A Personal View Of Session Programmers, Part 2: Programmers

In the sequel to his article last month about being a session musician, Big George takes a look at what it takes to be a successful freelance programmer. This is the last article in a two‑part series.

The mere fact that you're reading this magazine means that you probably own at least one piece of MIDI equipment. In fact, chances are that you've got a facility capable of churning out hit after hit after hit. But the chances also are that, so far, you're still waiting for your first one to arrive. Now, just while I'm speculating, I reckon that the thought of becoming a highly‑paid studio programmer has crossed your mind. It has? OK then — read on.

Before we go any further, by the way, this article is not going to contain any handy tips on sync'ing MIDI clock to SMPTE frames, or converting a Cubase VST tempo map into a Logic Audio non‑destructive crossfade: it's about how to get through a session and please the client, the kind of things you might have to do, and the kind of things I've had to do in the past...

Once Upon A Time

It could be you... but seriously folks, karaoke programming is a great way to gain experience.

I first became an unofficial programmer in the early 1980s, when the first generation of LinnDrums hit town. At that time most people (particularly drummers) were terrified of anything new. And the Linn certainly was new — it had real drum sounds that could be programmed to play impossible beats, it didn't need miking up, it wouldn't get paralytically drunk, and it wasn't obnoxious to all and sundry. It was a revolution, followed shortly by the arrival of the Fairlight, which needed a team of boffins just to switch it on and was better at drawing sine waves than it was at creating music. You also needed to be filthy stinking rich to own or hire one. I wasn't, so I waited until the mid‑'80s to plunge headfirst into what I thought was the future of studio technology: the Yamaha CX5, running on the ever‑popular MSX computer system (RIP). What a joy that was, laboriously inputting every note manually onto a stave, with playback on squeaky internal sounds. The only job I completed was a string (more like a squawk) arrangement on a pop demo: it took me literally a full working week to do.

The real revolution came when Hybrid Arts, Steinberg's Pro24 and C‑Lab's Creator arrived, which was around the same time that the first wave of Roland LA synth modules appeared and Akai brought out the first affordable sampler, the truly revolutionary S900. In my opinion, this was the first and only sampler not to disappoint most of its owners, but back then gear was fully tested before it was put on sale, and our expectations were far exceeded by the bliss of bug‑free 12‑bit mono technology. Since then technology has exploded into a million new avenues of ill‑thought‑out design, which has made the sequencing canvas a multi‑coloured mirage of possibility, all too often smudged by bugs and incompatibility. And that's the situation programmers are up to their necks in today.

Making A Living

Marius de Vries (top left) and Peter Gleadall — top‑flight programmers now, but both admit to having started work at the right time ie. the mid‑to‑late '80s, when people who knew what MIDI was really capable of were as rare as nymphomaniac pandas.

One of the most ridiculous jobs I ever had as a programmer was with a '60s band who, due to contractual rip‑offs, never earned a penny from their massive run of hit records. I'm afraid this is another one of those stories where all identities must remain anonymous, this time to preserve my health while at the same time being truthful and honest about the sort of thing that can happen.

It all started with a call from a European record company executive, who'd got my number from a disco label for whom I'd been churning out Mediterranean holiday crap records. The chap explained that the job entailed re‑recording the less‑than‑classic hits of the group as close to the originals as possible, so that the record could be released with the label 'The Original Hits By The Original Artists'. Piece of piss, I thought, and the money he was offering sounded great, so I was in.

Anyway, he sent me their 10 original tracks, all of which I had to do from scratch. I had a week of pre‑production time before going into the studio to lay them down with the band. The man with the money had said that the band weren't exactly in the best of nick these days. When I met them for the first and only time, on the day they did the vocals, they looked more like World War One veterans in Pringle jumpers. Also, seeing as they hadn't actually played on the original recordings — and, in fact, hadn't actually played anything but Crown Green bowls for the past three decades — I knew it was down to me to do all the playing, by means of (and I quote) "all this new‑fangled spaceship nonsense, not like in our day..." (followed by half an hour of waffle about travelling in the van and how watered‑down, commercialised flower‑power pop was the defining moment in 20th century music).

Being afraid of too much hard work, I subbed out the first stage of the process (namely, putting together the bare bones of the songs' structures — drums, bass, basic chords, and so on) to a fellow programmer, as I knew I'd be getting to know these tracks very well by the end of the project, and the later they started to invade my subconscious the better. As I recall, I paid this lower form of programming life a pittance for his time and effort and the cranial damage it inflicted on him. But as things that go around come around, he's my Editorial Directing boss at Sound On Sound these days, so no wonder I'm forever doing these kiss‑and‑tell articles which get me blacklisted from the industry.

But I digress... Out of the 10 pieces of rock & roll irrelevance there was one song of theirs which was just so abysmally recorded, back in the plate‑echo‑distorted '60s, that it was impossible to recreate through the wonders of new‑fangled technology. After a great deal of discussion with the money man, me explaining we could do a better, cleaner version and him saying it had to sound the same, we decided we had to take a chance. (And before you shout copyright at me, first off I'll deny it, secondly the band were morally entitled to something from their past, and lastly don't tell me that every single programmer who has ever been in a studio hasn't at some time sampled from a record without going through the MCPS copyright clearance — though granted, maybe not an entire song.)

So I time‑stretched the original by less than one per cent, to make it a couple of seconds longer. I then got the old‑boy band to sing along to it, and finally I added even more reverb to the reverb‑swamped original and their very matured voices. In the words of everyone in the studio who actually gave a toss, "it sounds more like the original than the original does". To date I've seen the record on sale once, for £2.99 in a petrol station. I bought it and compared it to the original CD and, if I say so myself, I did an amazing job of recreating duff muddy rubbish, tape hiss and out‑of‑time playing that sounds more like the original than the original did.

How Do They Do That?

Probably the best way of getting into programming is to have a string of hit remixes under your belt and wait for the telephone to ring. And how do you get your first remix? If you know someone putting out a record, ask them if you can have a copy of the vocals and any important musical phrases and riffs, and do a killer mix for no money. Once you've done it, send a copy to the weekend DJ of your choice on BBC Radio 1FM and pray they play it — and include it on their own compilation CD of top tunes, as seen on TV and heard in clothes shops in High Streets across the entire world. Another way is to get into a studio, either as a rep for a company, or a pizza‑delivery operative, but try to arrive at the exact moment there's a problem with the MIDI aspect of the operation. Then you simply fix it, suggest a couple of brilliant ways of improving the process, and before you know it they've asked you to stay. In no time you're producing hit records. Fairy tales? I don't think so — I know two highly successful programmers who were in the right place at the right time and got their first breaks in exactly those ways.

There's another way, although you're not going to like it. About eight years ago it's how I made a couple of grand in under a fortnight (mind you, I've never done it since, as it made me feel dirty). And what is this other way? Karaoke!!!!! Yes, I know — even the devil wouldn't condemn the most evil of souls damned in Hades to do it. But if you've never worked under pressure and adverse conditions, it's a start, and you'll need some practice before you get the gig on Madonna's or Björk's next album.

There are two sources of income in this appalling '90s phenomenon. Go to any Karaoke bar and you'll see numerous wannabe singers with a burning desire to go on Stars In Their Eyes. They pay good money for their own backing tape of a hit song in their key with their arrangements.

It's also possible to actually make the Karaoke tracks for a company who puts them out. That's what I did, and I'm not ashamed (I actually am, but I had to put food on the table). Before you reject this out of hand, remember that Karaoke is one of the only boom businesses left in today's music industry.

Money can also be made, and programming experience gained, through 'Vanity Production'. There are always people who have written a song or thousand and want to record it in a studio, either with themselves, or their partner, or a session singer performing the vocal part (the session singer can be anyone you know who's prepared to sing 'the Moon in June made me Swoon'‑type lyrics without saying they're a pile of crap or, even worse, laughing). Advertising these services in the local music shop and free ads pages is practically guaranteed to bring a response.

Being a programmer isn't solely about how many cute short‑cuts you know for quantising a groove‑parametered hi‑hat pattern: it's about survival.

Knowing Your Place

Big George's favourite: the ever‑popular [are you sure? — Ed] Yamaha CX5 music computer.

A friend of mine (again, no names, no legal aggro) was programming for a songwriting heart‑throb who was working on his first solo album. The Star had a number of simplistically chord‑structured songs that he asked the programmer to orchestrate. As the process took shape and the original three chords became a cultured, fully‑voiced arrangement, including passing chords interwoven with new counter‑melodies, the programmer mentioned that maybe he was kind of co‑writing the music with the big star. That evening he received a call from the star's manager telling him he'd be paid up to date and was never to go back again, ever. When the album came out, the songs my mate had turned from primitive structures to beautifully crafted pop tunes were there, in his form, without a mention of his name on the sleeve anywhere. Which is how it should be, annoyingly. As it happens, the album sold disappointingly, and what was tipped to be the start of a major solo career has dwindled into the file labelled 'Where is he now and who actually cares?'. Maybe it was the classy arrangements that did for him.

The point is this: programmers, arrangers, producers and soloists are often major contributors to the structure of a song. If you find yourself in this position, the last thing you should do is ask for a co‑writer's credit, as you could be out of a job faster than a speeding whippet. If you want a co‑writer's credit (and before you let your artistic self‑importance get the better of you, think how many instrumentalists have contributed the killer hook to a song and received only a basic session fee for their pains), you have got to get the client to suggest it to you. How you go about that depends on you and them. You could try asking how they think the track is shaping up, or what other songs of theirs have the same musical structure, or get them so pissed they'll sign a piece of paper saying you co‑wrote everything they've ever written. But don't, whatever you do, think that because you've re‑arranged the middle eight and changed the intro you're entitled to a slice of the action. Unfair it may be, but what is it 'they' say about life?

And Finally...

These days there's no strongly defined line between becoming a programmer, composing for corporate/training videos, and producing the backing track for a singer/rapper. It's all MIDI‑based, on a budget and needs to be done exactly to someone else's specification, not yours. You don't need a PhD, and, more importantly, you mustn't approach it as a prima donna artist. It's all about doing whatever the job entails, as quickly as possible, without too much fuss, and getting paid — because, unlike a lot of other aspects of this business, there's no point in doing it unless someone gives you money. And before you ask how much, there isn't a set rate: ask for whatever you think is the maximum they can afford and accept nothing less than... well that's up to you. If you think you're up to the task, I sincerely wish you a crash‑free time.