Bottom-End, Writings and Reviews from Music Producer Pete Strobl

My mom makes an insane apple strudel. She is the Eddie Van Halen of apple strudel. I can state with authority that, in the world of apple strudel baking, she stands alone at the crest of Mount Olympus. Over the years she has often been asked to share her recipe and she has answered that this would be impossible because there is none. She bakes “by ear” as it were and duplicating her techniques would be on a par with replicating Van Halen’s “Eruption” by reading the notes. What is a slice of mom’s apple strudel worth? Who knows…but if just anyone could make her strudel, the commercial value would surely be diminished.

Technological advances have now made it possible for anyone to produce music at ever higher levels of quality. The ingredients are available by mail order and step by step instructions for virtually any recipe can be found online. At long last the playing field has been made level and anyone can be a rock star. But if anyone can be a rock star what happens to the commercial value of music?

There have always been great musical artists who have labored in obscurity. By the same token (anyone who can explain just exactly what that phrase means will be sent a prize…I just think it sounds pretty good, don’t you?) there has always been a huge amount of very average music produced by very average musicians. As the cost of recording plummets, high quality recordings can now be made by virtually anyone. And, as the sonic quality of home recording approaches professional standards, the value of the term “professional” is losing stock rapidly.

Professionals are recognized by their peers as having a given level of knowledge, expertise and a higher standard of ability than that of the general population. Lawyers go to school and have to pass the bar exam before they are accepted by other lawyers as professionals. Doctors and auto mechanics are also expected to know more about medicine or internal combustion than their clients. But in the field of commercial music, the roles of musician, engineer and producer are fast becoming name tags pinned to the same hat.

Sir George Martin was once asked why the recordings of the 60s and 70s are so well respected. After thinking over the question, Martin answered that, during that mythical era, there were a lot of people who were awfully good at what they did. Professional songwriters wrote for professional singers who made recordings backed by professional musicians playing professionally prepared arrangements in professional studios with professional engineers at the controls. And all of this under the watchful eyes of professional producers assigned to the project by professional A&R managers.

The word “professional” inserted before every job description in this scenario dictates that there were three truths at work. First, there was a definitive division of labor. Engineers engineered, musicians played their instruments, producers produced etc. Second, everyone involved was expected to be an expert at their job, and third, everyone was paid well. Where did the money come from? A professional record company who was not about to put an expensive production into the hands of amateurs. And why would a record company fund such a project? Because they knew that they would have a reasonable chance to make a profit. And why would they think that they could make a profit? Because every professional record company has a professional marketing department and a professional promotions department as insurance that their products will find their way into the hands of consumers. And all of this costs a boatload of money.

The internet record label Sellaband has stepped into the chaos of today’s music recording and marketing landscape holding the carrot of a professionally produced and manufactured album under the nose of anyone with the ability to sell 5000 units at $10.00 a pop. The actual recording budget, less manufacturing and other costs is in the neighborhood of $30,000. To those accustomed to the numbers associated with major label budgets, this is a pittance, while to many unknown and less experienced artists, this budget could could very well provide the product that could launch a career. And when I say “launch” I mean just that. Because the numbers don’t approach what is typically spent on a major label production, there are many corners to be cut, many favors to be called in and many typical label services to be foregone if the final product is to sonically compete with professionally produced recordings.

There was a time, not so many years ago, when having a professionally produced album in hand meant perhaps a great deal more than it does today. One factor in the equation was that a professionally recorded product was, by definition, usually backed by a promotional machine dedicated to making the venture financially viable. In today’s climate the cost of recording music has become affordable to the extent that a $30,000 budget can be manageable. What this means is that a label like Sellaband, which makes no artistic judgements and whose decision of who will make an album is made solely on the ability of artists to raise the required budget, can facilitate the creation of recordings that are paid in full without the cumbersome debt of re-coupable expenses.

But everything positive about a system like Sellaband comes at a price. The relative ease of releasing an album is balanced by the extreme difficulty of creating the demand for the album from the general public. While the cost of making recordings has dropped precipitously due to technological advances and the ability of artists/songwiters to produce and engineer their own music, the machinery of professional promotion has yet to be cracked. Real promotion still costs real money and a label like Sellaband cannot be expected to have the magnitude of required funds available at this early stage of the game.

That is not to say affordable promotional tools are not as available as are the tools to make music. It is remarkable to think that the internet, as Kevin Kelly so vividly describes in his Ted Talk, is only 5000 days old. But the psychology of promotion is still a tool of professionals. The internet offers countless methods whereby an artist can reach a target audience, but in the hands of amateurs these tools have the effect of shotgun blasts loaded with rock salt… plenty of hits but no real damage done. Professional promotion is done with surgical precision. Time is money and energy is not wasted firing scattergun blasts into the crowd. Reaching a worldwide audience is not the issue, but the same taste, discretion and economy of effort that make for notable music and great apple strudel are missing from the arsenal of many self-promoting artists. If attention is the new currency, artists will have to find a way to get and keep attention on their product if they expect to become commercially viable. Every unit sold represents a unit left on the shelves of everyone else with the same access to the the promotional tools available on the internet. There is massive room for growth and creativity as amateurs learn to use these tools with the same skill and precision of professionals. In the meantime, consumers are asked to wade mouse-deep through mega-gigs of homemade websites that feature unreadable red text shimmering on green paisley pages or slow loading flash sites that only the immediate family will have the patience to endure.

Music is an art of emotion. Promotion is not. And this is where artists must evolve if they are to create a marketplace for their products. Music has intrinsic value merely as a window into the heart of the artist who creates it. But commercial value is something altogether different. Creating value for one specific product to the exclusion of others was once as simple as buying cocaine and hookers for radio program directors, renting billboard advertising space, going in debt to the label for tour support and waiting for the money to roll in. Technology has changed all of that and today everyone has equal access and anyone can be a rock star. Getting paid to be a rock star however is the hard part. It’s not enough to be special. Consumers have to know it. The music buying public has to perceive the unique quality that makes a song worthy of a paid download and the work of providing this perception is increasingly being left up to the artist.

One bite of mom’s strudel would convince you of the value of owning a slice. There being only one source makes it a hot commodity. If you could make it yourself, the commercial value of mom’s strudel plummets, unless I could convincingly portray mom’s strudel as being more desirable than that which you can whip up in your home studio. And that is what promotion is all about. It can still cost plenty of money but creative minds thinking outside the restrictions of conventional record label thought could very well break through the money barrier to invent new promotional devices to go along with the exciting new world of music production.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of recording one of my all-time favorite singers. I’m finishing up the SolidTube tracks and we will begin mixing the album in a few days. While in Vienna, I had Mandana sketch out the background vocals but another voice will really add some meat to the tracks. And I know of no meatier voice than the one that lives inside Angela Carole Brown.

I met Angie many years ago at a cabaret in Los Angeles. Steve Haberman, Jim DiJulio Jr. and I were the house trio and one night Angie turned up with a pile of charts. We played a set behind her that night and from the first note, I knew that I was hearing something special. Angela’s rich voice oozes effortlessly and makes its way to the listener’s ear on waves of pure and honest emotion. I know, I know…the last sentence sounds a bit over the top, but if you go to her website and check out the video of “Slow Club” you will understand my lack of adequately descriptive vocabulary. So rather than try to put her abilities into words, give her a listen and see if you can come up with something better.

The first time I heard Mandana sing, I thought of Angela’s voice. They both have a rich and sonorous low range…this is a gift and cannot be taught any more than you can teach a young athlete to be taller. Stronger? Yes, but size is a natural attribute and both Angela and Mandana have big natural voices.

I had hoped to do the background voices for the SolidTube album with the guys in the band in combination with Mandana, and some of these tracks may ultimately find their way onto the album. But when we cut the guide tracks for a song called “Home” I knew that there was only one direction to go. I emailed Angela from Wild One Studio and begged.

One look at Angela’s website and it will be obvious why I begged…Angela is definitely not your average background singer. She is a published novelist, a composer and arranger, has produced her own albums and is a must see at her jazz gigs in the more popular LA nightclubs. But, she has always graciously stepped into the breech for me when I have needed her no matter what the gig.

Working with Angela is the ultimate experience in professionalism. She will stand in front of the mic and work all day to give you just exactly what the track needs. If you need ideas…she has a pocketful. But she’s just as ready to duplicate whatever parts are needed. Want vibrato?…sure. Straight tone?,,,no problem. Double the track and sound like someone else?…yep. Angela has all the tools of the trade and then some. And she is so good at what she does that ego never enters the room.

Doing vocals with Angela is a little like doing a photo shoot with an experienced model. All you have to do is say a few words, point and shoot. She makes subtle adjustments so fast that you just need to keep the machine in record and catch each take. We did five songs in two hours and I never felt like we were working too fast. It’s just that every frigging take is a keeper. Normally, there are takes that are better than others, but when she is at the mic, there just isn’t a lot that isn’t usable.

I’m really looking forward to mixing this album and am so proud to have been able to include Angela’s talent. I only wish that the SolidTube gang could have watched her work on their tracks. I know that her level of expertise and professionalism would have been an inspiration for them.

If all goes according to plan, the SolidTube album will be available in late May. I hope that you like it…I already do. And I’m a hard sell.

Goddamn! It has been a busy spring for me and I finally have some time to write. Many great stories, thousands of miles traveled and two fun projects signed, sealed and delivered. I’ve just delivered the masters for the ConFused5 album “Out of Confusion” which Ron Hitchcock and I mixed at RixMix here in the LA area. Man, what a great room. The place belongs to our pal Rick Ruggieri, a phenomenal studio designer and a fine engineer as well. As a matter of fact, Rick’s latest Grammy award arrived during the time we were working. He placed it on a pedestal between the Mastering Lab monitors so we had to stare at the damn thing 12 to 15 hours at a stretch. I’m really happy for him, but that was just too cruel.

Working in Rick’s room was a godsend for us. First of all, he doesn’t let a lot of projects in to begin with because it means that either he can’t work, or he has to go rent another room somewhere else. Secondly, he designed and hand built the place…and any studio that Rick has a hand in is always dead-nuts on the money when it comes to mixing accuracy. What you hear is exactly what you recorded and there is not a decibel of bullshit in the room. I know that when I take a mix out of RixMix there simply will be no surprises. Plenty of rooms can make a mix sound amazing, great bottom end…sizzling highs etc. But when you take the project for mastering you realize you’ve been fooling yourself. Ron and I were confident that whatever we took out of the place was accurate and exactly how we intended it to sound prior to putting the final mastering touches on.

Another point in the room’s favor is that, being a relatively private facility, there is not the usual parade of clowns walking through the control room to tell you how they would have dialed in the Fairchild or panned the vocals. Although Rick made himself available whenever we had need of his expertise, Ron and I could work in peace and give the sessions our full concentration. Ron had his granola bars, I had my new espresso machine and we just hunkered down and got to it.

We did have one visit with a notable musician that turned out to be fruitful. Ron has a boutique record label of his own and one of his artists is the well-known jazz guitarist Don Peak. For the unaware, Don gained notoriety as the guitarist with the Everly Brothers and now composes TV scores as well as continuing to play his ass off. Don had some business with Ron so we took a short break and visited a while. As Don was telling us how little time he had and how he had to rush off he made the oldest mistake in the book. He asked us to play him a bit of what we were working on. Everyone knows that this always results in at least an hour’s worth of “dig this…no, check this out…what do you think of this?” And whatever Don was in a rush to do went right out the window.

We had just been working on a ConFused5 song that had gone through some heavy changes during the recording process in Austria. The vocal had been transposed down an octave ala Henri Salvador, and the rock band that played the rest of the album had been replaced by a well-worn New Orleans jazz/blues combo. Oh…it was still the same guys, just a completely different approach. At that moment we were listening to the guitar solo which had originally been played with a solidbody PRS and a high gain boutique amp. The band’s guitarist, Markus Melms had acquired a lovely vintage ES345 recently and I had been dying to prove to him what a fantastic guitar it was. I plugged the beautiful thing into an old Fender Twin Reverb amp and we proceeded to spend the better part of a day creating a whole new vibe for the solo.

As we played the take for Don he looked up and said, “I thought you said you were doing a rock album… this is really interesting.” And I have to say it really is…interesting. Playing a substantial guitar like the 345 through a clean vintage amp was something Markus had probably not done in a good long while. A rig like that doesn’t play itself, you have to pull the music out with your bare hands. But once we got into it, Markus really put together a nice solo. It had interesting content, beautiful tone and most importantly, it was played with conviction. This is what caught Don’s ear…and he spent the next 20 minutes or so showing us what effects and equalization he would use on the track. You see, when you get a performance like that on a recording, you want to make damned sure that the intentions of the player reach through the speakers and tap you on the shoulder as if to say, “Hey man, lend me an ear, I’ve got a story to tell you.”

So Markus, meet Don. If you don’t like the sound of your solo, it’s all his fault. If you dig it, just remember, it was all my idea in the first place. The public can decide what they think when “Out Of Confusion” is released on the Sellaband label on July 4th.

FUCK!…always wanted to start a blog like that. The universal plosive monosyllabic attention getter…and a word with deep hidden meaning. But I digress. What I meant to say was, Fuck, I really don’t want this to be over. Went in to Sonic Flow Studio and ran up some work mixes and suddenly it began to sink in that the recording sessions for ConFused5 are history. As Sammie Davis Jr. might have said, “I dig this not, man.” I haven’t had this good a time since…well, since last month in Vienna as a matter of fact. So I guess I should stop whining.

Recording with ConFused5 drove home something that came to light as I was working with SolidTube last month and was also the theme of my article in yesterday’s Sellaband Tribune. The greatest single product that this new thing we call Sellaband can offer the artists on their roster is genuine artist development. If the truth be told, the recording budget does not allow for an all out recording/mixing/mastering package without some huge favors and vigilance on the part of a project manager. But it is sufficient for a band to get a good taste of what studio recording can be. Yeah, yeah. Of course you can make an album for the price of a happy meal with your godamned laptop. But that ain’t studio recording with a full band, pro engineers, pro gear and an eye looking in from the outside to help get the most out of yourself.

This album will be really good because the guys in the band allowed me to look deeper into their music than they themselves may have. They also, to their credit, are good enough musicians that they can try different approaches without losing their identity. Musicians can be stubborn and inflexible but I find that this usually stems from insecurity…perhaps they don’t have the chops and are afraid to admit it. Or their egos won’t allow them to see things from alternative angles. This was not the case with ConFused5. Their attitude was, “We’ve demo’d the songs, and this is as far as we could take it. Now it’s your turn.”

As someone who believes in artist development, I believe some of the best work toward a record will happen in a rehearsal room. We tore these songs to pieces and the guys themselves discovered how to put them back together in a way that every part and every note became intrinsic to the track. Time was short, but I wanted the band to really believe in themselves. And that meant that they had to relearn the motivating force behind their parts. These are seasoned guys, but they had to turn off the automatic pilot and fly the plane without instruments so to speak. It was amazing. As the parts became simpler, they began to play with real conviction. And suddenly the vocal melodies started to leap out of the tracks.

The other area where the band really grew was in taking a very organized approach to orchestrating the songs. Once the rhythm section was cleaned out, the parts, though simplified, had greater impact and we discovered that there was now much more room for the keyboards and single line guitar parts that give these songs so much character. Markus and Alex play great harmonic single line parts together and featuring them in a mix can be difficult unless there is room. Many times a band can slip into the habit of playing over other parts which are in the same frequency range. It’s good to adopt the philosophy of Willie Keeler. He was a baseball player known for his ability to get a base hit whenever he needed one. When asked how he did this he replied, ” I just keep my eyes open and hit em where they ain’t.” Keeping this in mind will definitely make you a more valuable musician in a group setting.

Recording guitar solos with Markus was great fun. We really got into the rhythmic aspects of soloing and with the rhythm tracks as simple and forceful as they were, he found that he had so much more room inside the tracks to really express himself. Beda and Kurt had provided a great bottom end on which to build. The solos in this music are mostly composed more than improvised so it took a while for Markus to relax into the groove these guys laid out for him. But once he let go of the old habits the shit started to catch fire.

I’m so proud of all these guys. They really stretched their musical horizons and played some great music. And it could only happen because they weren’t afraid to change. That is the key to developing as a band. You just have to be willing to try other things and to keep an open mind. There are no limits to what you can pull out of yourself if you are willing to say, “Fuck it…I want to be better today than I was yesterday.” Not every musician has that kind of courage.

Well, tonight the band and I got together for a farewell dinner. I had so much fun here and hate to leave this town. But, as much as we’ve grown together as a production team, I think that if I push the talk back button one more time and say “Perfect…except…” they’ll be packing my bags for me. I also should send a big shout of thanks out to Wolfgang, Max and Spanky at Sonic Flow Studio. They were all great guys to work with and really know what they are doing…when they’re not mounting vacuum cleaners and meat grinders on the wall. Spanky’s name is actually Harry but Spanky is his new nom de guerre…I’m hoping it sticks.

So…onward and upward! Tomorrow it’s back to Vienna for a quick beer before flying home. Thanks Markus and ConFused5, it’s been a slice.

As I said in my last entry, the guys at Sonic Flow Studio have built a very cool recording environment. The room is large and they have plenty of large studio gobos. These are move-able walls which are used to create isolated areas in the studio. With these we were able to isolate the guitar amps from the drum microphones. They are also handy in creating a vocal booth or for changing the acoustic characteristics of the room itself. Another thing I might have missed if I hadn’t taken a good look around is their extensive collection of table-top meat grinders. These are strictly old-school and are of the hand crank variety. Yes, Wolfgang and Max are have an interesting eye for visual design. There are about fifty of these beauties mounted just inside the studio entrance and what says “Rock’n'Roll” better than a platoon of meat grinders standing at attention at the gates of the tabernacle?

Markus has done an amazing job of getting the media to come out for pictures, articles, video footage and interviews. The question I enjoy answering most is “What kind of projects do you enjoy the most?” My immediate answer is always a very diplomatic, “This one!”
But my serious answer is that I really enjoy working with musicians, singers and bands who may not have had the opportunity to work in a real recording environment with an outside production influence before. Working in a professional studio with ample time to explore and develop has a way of refining the musicianship of any musician. And with the right production team a band that is ready, willing and open-minded will grow by leaps and bounds.

Many musicians with limited recording experience tend to think in terms of what their heroes might play in a given situation. All of us are influenced by what we listen to and love. But when the opportunity to make a recording presents itself, the most important thing for me is to dig deep into a musician and find out what he has to say…and then to pull that statement out of him in his own words so to speak. I’ve done plenty of sessions as a bassist where I’ve been asked to “do that Jaco thing” or “give me a Larry Graham type of slap thing.” But when I’m trying to interpret what an original artist has inside of him, I simply won’t stop until the musician himself can listen to the track and say, “oh…yeah, that’s what I always wanted to say, I just never knew that I knew how to do that.” That moment of realization is the big payoff as far as I’m concerned. If a song sells or not is often a matter of opinion and luck, but if a musician can let himself be taken to that moment he knows he is capable of more than he had dreamed of, then he can listen to the music for the rest of his life with a clear conscience.

ConFused5 is made up of excellent musicians from top to bottom. They are very capable on a technical level but have never had the chance to have an outsider look at their music under a microscope. Fortunately they are also mature grownups and have relatively open minds so we have been able to experiment quite a bit during the overdub sessions. If a musician doesn’t have the chops to try different things, well, then you’re dead in the water. But in every case, I think we’ve been able to get to the deepest recesses of the musician’s original intent and the recordings will reflect a genuine musical honesty.

Today we will finish off the last of the vocals and I’ll go into Sonic Flow to run up work mixes tomorrow. Man, I hate it when things start to come to a close.

After a strong rehearsal week, ConFused5 and I moved into Sonic Flow Studio and settled in to cut the basic rhythm tracks for their new album. Sonic Flow is a studio after my own heart. Wolfgang and Max have built a great sounding room and have stocked it with great equipment. The studio records on either Protools HD or Logic and there is no shortage of great microphones, pre-amps or good vibes. But what I found particularly interesting was the vintage vacuum cleaner collection. I have no clue what they sound like, but they sure look cool.

Markus and Alex have brought Marshall and Orange guitar amps in addition to the Tube Thomsen combo that Markus uses live. The studio has a really nice sounding Vox AC30 and a few nice Fender combos so tracking guitars will be more than fun. The only limitation we have here is that there are only sixteen input channels but that isn’t any different than recording in the average analog studio of twenty years ago. With a little thought and creativity we were able to set up the studio to record the entire rhythm section: bass, drums, two guitars and guide piano, in the same room at the same time.

And so, as Captain Beefheart once said, “the fun begun.” I had hoped to record at least two tracks per day and optimistically thought we might have a few days where we would catch three. Man, was I ever wrong. All the band needed was a few run throughs of each song and damned if they didn’t start nailing track after track. On the first day we finished the basics on four songs and by 6:00 pm of day two…that’s 18:00 in Austria, probably because of the weak dollar exchange rate, we had all ten tracks finished and ready for overdubs. As always, I let the band choose one track to record over again just because bands usually get cocky at about this time and think they have a better one left in them. And as usual…I was right and they were wrong. The first take of “Why Me” was loaded with energy and vibe and that’s the one I’ll keep. But what the hell, we had time to spare, and who wants to quit playing in the studio anyway?

Because the section was working so efficiently, I decided to grab a lot of rhythm guitar doubles immediately upon deciding that the take was a keeper. When playing live, Alex uses an Ibanez chorus stomp box and he asked me if we would be using it in the recording process. I answered that yes, probably…because the door lock in the toilet was broken and this little baby would be useful in holding the door closed. Then I showed Alex my very favorite chorus device.

My favorite chorus has two versions. If the tracking guitar is a Les Paul, I like to double the part with a Stratocaster through an AC30. If the tracking Guitar was a Strat, then I’ll double the part with either a Les Paul or a Gibson ES something or other…335, 345 or 355. Since we had Markus’ 345 at hand, my favorite chorus in this case consisted of the Vox AC30, Alex’s Les Paul Custom, Markus’ ES345 and my Knopfler signature Stratocaster. Yeah, it may not be as portable a chorus device as the Ibanez, but it sounds pretty goddamned good. And to tell the truth, I don’t think I would use any of the components of my chorus to hold the toilet door shut, so I think we made the best use of the materials we had available.

On day three Herbert and I began to work on keyboard overdubs. Herbert is great to work with. In addition to being a very well trained musician, he has a great instinct for musical ideas and best of all, he has an open mind and is not averse to trying different voicings or rhythmic motifs in order to create the proper soundscapes with which to feature the melodies and lyrics of these songs. We have a deep love for classical music in common and musical ideas fly back and forth in three languages. Between Herbert’s German, my English, both of our efforts at speaking each other’s language and the language of music, I suppose that totals up to 3.5 languages…but the music is coming together really well and we are having loads of fun.

Meanwhile, because Markus has nothing to do at the moment, he has been doing what he has an absolute genius for, and that is dragging the media out to the countryside and generating interest in this band and in the Sellaband platform. By the time this album is released in July, Markus will have made sure that the very cows grazing on the nearby alps will have heard of it and want a copy of their own. So far we’ve done at least one interview or media event per day in the studio and tomorrow will be no different…which reminds me…shit! I gotta shave and wear clean socks tomorrow. Ah well, a small price to pay.

Tomorrow we continue with keyboards and then it will be time to record guitar overdubs with Markus. I wonder how many interviews he’ll schedule when it’s his turn in the box…