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.

Sellaband will be celebrating its second birthday in August with Sellabration ‘08, a concert at the famous Paradiso in Amsterdam featuring some of the top artists on the label. One of the more influential “Believers” has posted a forum thread asking the Sellaband community to answer the question, “What was and what will be?” With over 8000 artists now on the Sellaband roster representing tens of thousands of fans and supporters, the ratio of opinions to assholes is probably 1:1 and, being the owner of one with no shortage of the other I may as well offer my 2 cents as well.

Sellaband has appeared on a music scene in massive disarray. The business is now experiencing the period of chaos described by Clay Shirky as the natural result of technological revolution in his book, “Here Comes Everybody.” Not only is it premature to think of Sellaband as a cure for the ills that brought about the need for a solution, it is simplistic thinking to assume that one system can instantly step into the soiled shoes of another which has stomped a path of greed to the brink of its own demise. Regardless of what artists and fans hope that Sellaband will accomplish, only time and the efforts of the few who are willing to actually do something substantive can hold any real answers.

In the two short years of Sellaband’s existence the web-based record label has excelled in some areas while disappointing some of the community in others. Developing a means of funding previously unknown artists has been Sellaband’s best achievement. And one of the by-products of this crowd-sourcing model has been the formation of a community where once there was none. With the world growing smaller everyday this virtual community is morphing into a real community with all the characteristics of the real people who choose this platform to support artistic independence. Real friendships have developed along with real disagreements and the resultant real progress.

Sellaband came into existence with the goal of selling parts in order to fund recording budgets without putting artists at risk of the debt represented by traditional recording contracts. But as each artist reaches the 50K mark the community continues to recreate itself and with each generation of artists and fans embracing the concept new innovations and creativity manifest themselves on a strictly voluntary basis. Believers have built websites, provided financial guidance and expertise, and have stepped in to help artists further their cause in a multitude of ways. This unforeseen social development coming at a ninety degree angle to the primary mission of Sellaband could prove to be the most meaningful of the many revolutionary “causes within a cause.”

The area in which Sellaband seems to have disappointed many in the community is that of promotion and marketing. This is also a premature and possibly unfair criticism. As most of Sellaband’s operating budget comes from interest earned from funds deposited from the sale of parts, it is unlikely that promotion of Sellaband albums could be accomplished at a magnitude sufficient to compete at a level comparable to the still extant major labels. I think that my copy of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” was somewhere in the 45th million sold. I held out until I felt that I must be missing something extremely revolutionary and finally jumped on the band wagon to buy a copy. Yes, it is a great album…I guess. But did it sell Zillions because it was good? Or because everyone eventually caved in to the promotional onslaught? The promotion of “Thriller” cost serious money and as the returns grew, ever more money was spent to insure that the profits would grow until sales snowballed to unforeseen proportions.

And what if Beatles manager Brian Epstein’s family didn’t own a record store? What if Epstein had not bought the 1500 copies of “Love Me Do” required to put the song on the Merseybeat charts? Would we have had an “English Invasion” in pop music? Would Peter Asher, half of the mop-top duo Peter and Gordon who reached the charts with Paul McCartney’s “World Without Love”, have reached the notoriety to become the producer of hit albums by Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor? To borrow a concept from Mark Twain’s “Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven” how many thousands of meritorious artistic endeavors have gone unrecognized? How many artists work in obscurity only because there is not a massive promotional budget? Selling a million albums requires putting that album in the faces of millions of prospective buyers. Even though we want to think that viral marketing reaches those numbers, real promotion at that level still costs serious money…the kind of money that Sellaband has yet to have at its disposal.

As in any social structure, there will be those who fill the role of “public” and support their favorites while pointing out what should and could be done better, and there are a small percentage who take whatever tools found at hand and act in a decisive manner. One is not qualitatively better than the other, both are necessary. After all, whenever I drive by a road construction site and see 5 or 6 guys in orange shirts leaning on their shovels I know that they are doing their best to give proper guidance to the poor bastard who is down in the hole getting dirty.

There are literally thousands of artists who have posted profiles to the Sellaband website and are now waiting to watch the money of complete strangers pile up around their digital work stations. And there are others who, after reaching their recording budget, have given their best efforts and are wondering what to do with their product. But what some see as Sellaband’s failure to effectively promote, others see as opportunity to use whatever does exist to their benefit. Gisel de Marco, who has virtually no support from her home country of Argentina, has been able to reach fans wordwide through the web and on a more personal level by performing live in the heart of Sellaband’s fanbase of Europe. And although the internet was the vehicle, it was a believer in England who took it upon himself to make possible Gisel’s meteoric rise up the Sellaband charts. Then there is Markus from ConFused5. This band plugs away in the tiny media market of Austria, population 8.5 million. If 10% of the country bought their album it wouldn’t make a global ripple. But Markus uses a combination of brains, technology and bulldog determination to make something happen for his band everyday. The media coverage garnered by Sellaband as a result of Markus’ efforts is of inestimable value. Mysti Mayhem does a webcast concert to touch fans around the world, and Brian Taylor of the Vegas Dragons flew from Australia to Amsterdam to personally number and sign 5000 limited edition cds for his fans. These are only a sampling of the creative solutions that didn’t exist pre-Sellaband. With little money available for product/artist promotion, those who want it bad enough simply invent some way of making something happen.

Will Sellaband weather the chaos? Will the shovel leaners support the diggers until the road is finished? At two years and counting it is impossible to predict how music marketing will adapt to the changing landscape. But there is a distinct buzz of activity in previously undiscovered areas of marketing creativity, and good intentions won’t go unrewarded. It is premature to expect these rewards to be reflected in dollar signs, but for many Sellabanders the effortss are already paying off in the form of friendships and new working relationships that could not have come about previous to Sellaband’s birth just two short years ago.

At least that’s my opinion.

This last trip to Austria, having become engrossed in Clay Shirky’s “Here Comes Everybody”  I was able to economize on battery life. I found the book interesting enough to read three times, once on the flight over, once again during the late hours in Salzburg, and a third time on the return flight. Clay Shirky’s talk on the internet site “Ted Talks” is a fast track synopsis of the book and both crystalize the conceptual basis of the Sellaband mechanism. The internet-based record label is both a symptom and a possible solution of the changing virtual world of the internet. As much as we would like to direct traffic in this world, Shirky’s concept of technical revolution resulting in a period of chaos rather than instant re-organization leads me to think again of the Sellaband model as the primal brine from which the new order of music marketing will eventually crawl out onto the land once again.

An interesting correlation can be made between Shirky’s description of Power Law Distribution and a cursory analysis of the Sellaband community. The Power Law Distribution, also known as the 80/20 rule, is the curve that can be applied to almost any system in which individuals take part on a voluntary basis and there exist no strict work assignments or compensatory schedules. As a simple illustration, say you could not be home for Halloween but still wanted to pass out candy to the neighborhood goblins. If you were to leave ten pounds of candy on your doorstep, there is a good chance that 80% of the candy will end up in the hands of 20% of the goblins. The vast majority of kids would take one or two pieces, some would grab a handful, and a handful of kids would take as much as they could get away with.

This curve can be applied to different aspects of the Sellaband community. There are now over 8000 artists on the platform with the bulk of monetary investment being represented by a small percentage of artists. I would feel confident in making a wild guess that 80% of the funding in Sellaband artists has been invested in 20% of the total artist roster.Conversely, there are tens of thousands of investors or believers as they are known in Sellabandese. Leaving statistical analysis to the experts, I would bet that 20% of these believers are responsible for 80% of the total dollar amount invested in Sellaband artists.

This is the second summer of Sellaband’s existence and there are mumblings related to the slow rate of activity regarding investment. But this slowdown has not affected all artists equally. Following the 80/20 rule, the lower percentage of artists who do a higher percentage of self promotion and networking will reap a greater return from the lower percentage of believers who invest the highest percentage of funds. The high percentage of artists who do nothing to further themselves will reap the lowest level of investment from the highest percentage of believers who invest the lowest percentage of funds. The 80/20 rule is not something that was handed down from above as a mode of behavior. It is simply a symptomatic analysis of that which exists in a voluntary community.

There has also been some concern that the system will suffer from the cannibalistic effect of artists seeking support from the existing community without bringing new investment from the outside. Again, if we are to trust the integrity of the Power Law Distribution, very few big investors are needed to balance the inactivity of these artists for the proportions of the 80/20 rule to remain intact.

Sellaband is an experiment that has grown out of the ashes of what once was a powerful money-making machine. The survival of Sellaband depends less on profit than it does on the willingness of individuals, artists as well as believers, to take part in a social community on a voluntary basis. Community efforts will always suffer the effects of insecurity, ego, greed and the whole litany of human frailties. There are the 20% who are responsible for 80% of the sloth, and there are the 20% who actually do 80% of the work. To be successful as an individual in such a loosely regulated social structure, the individual must first do what is necessary to insure success on a global level. 80% in such a community will not understand this and will work toward only their own success even at the expense of other community members.

Then there is the concept of assimilated accomplishment. Want to be a good athlete? Hang out with the small percentage who really work hard. Want to be a good musician? Go play with the percentage at the top of their game and learn from them. This seems to be true no matter what one seeks to accomplish. Being better than the next guy is one thing, but being as good as you are able to be, accomplishing anything up to your personal potential requires that you stop looking right and left for comparisons and concentrating on the goal at hand. In a system like Sellaband, where there are no homework assignments, no practice schedules and success at any level is contingent only on the degree of personal involvement and commitment, any significant growth of the community will continue to reflect this 80/20 rule. The structure of a community like Sellaband is never intentionally created to conform to the Power Law Distribution. Rather, the 80/20 rule is a graphic description of what will occur naturally when individuals follow their natural behaviors in a social system.

Given the information that Sellaband’s primary focus is to “sell parts” the promotion and marketing of completed projects becomes a secondary byproduct of the platform. Using this information wisely is key. There are many artists as well as believers who spend a great deal of well-intentioned time offering opinions as to how Sellaband could or should better serve the community. But the fact is that Sellaband is in the business of “selling parts, and lots of them.” The higher the number of parts sold, the larger the community. Those within the community who look to Sellaband for more structure and support are thinking in old-school label terms and misreading the value of the platform. Structure and services come at a loss of freedom and initiative. The Sellaband landscape is a fertile ground for creativity of thinking, marketing and self-promotion which does not exist in traditional label structure.

Shirky’s statement that technical revolution brings on a period of chaos before settling into a new system is not bad news but provides an optimistic outlook for creative self-starting individuals because it leaves the field open for fresh ideas. There will always be those who complain that the sky is falling. But progress is defined by those creative individuals who use what is falling from the sky to their advantage in new and flexible ways. The old label system used both artists and consumers to their advantage. Platforms like Sellaband are providing the opportunity for artists and consumers not only to use the system, but to create the new system out of the chaos that evolves when an old system is turned on its head by technological advances.

The face of music marketing has changed little since Enrico Caruso’s first recordings became a mass-marketing bonanza for the fledgeling recording industry. But advances in technology have brought about a Lon Chaney effect and this face changes more each day than it has over the last century. The good news is that the changes are being instigated by individual initiative in combination with community acceptance. In the cycle of Closed System>Revolution>Chaos>New System, Sellaband straddles the area between Revolution and Chaos. Whatever the new system shall be and how effectively it serves the community is in liquid form. Have you ever stared at a restaurant menu and said to yourself,” Man, all of this is really close, but I wish I could just go to the kitchen and cook myself exactly what I want.” Well, the restaurant is built, the pantry is full and the fire is burning. The menu is up to anyone willing to step up and cook.

So, back to my great day, Since it was my last day, I decided to walk from my room to the railroad station, normally a healthy 30 minutes. At minute 10 the mist had become a tolerable drizzle and the last 200 meters the sky opened with a personal vengeance. I know the vengeance part is true because it stopped raining moments after I reached the shelter of the station.

As it happened, the rain had increased my pace to the point that I was able to take an earlier train. My computer battery had gone dead just as I was checking into my flight from Vienna so this would get me to the airport in plenty of time to secure a seat in the exit aisle. Things were looking good.

When I hoisted my luggage onto the belt for check in, the representative handed me back my passport, smiled her sweet Viennese smile and told me that I had missed my flight by anywhere from 4 to 8 hours depending on the exchange rate at the moment! Damn it! With the damnable 24 hour clock they use over here I had misread my itinerary! No big surprise since Markus from C5 and I had been sorting out the world’s problems over beer til at least 47 o’clock the night before. This is the only place I know where you can ask someone the time and still have no clue without taking off your shoes to count out the hours.

And so, here I am, stranded in Vienna, not “in” Vienna but at the airport…the difference is eloquent. As I don’t fly until morning, I’ll listen to some music and try to think happy thoughts.

Speaking of happy thoughts, a quick look at the top ten artists on the Sellaband roster could mislead one to think that the label has become some sort of dating service. Of the ten, eight are females or feature females in their band. But to dispel any false impressions, these artists are in the top ten because they belong there.

The latest to break page one is Polish-American singer/songwriter Natalia Safran. While Natalia’s Carly Simon smile has surely drawn attention to her Sellaband profile, her songwriting and sultry delivery are what will ultimately define her success as an artist.

Natalia has surrounded herself with very capable musicians who have learned the art of accompaniment. The tracks display a mature and empathetic level of musicianship in that, even though the instruments are masterfully played, the intent to focus attention on the vocal is accomplished very naturally. The tracks are custom fitted to Natalia’s strength which is to deliver lyrics in a melodic, chant-like manner that makes listening to her a personal experience. Her soothing voice is free of pretense and the combination of urgency and innocence are charming.

While vagueness is not necessarily something to seek in writing prose, it can be the characteristic which sets a song apart for many listeners. A song isn’t complete until the final element of the equation, the listener, has heard and accepted the intent of the artist. When a song has mystery, when the listener is free to dress the characters of a story as he sees them, the artist has done much more than just perform a song. The singer has collaborated with each listener on a very individual basis and has let them decide how the story should play out.

Every successful artist has something special which sets them apart…let’s call it the X-factor for want of a better term. The ability to pull the listener into her stories is what sets Natalia apart and in context of her material, bombastic vocal pyrotechnics have high value by their absence. I would be curious to know what Natalia could do if she really put her foot to the floor but then again, that doesn’t seem to have anything at all to do with her music. I find myself wanting more from Natalia. And I say that this is a good thing because, as a listener, when you find yourself wanting less, you simply move on to another track, another song, another artist.

Natalia is touring Europe at the moment, but a listen on her profile page is well worth a click or two. It will indeed be interesting to watch the progress of what has become the Race of the Divas on Sellaband’s page one. One thing you can count on, there will be no losers. And thanks to Natalia for making my one day “vacation” at the Vienna airport much more than bearable.

It was the summer of 1968. My parents, having seen “The Sound of Music,” had saved for the better part of a year in order to alleviate their homesickness and make the journey back to Salzburg to visit my grandparents for the summer. It was a summer of milestones for all of us. My father had only flown in an aircraft once before and for my mother the 14 hour journey would be her first experience away from terra firma. The trip would ultimately prove to be the last time my father would see his parents alive. We had also hoped to visit with my great-grandmother, known to me as “Wolfgang Omi” and my god-father, Ludwig. Sadly, they had passed within days of our departure and our visit was limited to planting fuscias on their new graves.

For me, the summer was a time of discovery. I was 15 years old, about 6′5” and looked at least 20 so there was nothing off limits. After a cup of my grandmother’s coffee, my first discovery of the summer and the beginning of a life-long addiction to the sort of coffee that turns spoons into forks, I would head out into the city on foot. I was alone and could do as I liked, go where it pleased me to and linger over whatever caught my interest. I became particularly enamored of the Mirabell Garden. The idea that this formal baroque garden, with its fountains, statuary and manicured flower beds was once someone’s back yard impressed me. So regardless of where my fact-finding mission of the day took me, a portion of the afternoon was spent sitting on a bench fantasizing that this was mine and those enjoying the garden were there by the grace of my benevolent nature. My usual perch turned out to be just under the open windows of the Mozarteum and the sounds of practicing singers and musicians pouring out into the garden air became the “first hit” of the second addiction I acquired that summer.

Up to that time I had been sitting on the fence between being a basketball star and becoming a world-famous musician. I was fifteen and had that curious combination of confidence and inherent laziness that marks that age. Sitting in the garden I decided that music had to be an easier way to get girls than sweating in a gym and my fate was sealed. I decided to study at the Mozarteum. The last thing that occurred to me as I made up my mind was that I would have to actually learn something. Sitting in my personal garden I was convinced that the music world was waiting to strew my path with flower petals.

Flash forward and thirty years of reality have not dimmed my ambition of entering the Mozarteum. This spring I produced the “Out Of Confusion” album for the Salzburg band, ConFused5. Herbert Hopfgartner is a multi instrumentalist, composer and one of the two talented lead singers in the group. During the recording of the album we discovered that we had a lot in common and subsequently, Herbert’s wife Regina Hopfgartner, a teacher of vocal pedagogy at the Mozarteum, asked if I would have interest in teaching a workshop for singers at the school. I played hard to get for a nano-second and accepted the invitation on any terms and at all cost. We decided that it would be a workshop aimed at singing students with a classical background and training but who wanted to sing pop and rock material. As Herbert is more adept at interpreting these styles than the average school accompanist, he graciously offered to lend his fingers to the project.

The workshop was attended by a wide variety of students and a few faculty members as well. As I scanned the room I saw that the teachers were all in the back row and imagined they might have been thinking, “Okay hotshot, show us something we don’t already know!” I could not have been more wrong. After a short introduction, I brought the first victim to the front of the room.

My chief aim for the workshop was to prove the value of keeping an open mind, When I went to school, and what eventually drove me to leave the academic environment behind, was the close-minded attitude of my teachers and the manner in which they used their authority to foster the same prejudicial tastes in their students. I respect teachers for their learning and for the work that they do. But I have a great deal more respect for students because of the work they have yet to do. Teachers are already plying their trade, they have made their choices and are living their lives accordingly. But students are a blank page waiting for the words to be written. “What shall I do?” and “How shall I proceed?” are questions yet to be asked intelligently.

And so, given my rebellious nature, I had no qualms about instructing the students on more than one occasion to forget everything they have learned in school, if only for the next few hours. The reaction from the faculty members was not at all what I expected. The questions they asked and their welcoming attitude toward me demonstrated a willingness to learn something new and a genuine effort to give their students a different viewpoint and perhaps some tools they didn’t know were in the toolbox.

The most common impediment we encountered was fear. Most of these singers had excellent voices and good technique. What was missing in their performances was intent. The notes were correct, their diction and enunciation were, with a few adjustments, acceptable. But when attempting to sing anything contemporary they delivered data and not music. Years of learning technical exercises don’t yield an end product. They are meant to teach the body to respond in the most natural way to what is required. I have yet to see a poster advertising Gabriella Sans-Corazon in a program of vocal exercises. In working with these singers I attempted to take them out of their comfort zone. I asked them to describe what their song means and what they wished to convey to the audience other than “My, what a lovely vibrato, or, Doesn’t she stand with good posture?”

There were some corrections to make in the area of what I call Vocal Architecture. And there was the baritone who was trying to sing a song that had a high ‘G’ and I could see in his eyes that he knew it was coming and he also had a plan ‘B’ which he availed himself of every time. Apparently this singer had not heard of Leonard Warren, the great American baritone who sang the sort of high ‘B’-flat that made tenors look into their trousers to see if the twins were really all they were supposed to be. I asked the young man what his highest note was. He told me ‘E’ was about it. And I observed also that he was very sure about this and that it was based on many hours of training. Yep, ‘E’ was it and then he had to go into his head voice. So I took him to the piano and vocalized him a bit. I went up to ‘F’ sharp and he had no problem at all. But as soon as I told him that he had sung a, ‘F’ sharp he folded again. I explained to him the importance of not caring how the note is named. And if he could sing an ‘F’ sharp freely, then a ‘G’ was nothing to worry about. It’s like being a receiver in football. How many times do we see a tough pass go off of a wide receivers fingertips? But if you can touch the ball, you should also be able to catch the ball with just a fraction more effort. This baritone had told himself that a ‘G’ was too high, and as long as he believes himself, it will be out of his range. No amount of exercising will change that belief. He already has the note, he’s just afraid of disobeying his own instructions and just letting it out.

The two days were heaven for me. And I want to thank the students for their attention, the teachers for their warm welcome, Herbert for putting up with me and providing expert accompaniment and finally, Regina Hopfgartner for making a thirty-year-old dream come true for me…even if I did come through the back door.There isn’t anything I love more than seeing young musicians step out of themselves and be who they really are, not who they think their teachers want them to be. And to freely express themselves without regard for what they think is right and wrong. Because there really isn’t a right or wrong in the arts. There is only “I dig it” and “I dig it not.”

This year the fourth of July will be cause for celebration of another sort in one of the great music capitals of the world. ConFused5, the popular Retro-Rock band from Salzburg, Austria will be headlining at the Rockhouse to celebrate the release of their new album “Out Of Confusion” on the internet-based record label Sellaband. Taking on the role of impresario, bandleader Markus Melms has scheduled a night to remember. On the bill will be the sensational young Dutch band So What and from Argentina, the very talented Gisel de Marco accompanied on guitar by my good friend Pieter Vos, aka Pieps.

Local boys ConFused5 always put on a memorable show but this lineup offers a wide variety of music and is Markus’ way of thanking the Sellaband community for the support which made the new album a reality. So What has already raised their $50,000 recording budget and is now interviewing producers for their turn in the studio. Gisel de Marco is well on her way to the same goal and this concert could be the shot in the arm that puts her closer to her final countdown.

So who is Gisel de Marco? The tracks offered on her Sellaband profile reveal a pure voice of rich clarity and dazzling technique. The ambitious productions are still of decidedly demo quality but Gisel sings as if she is in the big room at the old A&M studios. Gisel has a mature sense of dynamics well beyond her years. Her performance on “I Wish I could Fly” demonstrates a flare for the dramatic and shows great potential for what will happen when she has the opportunity to sing on a full-blown studio production.

“I Found You” shows another side of this young singer. The vocal is engagingly performed and, as with the previous track, one could imagine Gisel really letting out all the stops. There is something a bit measured about this track but again, the potential is hugely apparent. There is real character and honesty in her voice on “All The Way.” “Roma” is yet another side of Gisel. The vulnerability of this track is haunting and touches the listener in a very personal way without being contrived or disingenuous.

The last track on her Profile is an excellent collaboration with fellow Sellaband artist
Marc Supsic. Hats off to Marc for creating a beautiful soundscape to showcase Gisel’s talent. A very musical effort on both their parts. Marc’s tasteful writing takes Gisel in more of an alternative direction and the result opens up even more possibilities for her future endeavors.

Gisel has that special ability to make a performance exciting without resorting to kitschy pyrotechnics or simply belting at the top of her lungs. If she continues to develop along the same lines her style and technique certainly offer the possibility of a long creative career. Her command of American pop diction is very natural and she does a great job of camouflaging how difficult these songs really are to sing. One of the keys to understanding how good she can be is the quality of her background vocal parts. Most professional background singers are highly skilled and technically more advanced than the artists they sing behind. Gisel proves beyond a doubt that she can do it all.

So…who is Gisel de Marco? The tracks on her Sellaband profile show a wide range of potential directions for a young singer at this stage of development. There are traces of many influences including Celine Dion and even the renowned vocal chameleon, Marnie Nixon. $50,000 will give her the opportunity to look inside herself and, with a good production team to guide her, she will surely reveal the genuine artist inside.

If you are in the Salzburg area on the fourth of July, do yourself a big favor. ConFused5 will rock the Rockhouse with their new album and So What will give a preview of what we can expect from their own upcoming album. But come early and get a good seat. Gisel de Marco, accompanied by Pieps, will be opening the evenings festivities and she is not to be missed.

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.

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.

Upon entering the modern marketplace it’s not uncommon to to be immediately approached by the old school panhandler. Their approach hasn’t changed much over the years. The real pros have upped the ante from asking for extra change to asking for a dollar and sometimes have the balls to wear better sneakers than their prey. Then there is the rented kid gambit. A doe-eyed woman roams the parking lot holding an infant of spurious origin and begs for everything from money for milk to gas money for the old Datsun crap wagon that sits steaming at the far end of the parking lot.

The latest scam is run by the ostensibly underpaid coffee jockeys who look you square in the eye as the translate your order of a “medium coffee” into Italian gibberish without cracking a smile. On the counter is a cup marked “TIPS.” What it really says is “We don’t get paid enough to pass a cup of coffee across the counter to you, but it’s air-conditioned in here and we don’t really know how to do anything else so can we have some of your ‘extra’ money?” Personally, drinking over-priced coffee with designer names from a paper cup goes against my grain and paying a guilt fee to a pimple-faced snot-nosed kid for pouring it adds insult to acidosis. I bought a nice espresso machine and at three bucks a day it will pay for itself in no time.

But the fun really starts when you hit the main attraction, the supermarket itself. Getting in the door is an exercise in avoiding eye contact with representatives of Greenpeace, Little League fund raisers, Girl Scout cookie hucksters and the guy who asks for a moment of my time to explain how horseback riding excursions for “teens at risk” will lower the odds of my car being stripped in the parking lot by youthful offenders pining for the smell of leather on sweating horseflesh. Jesus, it’s like you have to run the beggars gauntlet just to get in the store.

With the price of energy going through the roof, it follows that the prices of everything in the store have risen proportionately. Everything has to be delivered by internal combustion engines and, once on the shelves, must be cooled or heated accordingly. I can almost feel the magnetic pull on my wallet as I walk up and down the aisles. Back in school I worked at a supermarket and was struck with a combination of disgust and pity whenever the local bums came in to buy crackers and canned cat food with their nickels and dimes. With a box of saltines at over three dollars and cat food out of reach it is no wonder these guys are asking for paper money in the parking lot.

The killer-diller of the day however, is reserved for the check-out counter. After dodging all the money-grabbers going in and choosing which groceries will look the biggest in the basket without having to take out a bank loan, the checkout clerk has the unmitigated balls to ask if I would be interested in donating something to prostrate cancer! That’s not even grammatical begging! I mean, why can’t she say ” Would you like to donate something toward finding a cure for prostrate cancer?” Nope. It’s just “Do you want to give something to prostate cancer?” with a finger pointing at the empty clear plastic cup next to the credit card reader. My first instinct was to pee in the cup.

After assuring the grocery bagger that yes, I could manage to carry my box of saltines and can of tuna livers out of the store under my own steam I am assailed by a last ditch effort to separate me from the last of my “extra” change. At the front of the store next to the managers station is a makeshift jail cell. Employees of the store take turns standing inside the bars and, with a hangdog expression, ask me if I could donate something to get him out of jail…all in the name of some goddamned charity or other.

Now, I can dig the motives of good people trying to raise money for a good cause. But Jesus Henry Christ! I’m paying more for less groceries everyday…and a portion of what I pay for those groceries is providing the hourly wage of a store employee pacing in a makeshift jail like a caged idiot and begging customers for money! I’ve had it! From now on I’ll buy my produce at the farmers market, my meat at the discount supermarket on the other side of town where a chic overpriced coffee place would be laughed out of the parking lot, and my toilet paper and soap at some other goddamned place. I refuse to be guilted out of whatever I have left after battling the beggars just to get into the damned store, and then battling the beggars who I am paying with my grocery money to get back out again.

Beggars…I’ve had it!

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.