"The brothers Potter start with
nothing but innocence to
overcome barriers to creating
magic with their music.
Beautifully written with
countless inspired moments,
East Bench is sure to become
a classic for young adults
and Baby Boomers alike."
Integration is defined as:
“To bring together or incorporate into a unified, harmonious, or interrelated whole or system.”
So, when one is composing and/or recording music, one integrates the following parts (which I blogged about earlier) into a cohesive, larger concept or theme:
Melody
Rhythm
Harmony
Lyrics
Arrangement
Instrumentation
Song Structure
Performance
Quality of Recording
The [...]
There’s no guarantee the best mix in the world will completely mask a recording’s blatant weaknesses, but it can help. What a great mix will do, however, is make a strong recording even stronger. I have mixed many songs which, pre-mix, sounded flat, blah, unexciting with little redeeming aesthetic value. You know you’ve done a [...]
Back in the mid 90’s when I was living in Frankfurt, Germany, I checked out several local recording studios. Germans love their technology! One studio had an impressive array of brand new digital recording equipment. I was blown away—until I asked one of the engineers to play a song that had been recently recorded on [...]
Nowadays we have software than can fix imperfect performances. Pitch problems and slight timing issues can be corrected but they have their limits. It’s usually cheaper to just nail the performance in the studio than to pay someone to painstakingly fix a mediocre performance with special software programs.
In my experience, the most common performance problem [...]
Since most pop songs are only 3.5 to 4 minutes long, the order and length of song sections—intro, verse, pre-chorus, lead break, bridge and vamp (or coda)—should be carefully scrutinized. Beware the songwriter who gets carried away with overlong lead breaks or too many verses, though there are some notable exceptions to this. Check out [...]
All instruments used in recording should be in good working order. Don’t slough off a poor drum sound as something the producer/engineer will be able to fix in the mix, for instance. Poor quality equipment will affect the overall recording. Beg, borrow or rent a decent set of drums (with new drum heads) if what [...]
There are entire books with accompanying music theory courses on arranging. George Martin, the long time Beatles’ producer, was a musical genius whose arrangements came to define the Fab Four’s sound from 1962-1969. Though his contributions were universally hailed, sometimes his ideas clashed with the desires of the composer(s). When John Lennon wrote Long [...]
If a producer, or any person for that matter, adds even one word to your song then, by law, he owns half of the song. Many successful producers end up taking half songwriting credit for this reason alone. There’s nothing really the matter with that, but all songwriters should be aware of what they’re giving [...]
Most people think of harmony as referring solely to vocal harmony. However, two or more notes played together create chords (or harmony), whether played on guitar or piano or when a horn section or back ground vocals play/sing different notes simultaneously. Chords can be ‘consonant’ (pleasing to the ear using only notes in the chord) [...]
Ah! The variety of rhythmic universes! Of which, only a fraction could be learned in one lifetime. Many successful bands, recording artists or composers are attracted to certain rhythms. Sting, former member of the rock/punk band, The Police, spent considerable time studying reggae, successfully composing hit pop/rock music based on this highly rhythmic style. Throughout [...]
