Friday was a pretty crap day. I woke up to a wee home-maintenance crisis and had to phone my boss saying I wouldn't be coming in. That was also stressful because there's a lot going on there right now, and they need me for it. After spending half the day dealing with the apartment, I got two emails from my music-production partners that put me more on edge.
They said the demo workload for the Nashville trip had become too heavy. Jo said "Why so many songs?"
Al said "I'd prefer to do fewer songs well than ram a full bunch through." This surprised me because I didn't think much had changed. But after I'd put everything together in a single status report, the list looked a lot longer in writing that it had in our heads.
The initial plan
I wanted to bring 7-8 of my newest songs to Nashville and perhaps a few marketable tunes from my own indie albums. I thought, in the event that I'm lucky enough to find some interested ears on this first trip or even over the next year, a good range of material in one place would be better than just a couple of songs.
So the initial plan was to have full productions of 4 songs and acoustic-vocal demos of another 3-4. By 'full' demos, I mean pretty much what you'd hear on a band's CD: drums, bass, multiple guitars, perhaps keys, lead and backing vocals. Then, last month, I wrote a new song that we felt was strong enough to add and Al wanted to try a full production of it. I obviously loved that idea. So we were up to 5 full demos.
But September had snuck by and we were now behind schedule. In hindsight, I don't know if we were ever really on schedule, but we'd only now realized it. The clock was ticking and stress was building.
At this stage in the game, there's a lot of studio work: producing, playing, recording, editing, mixing, pondering and sometimes redoing parts of it. With the songs written, my job right now is listening to what Al and Jo produce, giving feedback and describing any changes I think are needed.
As a song moves farther through the process, the later changes are usually minor. But the first draft is a whole different animal. The producer takes my rough sketch recording of guitar/piano and vocal, and puts his mark on it with a full arrangement -- which could mean changes to tempo, key signature and even style treatments. Then I listen to the producer's work and decide if I'm comfortable with how it represents the core song. It can be a stressful step.
Keep in mind that we're all on different schedules with different life demands. There are also day jobs and wives and kids and parents and friends and gigs and volunteer work and dogs and bills and chores. So none of our music collaboration is ever done in the same room or at the same time of day. We work primarily by email and occasionally by phone.
Re-evaluating the situation
After looking at what was left to do on these 5 songs, plus new lyrics and vocals for one that Jo had brought to the project, I decided to cut 2 songs from the full-demo list. This was a bit of a let-down, but I'm so excited about the top two songs (which will also be the most time consuming), that I didn't want anything jeopardizing the quality of their tracks.
Then I did something absolutely revolutionary. I made a schedule! Just imagine. All those years of business school finally paying off. Key deadlines for various parts of the process -- drum tracks for song 1, guitar tracks for song 2, vocal sessions, and so on. It worked wonders. Less work + more clarity = less stress.
For the next two weeks, the production focus is on the two top songs. Then it'll shift to the odds and ends needed for the other full demos, which are already close to being final mixes.
In the meantime, I continue writing and tweaking lyrics in preparation for the final vocal sessions, and working on song selections, arrangements and guitar parts for the simpler acoustic demos.
The plan is to have everything mixed and mastered by the end of October, with a little buffer time factored in, plus two weeks for CD dupes and printing, and another week for shipping to my Nashville friend at the end of November.
This all got sorted late Friday.
On Saturday, I sent Jo a demo of a chorus edit I made following the NSAI group feedback.
Sticking to the schedule.
Less is more. Good plan.
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