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Post by swurveman on Jul 21, 2016 8:12:21 GMT -6
I had a talented 15 year old come into the studio yesterday. She had just won her age group in a state wide singer/performer competition and as a result will be performing at the indiana State Fair. She played some Ukulele songs in the "Stay Stay Stay" Taylor Swift style. While she was playing, she kept percussively tapping the Ukulele . I don't even know if she was aware of it. I chose not to say anything, but now I regret it because of its predominance, which I can't EQ out. So, I was wondering how much direction you guys are giving to young artists. It was her first time in the studio and she was nervous. I didn't want to spoil the fun of the experience, or make her self conscious of her playing if she had picked up this habit of tapping unconsciously. So, if anybody has thoughts/experiences with young, talented kids I'd appreciate your feedback.
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Post by jazznoise on Jul 21, 2016 8:21:37 GMT -6
While you might feel the sonics suffered, you probably did the right thing. That's an age in which people are very malleable and plying influence via compliments or criticism is very easy. Letting them follow their nose and draw from their mistakes is often better.
There's always the neutral option - present the issue without showing any personal opinion and see if they're comfortable with it.
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Post by swurveman on Jul 21, 2016 9:06:07 GMT -6
While you might feel the sonics suffered, you probably did the right thing. That's an age in which people are very malleable and plying influence via compliments or criticism is very easy. Letting them follow their nose and draw from their mistakes is often better. There's always the neutral option - present the issue without showing any personal opinion and see if they're comfortable with it. Yeah, perhaps I should have asked her if the percussive tapping was intentional. However, if she said no and had no experience playing the song without the taps, perhaps her timing would have suffered. I'll bring it up to her and her mom and offer to re-record if it wasn't intentional and they want to try again without the taps. |
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Post by svart on Jul 22, 2016 6:38:52 GMT -6
I'm kinda torn on issues like this.
On one hand, I feel for the budding artist and their fears, and their desires. I want to help and nurture them as much as possible, especially if they have some natural talent that I know will take them far.
On the other hand, I will act professionally, and if that means getting the best performance through multiple takes, changes and being tough, then I will. Ultimately, my job is to record them to the best of my ability while getting the best performance from them, not hand-holding and babying.
I've seen what coddling a young artist will do. They become un-manageable to some degree, having been told how great they are by family and friends for too long.
This stops their artistic growth in it's tracks, as they start to believe they are at the pinnacle of their performance. I mean, if everyone is telling you that you are wonderful and great already, why would you *try* to be better?
In the end, they become self-absorbed divas and un-able to take constructive criticism due to the belief that they are great, and the young fragile mind that their ego is protecting.
You come along and find fault with their performance, and suddenly you're the one who doesn't know what they are doing, because obviously the artist is *great*...
So, if you have a young artist that is good, and still humble, be firm with them, but be professional. Don't exaggerate anything, positive or negatively.
Tell them like it is.
In the end this is the best path to follow and they'll be in the right frame of mind to continue growing as an artist.
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Post by jazznoise on Jul 22, 2016 7:51:10 GMT -6
Except who is to say what is positive or negative? Young people think Alt J,Taylor Swift, James Bay and Ed Sheeran are the realist shit in the world, to me they're totally fake and put on. I can't account for that gap, so how can I offer input that isn't just me imposing my taste on them?
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Post by svart on Jul 22, 2016 9:59:31 GMT -6
Except who is to say what is positive or negative? Young people think Alt J,Taylor Swift, James Bay and Ed Sheeran are the realist shit in the world, to me they're totally fake and put on. I can't account for that gap, so how can I offer input that isn't just me imposing my taste on them? Well, what I mean is, if the artist does a mediocre take, you can go two ways: Too negatively: "That was bad. You were waaaaay out of tune. Have you been practicing at all? Jeeze, I hope we get a decent enough take sometime today.." Too positively: "That was great! I mean really, truly out of this world. You're the best artist I've ever had in here, but I think we need to do another take, just in case" But I say that neutral, and factual is the way to go. Neutral: "I'm going to have you do another take. Be careful of the transition between the 2nd chorus and the outro, the inhale you take right there causes you to pause too long and miss the next beat." It's all for the performance for the style. I don't really care about the style itself, but the performance has to be good to fit. The best crooning blues vocals aren't going to sound good on a pop song, etc. I've also had young artists in the studio, who insisted on having their parents there to run interference. If I feel a take wasn't good enough, I'll say that we need to do another take. The young artist immediately looks at the parents and asks them if it was good enough, looking for validation and parental acceptance.. Parent to child: "Oh yes, it was perfect, I didn't hear anything wrong Angel, you're going to be a star, blah blah blah". Parent to me: "Does she really need to do this again? That was like the 3rd time, can't you capture her performance correctly, or are we working around your problems? Maybe your mic is broken?" |
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Post by swurveman on Jul 22, 2016 20:00:31 GMT -6
I chose to tell this young artist and her mom a few things. First, I told them - at 15- she has a 10 year window of having an infinitesimally small chance of making it big. So, she has to do her schoolwork and be prepared for a life where music is a hobby, or live a music life with little money. I told them she needed to start practicing her Ukulele with a click track. I told them she needs to take voice and Ukulele lessons. Told her to play live as much as possible. Told them to beware of people who take money from artists, promise things and don't deliver. Thankfully, they seemed pretty conscious of these aspects of the music business.
I felt there was some Diva in her, but she is living in a small town and is a big fish. She'll quickly be disabused of this notion if she goes to NY/LA or Nashville and recognizes how many Taylor Swift clones there are. I did not ask her to do retakes of entire songs, due to things they said about budget. I chose to record her Ukelele and then overdub the vocal. I think I lost some of the vibe by doing this. She struggled with keeping time with her Ukelele. I didn't get a sense that doing it over again was gonna help much. This was a first time in the studio experience and I didn't think multiple takes was gonna help things, as her technique was raw imo. Perhaps I was wrong not to push her, but I was concerned about cost, as she also brought in three Karaoke tracks she sang over. I pointed out a timing issue with her vocal in one part of one song, and she agreed and we overdubbed it. Interestingly, the next song she sang she decided to retake the entire song.
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Post by swurveman on Jul 23, 2016 7:49:30 GMT -6
Except who is to say what is positive or negative? Young people think Alt J,Taylor Swift, James Bay and Ed Sheeran are the realist shit in the world, to me they're totally fake and put on. I can't account for that gap, so how can I offer input that isn't just me imposing my taste on them? I've also had young artists in the studio, who insisted on having their parents there to run interference. If I feel a take wasn't good enough, I'll say that we need to do another take. The young artist immediately looks at the parents and asks them if it was good enough, looking for validation and parental acceptance.. Parent to child: "Oh yes, it was perfect, I didn't hear anything wrong Angel, you're going to be a star, blah blah blah". Parent to me: "Does she really need to do this again? That was like the 3rd time, can't you capture her performance correctly, or are we working around your problems? Maybe your mic is broken?" I haven't had any "you're going to be a star" experiences, but I do think parents come to the session (a) out of safety concerns, (b) out of curiosity and (c) out of cost control. I had one parent say "do we really have to mix this song?". So, I sent her the raw performance without auto - tune, compression, reverb and delay and one with. They quickly came back to me saying they thought mixing was a good thing. There's an educational aspect to what we do and the best way to do it is to give them before/after samples imo. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 23, 2016 13:44:39 GMT -6
I had a guy come in here who's also quite young recently who didn't tune his guitar to a tuner but rather by just making sure it was in tune with itself, he also didn't use a pick for strumming but rather his finger nail. I told him the finger nail thing I'd let go, the tuner was out of the question. Young performers need solid guidance and it's a disservice to them to not offer it. Help them develop good habits so they become better, otherwise you'll have the same issues when they come back years later.
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Post by Ward on Jul 27, 2016 10:24:59 GMT -6
Parents are one thing but "girlfriend producers" are a complete no-no.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 29, 2016 9:28:54 GMT -6
The girlfriend producer thing is such a stereotype it made it into "This is Spinal Tap!" :-)
There may be several things that are just different to the time i were studio recording for the first time...
I had to fight for getting a guitar (and a bass half year later) when i was 15, and by no means it was easy to start against the will of my father, let alone having lessons ... but this had a good effect - i was aware of that it is not easy to get what you want, but is totally worth it to invest time and work to reach your goals. Nowadays i guess many parents live their unfulfilled rockstar dreams thru their kids... (just personal view...)
Better they learn that no one is a born popstar and talent has to go with a bit of work. There are some geniouses you know will make their way anyhow, but most talents have to invest a lot of work and go thru frustration to reach their goals. But this makes making music even more valuable.
When i was young, we had to play live to get together the money for studio recordings. Later were more and more young musicians who got everything with daddy's credit card and got much too much attention by their parents. I don't think this is good thing. I mean, you can't give your kids too much love, but for sure you can give them too much attention, so they turn into little egomaniacs who are used to get everything instantly, without working for it at all.
Frustration resistance is something that is desperately needed to be a musician, right? At least i guess so.
If young artists are of the shy and sensible kind, ok, you might try to show up the shortcomings of a performance in a very polite and calm way, so they don't lose focus. But if they are just mega egos, well, they better learn early that they are not the centre of the universe and make errors and have to work on their performances like almost everyone else. Sure there is an educative moment in this.
When i went to the studio for recording for the first time, most people said: "The first time is always very suboptimal, consider it a lesson about how things work. You will hear everything and might be surprised how bad you are." We were lucky, had a quite experienced producer and recorded for a sampler, so it turned out much better than expected. But nearly 1/3 of the bands on this sampler broke up while or after the recording, most of them due to "artistic differences", emotional stress and whatever...
Recording can be quite disillusioning. Personally i consider this to be a good thing. Much better than going into music biz with wrong expectations and illusions about your own talent and competence...
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