How do you fit a $500,000 recording studio into a small box?
Easy. You buy a decent PC and $1000 worth of software. You can
blame this as the start of the Golden Age of the songwriter,
because before this evolutionary step-up, people like me used to
write maybe four songs a year, badly recorded on the first Sony
cassette recorders. I'd save my pennies, and once a year, I'd
negotiate a deal with a local studio for a special Saturday
morning demo rate. I'd pay four reasonable musicians a straight
cash fee and try to get three songs done in a three hour
session. It didn't help that I wrote the skankiest chord charts
in the world. So I had to get across to the musos how the songs
went, while the clock ticked away, and like the man said, it was
like dancing about architecture.
Nowadays the best player on my songs in my own studio is a guy
I've never actually met. He plays rhythm guitar, keeps perfect
time, learns the song immediately, and doesn't bring his
girlfriend to the session. He lives in a binary cloud of 1s and
0s, and is the best piece of software I ever bought. Because I
live on a small farm,good guitarists are hard to come by, and
this is a bad and a good thing. Good because it forces me into a
minimal style of song construction. My software gives me 99+
tracks if I want them, but lacking the handy players, I make do
with what I have, and it turns out that less if often more...and
sounds better.
Looking back through the tequila haze, I always had a special
liking for Leo Sayer's records. They were minimal, but always
had exactly enough to deliver the song and nothing more to get
in the way. They were about the song, not the guitar solo. And
in painting terms, they were a portrait of four friends rather
than the main grandstand at Manchester United.
While we're taking about musicians, I was working in a studio in
south London back in the day, and few miles away, Rod Stewart
was recording his next chart-topping album at Olympic studios.
Parked in the street outside the front door was Rod's ride home
- a shocking pink Lamborghini. Inside, the session was running
overtime and into the evening. The assembled musos - (19 with
string section) were getting restless and checking their
watches. The producer took Rod aside and said: Why don't we send
out for tipple for the lads to keep them happy?.. Great idea
said Rod, putting his hand in his pocket: Send someone out for a
bottle of Cinzano and 20 glasses...
And that's how fortunes are made....and a-one...two...three...
Copyright: Bill Dollar © 2005
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