Part 2: Having wondered last month about the reliability of your gear, David Mellor discusses the even less predictable nature of music business people...
Last month I discussed how far it's possible to trust your equipment and software. My conclusions were that modern equipment is reliable and trustworthy, but that you should still prepare for the worst! This month I'll be talking about the people who you may meet and work with in the music and sound business.
There are those who maintain that the music business in particular is full of sharks and charlatans. My experience, however, is that the music business is mostly staffed by honest, hard‑working people in whom you can safely trust. The problem is that there is money and glamour involved, and hordes of hangers‑on whose intentions are not quite so honourable are attracted to the industry — and it only takes one dishonourable person in a hundred to make everyone very cautious in their dealings with others in the business. I'm not going to tell you how to eliminate the risk, but simply present a few ideas you can think over. But before I come onto music, let's take a look at the way things can go wrong in sound...
CD Mastering
When I finish recording session for a CD, either for my own projects or for the people I work with, I book a mastering session with Denis at Porky's. Porky's is one of the top record cutting and CD mastering studios in London and I know that when I go there I'll come out with a perfect CD master tape. CD mastering is the stage that comes after you've finished mixing the individual tracks onto DAT, where a skilled mastering engineer will edit, EQ, compress or limit, and balance the relative levels of your tracks to produce a perfect Sony 1630‑format tape from which the CD will be manufactured. Since the mastering engineer does this every working day and acquires more experience in mastering than any recording engineer ever could, you can look upon the process as a final coat of varnish on your already finely polished piece of work. The trick with CD mastering is to go to the session yourself and make absolutely sure that everything is going the way you want it to. If you are paying the full cost of a top class facility then you will be able to do this. On the other hand, your budget may be limited and you might want to economise on the mastering, or you may be sending the tape abroad so that it isn't practical to attend yourself. Let me tell you two horrible experiences that I'm going to make sure I never have again...
The first concerned a track from a CD of mine that was due to be included in a compilation CD produced by a different record company. I sent a DAT of the track over to Europe and the company producing the compilation passed it onto a mastering studio. The track was about six minutes long and just before the end it faded into complete silence before a final 'epilogue'. Guess what? They missed off the last part of the track! A major act would have shouted and screamed and had the CD re‑mastered and re‑pressed, but smaller fry like me are not in a position to do that. What I should have done is anticipated the problem and listed the duration of the track on the DAT inlay card — and also pointed out the fact that it had a false ending. Maybe the mastering engineer was in a hurry to go to lunch.
Another problem happened with a second compilation CD, where the mastering engineer used the start ID on the DAT as the starting point for the track. I had allowed my DAT machine to insert the start ID automatically, and therefore it came just a couple of milliseconds after the music. At Porky's they always wind back the tape to a point just before the ID to make sure that the very beginning is captured, like any sensible person would. I thought this procedure was universal. Evidently, it isn't. The track on the CD was clipped and it started with an obvious click. The answer is always to play safe and insert ID points manually about a second before the music starts.
Printing And CD Manufacture
Printing is definitely not a strange topic to mention in Sound On Sound, since it is becoming more and more common for musicians and bands to release their own CDs. Since CDs are comparatively cheap to manufacture, yet sell for a healthy price, if you have a reasonable following you'll be able to recoup the cost of production and still have plenty of copies left over to send to record companies as up‑market demos. A CD, as you may realise, is more than just a storage medium for music. It should be a whole range of experiences, from pleasurable anticipation for the potential purchaser, to pride of ownership for the dedicated fan. To achieve all of this, everything about the CD has to say that it is a high‑quality item. Assuming that the music is up to standard, this then depends on the quality of the design, print and manufacture.
Most CDs play perfectly these days, and most have the appearance of quality, but there are still some around which have, literally, a rough edge formed as part of the manufacturing process. This might not be a problem for you, but if you would prefer your CD to have a smooth finish, ask for a sample before you go ahead with manufacture. This also applies to the jewel box which will contain the CD. Not all are of equal quality. Probably the biggest difference in the quality of CDs is in the printing on the CD itself, sometimes referred to as the 'on‑body print'. You will see from your own collection that some CDs have on‑body print which is crisp and clear, some are a little fuzzy, and on some the ink obviously hasn't attached itself to the polycarbonate plastic properly.
Even if you've received perfect samples from the pressing plant, there are specific requirements for the design of the artwork itself. You should check these with the manufacturer, but one key area is how thin the lines can be, particularly when text is reversed so that silver characters are surrounded by ink. Some typefaces are better than others for this — don't make assumptions: ask. You should also find out which areas of the CD you can print onto and which you cannot, whether you're considering a picture CD or not
One problem I have frequently had with repro houses and printers is that they have a tendency to make changes without letting anyone know. On a recent CD booklet, someone inserted a space in the text which wasn't on my disk file or in the laser‑printer proofs. It was very obvious and the booklet had to be reprinted — not at my expense in cash terms, but at my expense in time. Insist that you are informed of any technical problems or changes that need to be made to your artwork.
Concert Promoters
There are many ways in which you have to place your trust in concert or tour promoters. Will you get paid? Will you get your return flight tickets? Will the tour bus — and driver — be in a safe condition? One problem area I have found on a number of occasions is in the equipment. If I play in Europe (I don't think anyone wants to listen to me in Britain!), I need the promoter to hire a keyboard for me — but will I get the right one? I use a Korg 01W/FD and that is exactly the model I want on stage. You wouldn't think it would be a problem but I have ended up, on different occasions, with an M1, a T1, an 01W (without the FD) and an 01W/FD Pro. At least they're all from the right manufacturer! In each case, the problem has been the inability of the promoter and hire company to understand that I have particular reasons for wanting exactly the right model, and although the other keyboards may be as good as, or even better than, mine, they are not the same. For one thing they might not take the same data card, and although I imagined that the 01W/FD Pro would be OK, I found at the sound check that the extra notes of the keyboard really distracted me in the dim light (only the star of the show gets a bright light!). My 'fix' was to stick black gaffer tape over the notes outside my normal five‑octave range, and my fingers managed to find mostly the right places.
Publishers And Record Companies
"Where there's a hit, there's a writ", is a saying in music business circles. When a song makes a lot of money, there's always someone ready to creep out of the woodwork to accuse the writer of having stolen their work. Few of these cases go all the way to court. Most are settled quietly out of court and no‑one, apart from the people directly involved, is any the wiser. In fact, it would very rarely be the case that someone had intentionally stolen some lyrics or a snatch of tune. What is far more likely is that two people have accidentally come across a similar combination of the 12 notes that make up our musical language, or some of the fairly limited range of words that make up the lyrics of a typical pop song. If this happens by accident there isn't any blame attached to anyone, although there may still be some discussion about financial matters! What aspiring songwriters do tend to worry about is that if they send anyone a cassette of their work, the next time they hear their own song it will be on TV, with someone else taking the writing credit. Although this isn't impossible, if you are dealing with industry professionals it is very unlikely. If you can write one chart‑topping song, you can write more. Why should they kill the goose that's laying golden eggs when they can sign it to a contract? Actually, the most unlikely scenario of all is that any of your early songs will be of chart quality, so there will be no point in ripping you off. A good publisher will be listening for potential that can be developed, and hopefully that's what your songs will demonstrate.
Just to round off this section with an example of how rare it is that anyone's work is abused in this way, over the years I have had more than 300 pieces of instrumental music published, and not once has anyone questioned the originality of my work, nor have I had occasion to imagine that anyone was copying my tunes. By all means take the sensible step of sending a copy of your music on cassette to yourself, via registered post, with a clear date stamp. Keep the unopened envelope in a safe place against the day when it might be necessary to present it in court. But once you've done that, stop worrying and get out there and promote your work to anyone and everyone. That's the only way you'll achieve the success you're looking for.
Contracts And Agreements
The holy grail of music is to win a publishing or recording contract. But many people don't realise that it's just the first rung on the very steep ladder of success. It's a very precarious foothold too, and you can easily slip back down to earth. Contracts come in various forms, but there are two basic types you should think about. The first is where you sign over your rights to a particular song, or collection of songs, in return for a share of the profits the publisher or record company can make. The second is where you sign the rights to all the compositions you create over a set period of years. The dangers should be obvious. In the first case, if things go wrong there's at least a limit to how much of your work is lost. In the second case, you're virtually signing your life away, so you had better be very sure you can trust the people you're dealing with. Since the music business is a very fertile field for misunderstandings, you'll soon find that around every corner there is a lawyer, and you should have access to good legal advice on whatever you sign. In my rather humble compositional capacity I have been offered contracts which are extraordinarily deficient in the obligations they place on the publisher. In other words, they wanted to have control of the copyright but they wouldn't commit themselves to actually doing any promotion! Be very careful when you sign a contract, and get proper advice.
When people think of a contract, they often imagine it written on parchment and trimmed with sealing wax and red ribbons. A simple spoken agreement is just as valid as a contract, and so might be an offer you make or accept in a letter. At the lower end of the music industry, where a band makes beer money out of gigging, or a one‑man‑and‑a‑dog record company offers to make 1000 CDs from your home studio recordings, there just isn't any leeway in the budget to hire a music business lawyer to check over the small print. This is where the question of trust comes back in. If you get to know the people you're dealing with, and your instincts tell you that you can trust them, go down to your local pub and talk over just one specific project thoroughly, so that everyone understands what their roles and responsibilities are, and write everything down on a piece of paper rather than trusting the details to memory. Whether you sign or don't sign the paper, it could still be construed as a contract if a dispute arose, but the whole point of this exercise is to get away from the 'shark‑infested waters' of the music industry and back to real life, where people act honourably and with mutual goodwill.
Who Owns The Name?
When a couple of mates get together and say, in time‑honoured fashion, "Let's form a band", they tend not to look 10 years down the line when they might be extremely rich, extremely famous, and exceedingly fed up with each other. There comes a time in the fortunes of most bands when the various members want to go their own ways. Usually this is a disastrous idea and none of them are ever heard of again. Sometimes, however, the band has such a reputation, and such a large fan base, that one or other of the ex‑members wants to recreate the band and make even more money. Since the reputation of a band hangs on the brand name, the question of who owns the rights to the name is vitally important. Yet unless they were advised by a manager early on to set everything down in writing, there may nothing more than an unspoken agreement made in the dim and distant past — or no agreement at all. If it is true that a verbal agreement is not worth the paper it's written on, a mere 'understanding' is potentially a sound basis for lengthy arguments and possible litigation.
In this situation, it isn't really a question of trusting your fellow band members to do the decent thing when the time comes. Imagine how you will feel if you develop your musical talent to such an extent that you are the centre of the band and virtually the whole basis of its success, but the other three members decide democratically to throw you out and to keep the band's name for themselves! You really do need to agree at an early stage in your career what will happen to the name if you finally split, because you may start off as friends and continue as business partners, but time and again bands have split on the bitterest of terms. Sad, maybe, but don't allow yourself to be the loser.