely over the dominating horns and drums, and the piano was miced closely, with the microphones pointing away from the drum kit. For the drum kit itself, only two mics were used: a single overhead (AKG C414) and a kick drum mic (AKG D112). One microphone was given between each pair of saxes, one for the tuba, one between the two trumpets and one between the two trombones. Thus I drew together the final line list, using a total of 15 lines out of 16, including a pair of room mics at the back of the audience.

On the day of the concert, I took out all the microphones, stands and cables I would need, basically clearing out the stores, loaded them on a trolley that I was allowed to borrow from the Art Shop, and took them across the road, not before being stopped by university security who thought there was a heist in progress. I knew that I would only have access to the room half an hour before the show started, which was also when the musicians would be loading in, so I made sure I was there in plenty of time to put microphones on stands in the corridor and finalise the plan between myself and my friend Andy (who was helping me out). Luckily, we got access to the room early, so we could set up the stage and put microphones in the right places. 

This is when some unforeseen difficulties intervened. The stage box was in the control room, and the control room was locked. Richard, who is in charge with stores, would arrive at 7pm to let us in, but in the meantime we weren’t sure where the stage box would be (stage left or stage right), so we didn’t know which microphones needed the longest cables. Soon we found that the cables themselves were all extremely short, mostly under five meters, which meant that we couldn’t possibly plug everything in. We would have to daisy chain some XLRs together, but we didn’t know where to extend them to. I therefore had to run back and find a proctor to let me in to the studios for longer XLRs. The main pair at the back of the room was probably not feasible so we moved it down to stage right, looking at the horns, but with a good physical distance from the drum kit.

There were also some changes to the lineup. There were now two bass players, one upright (electric) and one bass guitarist. Talking to the upright player, he explained that they took it in turns, and both plugged into the PA system installed in the room. Luckily the speaker had a link-thru, so I could take a DI feed from that. There was also an extra saxophonist, the flute player was sitting on the other side of the stage, and there was only one trombone.

Diagram of the players' positions and microphones used. From left to right, back to front: tuba, trombone, two trumpets; flute, six saxes; drum kit; piano.

Fortunately I was able to find someone to let me in to the studio, so the XLR situation was solved. When Richard arrived with the stage box, we had to plug everything in in less than 15 minutes. With the help of Andy and the proctor, we managed to finish in time, but it was extremely stressful. For the most part I kept to the microphone order I decided in the original plan, but in the heat of the moment some cables ended up stuck in a different input. This was not a major problem though, as I could sort everything out later during the mixing stage.

Thankfully, when I entered the control room, there was already a 16 channel Pro Tools session open and record enabled, ready for the start of the concert, which had been set up by Richard. 14/15 channels were working (we lost a sax mic somewhere along the way), but one of the piano mics had intermittent noise. Also, in the chaos of the setup, none of us had notices that because of the missing trombone player, the trumpet players had moved to the left, and were now completely off mic. Between songs, I was able to sneak in and twist the nearest mic to pick up more of the trumpet, but I had to wait until the interval before I could position it properly. Also during the interval I re-plugged the intermittent piano line, which seemed to fix it.

From the moment they started playing, and I heard the first unmixed, mono cacophony of input signals, I knew I had done something right. I could hear all instruments clearly, with already a decent balance between them. The drums were no longer overpowering, and the quiet instruments could now be heard. As I played with levels, I started liking it more and more. Attending that first rehearsal definitely helped, and while the setup period was hectic, it would have been much, much worse had I not organised it the way I had, or if I hadn’t pre-rigged the microphones early. However, things would have run more smoothly if I made sure I knew the line-up, if I’d checked the cable lengths when I took them out, and if I had found out in advance where the stage box sits. 

To conclude, this was a very intense but useful experience, because now I am more familiar with the recording space and facilities in the FMM building and I am looking forward to start making some recordings in there (rather than going back to record at University of Surrey, like I did for 'Cosmic Latte').  I intend to record a brass section for some songs on my album, which will be my final project for my Masters degree, so having some practice in recording brass and networking with brass players who I am hoping to see at future session was extremely useful.