Writing the Second Album

“Everyone always says that a rock band’s second record is a road record, and there’s a reason for that, cause that’s all you fuckin’ did for two years.” Rocking buses, crowded hotels, hungover mornings – life as a touring musician isn’t exactly a writer’s paradise. But after several years spent on the road, Jollet is enjoying some of what he only half-sardonically calls “time off.” What’s he doing with all his free time? Working on ATE’s next album, of course.

“I wasn’t sure what it was going to be like when I got back,” he says, “but it literally took two days and I was locked in a room writing songs.” Jollet, who comes from a background in fiction writing and journalism, isn’t suffering from writer’s block. He describes the songs he’s creating for the new album as covering a range of stories and experiences from the past two years spent touring, a marked difference from ATE’s first album, which was, like many first albums, a broken-heart record.

“It’s not like I have choice,” he says about his subject matter. “I’m just not good at writing things that I don’t really mean.“ Jollet, who has never had any training in songwriting, doesn’t sit down to write with a plan and a verse-chorus-hook structure in mind. Instead, he style tends towards focus on a story or a feeling.

Serving the Soul of the Song

“A song has a soul, and you have to find the soul of the song and serve it,” he explains. “Sometimes I think songs, when they start, promise a certain story, and you have to deliver that story. The hard part is trying to figure out what story has been promised and deliver upon it – you’ve got to have unexpected turns and moments of catharsis, release and reciprocity, that’s the idea from Greek tragedy. You have to have transition.”

For Jollet, the idea that a song’s soul can be formed in an effortless flash of genius is ridiculous. He spends hours editing lyrics to get to the essence of what he’s trying to express. “Usually I have an image in my head of a story or a feeling, and I’m always trying to narrow in on that image. It took me about 8 months to write the song “Wishing Well” and I did about twenty drafts of that song. It went through a lot of different types of lyrics – and finally when it was done, the last chord hit, the song faded, and I was like, ‘that’s it. That’s exactly what I was going for.’”

Building Melody

With all this talk of editing, story, and catharsis, it’s easy to forget that we’re talking about songs here. But for Jollet – who’s not exactly a fan of poetry – there’s no mistaking song construction for that other business of penning poems. The distinctive nature of the craft again comes into play when lyrics must be paired with melody. While Jollet describes his own process as vacillating between finding lyrics to fit a melody, and building a tune to fit some lyrics, he also loves writing around music written by other members of the band.

“We just wrote this new song. Our bass player, Noah Harman, wrote all the music for it, and he created this entire sonic landscape that I thought was beautiful. I took it and put a song in that environment, and the song called “Half of Something Else” came out,” Jollet is obviously pleased with the results. “Sometimes it’s just that, I hear the landscape and just start writing things to it.”

Practice to Play

Of course, for some songwriters, the call to “just start writing” can be well nigh on aneurysm-inducing. It’s not always easy to write a new song, is it? But that’s not what Jollet is talking about. It was only after years of songwriting and home recording that he found himself able to do his job well.

“A lot of it is just work ethic,” he contends. “If you spend ten hours a day at anything, you’ll be really good at it. If you’re an artist, you take some small section of your life and repeat it again and again, and really, really work on that and after a while you can play at it. When you can play and you can riff, that’s where you want to be.”

Jollet emphasizes that the idea of natural genius, sprung fully formed and awesomely talented out of the ether, is kind of bullshit. “The dirty secret of this is that the people who have done well are the hardest working people. As cool as they seem now, at one point in their lives, they were fucking hustling, they were working to get the sound right, working to get the song right, writing and writing.”

Make a Bet with Life, and Bet on Yourself

When Jollet describes this wager with life, the tone of his voice tells you that he’s absolutely serious in the belief that artists are not born but formed through incredibly hard work. “At one point,” he says of great songwriters, “they made a bet, That’s how life works, you make a bet where you bet everything you have on something when you don’t know how it’s gonna turn out. You say, ‘you know what? Fuck this. I’m gonna lock myself in a room for a year and get good at whatever it is. I’m gonna disfigure myself in some important way, and then I’m going to take that disfigurement and make art from it.’”

This transformative process sounds a bit overwhelming. For the burgeoning songwriter, the question seems to be not, “is it possible?” so much as “is it worth it?” But that’s good news, isn’t it? Because it means that our ability to succeed isn’t determined by the quality of the first song written, or even the one hundredth. In Jollet’s words, “If there’s one thing I could say to any young songwriter, it’s that I wrote a thousand songs before I wrote one good one.”

I guess that means it’s time to start writing.

Keep your eyes peeled for Part II of our Songwriting Series, where we’ll be talking to emcee / vocalist Mystic, whose much-anticipated second album is about to drop a world of lyrical insight on hip hop fans. Until then, let us know what questions you’d like answered about songwriting in the SoundOff! Forum!

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“I think it’s a testament to any artist, the way you carry yourself and the way you interact with people, the way that you respect others and the way that you approach music when you have no budget – when you have nothing except yourself and your voice, your ideas, your dreams, your concepts – and people will still create with you.”

That’s Mystic, talking half in poetry even as she discusses the process of writing and producing her new album, Beautiful Resistance. The production is nearly complete, almost ten years after her first album, Cuts for Luck and Scars for Freedom, dropped to the sound of much buzz from the hip hop community.
The Bay Area emcee was nominated for a Grammy in 2001 year for the song ‘W,’ and she was touring and performing steadily. But instead of forcing a second album into production at the time, she took a breath, and took a step back. She got out of her recording deal, went to school, worked in her community, and continued to write and perform, but it’s only now, in 2010, that she’s ready to release her sophomore album.

I wanted to know why she made us wait so long for a new record, and she fired a question right back. “We have our whole lives to put together our first album, and then, what do we have on the second album?” she asked. “I’m a true believer that there are no songs, there is no music without life. Artists these days are putting out projects all the time but I just don’t work that way. Because I’ve had these ten years, and I have grown as a woman, and as a human being, it was fairly easy for me to write about the things that I’ve discovered.”

Writing Beautiful Resistance

Years of practice on tight-deadline film scores and limited studio time have allowed Mystic to develop her songwriting ability to the point where she write almost on command. But her lyrical dexterity is also thanks to a corner of her consciousness that’s always writing. “I’m constantly inspired by who I’m loving, or a child laughing in the street, or something happening in the world. Those things are processed, in my mind and in my heart, so there’s so much to say when I sit down to write.”
Cuts for Luck and Scars for Freedom was produced under an intense schedule of flying down to L.A. on weekends with a handful of songs written and ready to be recorded. This time around, however, Mystic is taking her time, and doing most of her writing in the studio alongside producer Eligh of Living Legends. “It kind of just starts to flow,” she says, describing her writing process. “With the new album, I literally walked into the studio on a Saturday or a Sunday morning with no idea what piece of music I was going to use or what I was going to write about. And I’d sit with the producer and listen to different pieces of music and think about how I felt, and when it hit me, I would write.”

She takes inspiration for the music that her producer suggests. “I don’t write without music,” she tells me. “Whatever music I’m writing to should tell a story all its own without my voice on it. So I really like the music to speak to me, to trigger for me what I need to say as an artist. And writing along with the music allows me to play more within the instruments that exist, in terms of developing cadence, flow, stagger, if I don’t have the music, I don’t know where the pockets are.”

Caring For Your Listeners

While she’s got the craft of writing a song down to a science (and always be able to perform what you record, she emphasizes), Mystic is as deeply committed to her lyrics and the meaning behind her songs as any poet. She writes to heal herself, but the connection she makes with her listeners is a constant priority.
“I know how important music was to me when I was growing up,” she remembers, “especially when I was a teen struggling with identity and the world. I hope that I’m able to create music that people can identify with. The stories people share with me have cemented for me that there’s nothing more important than the connection that happens between myself and the people listening to the music. I have people who are like, ‘you saved my life.’ And literally, their tears run down your neck. They share with you these things that are incredibly painful, but really, they’re saying ‘thank you, I’m not alone.’ And no, you’re not alone. I learned, from putting out the first album, that there are a lot of us out there.”
For Mystic, the responsibility of an artist to care for her fans also extends to the sequencing of an album. “It’s about how it feels, but I also believe that it’s important to take care of each other and to take care of people in my music,” she explains. “For instance, on the first album, I went from a song about my dad into a song about, you know, things are okay and they’re alright, because I don’t believe that you take people into dark spaces and then just leave them there. I don’t believe that that’s safe and that’s important to me in terms of sequencing.”

Owning Your Process

If there’s one thing I get a feeling for while talking to Mystic, it’s that she is passionate about her craft, and, she says, a songwriter has to be to survive in this industry. “Really begin to own your process,” she advises young songwriters. “You can be open to other people who want to help you, but own your process, because if you do not own your process, as you get deeper and deeper into this business, other people will start to own it for you.”
She’s talking, here, about developing a distinctive creative voice, but also about what songwriting can do for your career. “Write your own songs,” she cautions. “It’s great to collaborate with people, but write your own songs. Not only will you get to express how you really feel and where you’re coming from, but that will also help sustain you as an artist.”

Owning Your Publishing Rights

“I wrote everything on my first album,” Mystic explains, “and so now, ten years later, with an album that’s out of print, I still get checks, because I wrote those songs. I own the publishing. And that’s the next step. After you’re writing your own songs, really, hold on to your publishing. The reality is that as songwriters, we may only have one song that is ever popular, ever in our entire lives, but if it’s super popular, then yes, that will feed your children and your grandchildren.”
I say goodbye to Mystic only after extracting a tentative promise that we can expect Beautiful Resistance to be released in 2011. “It took a long time to make it, so I will treat it with respect,” she says. A labor of love, she’s not willing to let the album go simply to the highest bidder.

“Our writing is precious,” she says of her songs, and the songs of all musicians. “If, as a songwriter, you’re approaching the process of songwriting simply for financial gain, that’s one thing, but if you’re a songwriter and you’re writing for your life and what you feel and what you really want to express and to heal yourself and unite people through music, that is something different and powerful, and it may be a longer road, and it may be a bit more of struggle, but I think it’s better.”

In the first installment of this series, we spoke to The Airborne Toxic Event’s Mikel Jollett about his songwriting process. Two brilliant songwriters, two very different approaches to the craft. Who do you identify with most? Let us know!

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In Part I of this series, we learned about Tom’s unconventional path into the music industry-one which inevitably led him to public radio.  In Part II, we’ll hear more about Tom’s penchant for picking and playing the best in world music artists, and his own brand of advice for musicians looking to stand out on the radio airwaves.

SW: Tell me about the team of people who work with you at KCRW.

TS: It takes all different kinds of people to make a radio station and it’s good that people are different in what they think, and their taste. I mean, Nic [Harcourt] and Chris [Douridas] have such keen ears for new bands, I don’t think I have their golden ears. I think I have ears for other kinds of music, you know, but in terms of new bands, I think the great things about Nic, Chris and Raul-they’re playing bands that never would have had a chance before-never would have had a chance at a record contract you know, records used to cost a lot of money!

People like Nic and Chris and Anne Litt, they don’t care, [they'll play it.]  I mean, if they have something that’s good, it’s so much easier for [bands] to get on the radio than before, and KCRW has an incredible audience, it has like a perfect audience-people buy records, people are very passionate about music, and people are very professional at KCRW, I mean, it’s a really great organization.

SW: So how is a band going to get heard?

TS: They make a CD. Hopefully they put a label on the CD and make it look halfway decent and don’t just write with a sharpie on it and send it in-although some people do actually do that, you know.  And God knows, at KCRW, it’ll probably get heard.

At KCRW we get loads of unsolicited stuff and we actually go through it and listen to it.  So in that respect, it’s better for bands than ever before.

SW: What changes have you noticed on the radio in terms of what’s being played these days on the air?

TS: The radio industry has become much worse; it’s become much more controlled.  Clear Channel taking over the commercial stations, bad stuff.  [A few years ago] the Dixie Chicks protested the war in Iraq, and look what happened to them; it’s like Hollywood blacklisting from the early 1950s you know. And that’s because there are very conservative business organizations that run Clear Channel, so in a sense it’s gotten worse, and in a sense it’s gotten better.  It’s gotten worse in the sense that the community stations are all very tightly controlled and yet a lot of people are listening to KCRW to try to find out what’s happening and what’s new.  Also a lot of the talk radio stations- KPCC, a very popular talk station used to have music. Not any more.  KUSC used to have a free-form segment on every day.  Not any more.  Now, it’s very tightly play-listed classical music.

So they’re not really DJs, they’ll come in and do their voice-over for five days of shows; it’s also cheaper for management.  Management hires them part-time, does not pay them benefits, pays them less-whatever.  They come in, they do all their voice-over, they say, “That was so and so, doing symphony number D for the last hour.”

SW: How does KCRW’s broadcast style differ?

TS: Being a DJ at KCRW means you’re watching your time, thinking what’s next, you’re on your toes.  It’s the difference between someone giving you a packaged meal out of the freezer and you’re [being] cooking a four-course meal-you have to pay attention, you can’t just take a nap.  So there certainly is a gestalt at being a DJ, you know, and it kind of harkens back to the old days of DJs, especially where people were playing 45s, and singles and songs that only lasted 3 minutes or less.  Plus, you have to be reading copy; you have to be putting cards in the announcements and stuff.

I remember when I was 17 the original KPCC in Miracle Mile [district] and we saw one of our hero DJs, Rick Holmes and he was doing his thing, doing ads, putting in the carts, reading copy, and he was like a maniac, doing this, doing that, and it’s like wow!  So it’s better than ever because they don’t have the intermediary wall of the record company.  Record companies are still doing great things, don’t get me wrong-plus, think about it, in the old days, bands had, what-a cassette?  People want CDs.  Well, now anybody can go in and set up a few microphones and a recording machine and come out with something that’s listenable if they do the drums right-and people like Nic Harcourt will listen to it.  It’s better for bands overall than it used to be.

Schnabel, whose weekly radio show, Café LA features some of the most varied artists in world music, is himself an anomaly of the very best kind—as a young man, he attended the famed Sorbonne and taught in Paris, he then worked as a lifeguard on the beaches of sunny California, he was KCRW’s very first Music Director (1979-1991) and he has little tolerance for people who can’t sing on key.

Here, Sonic Weekly brings you the first of a two-part interview with Schnabel to learn more about his advice to musicians trying to get airplay, his passion for public radio, and what inspires his eclectic musical taste and keeps him going, after more than 30 years on the radio.

SW: Tom, how did you get your start?

TS: What got me started is what gets a lot of people started. I was crazy about music. It was a Jones. I mean, if it came between buying lunch and buying a record, I would buy the record and figure out a way to get food. That’s the way it always for me, from the time I was stricken with music—from like 15 or 16, that was it. So I never had enough money to buy records, spent all my money on records and pursued another career—I went to graduate school, taught here at Mount St. Mary’s College, moved to Paris and taught there… I came back couldn’t get a teaching job, couldn’t get one. The only teaching job was in Topeka, Kansas, and I was like, I can’t go to Kansas! I’m from California! It’s not gonna work for me in Kansas. It just isn’t.

I said, well, let me just start walking towards music, this is where I’m already at, this is what I love, if only I could figure out how to get paid for it.

SW: How were you making a living back then?

TS: One thing that really saved me, I was a county lifeguard and I was high enough in seniority that I could work on the beach. That’s another thing, I learned a lot about music sitting on the lifeguard tower, especially in the winter time. Listening to the radio. Radio was always really important to me because it’s a conduit for music.

I had a little bit of money coming in from the lifeguarding, I’m working for a catering service during the day, still can’t get a job teaching. First of all, I start writing for Downbeat [magazine] 40-50 bucks, then I start doing liner notes for record companies, I still have all my vinyl upstairs; I’d write for $75 bucks a pop, 800 words.

Then, I get my radio license. And in the old days it was tough to get your radio license. You had go down and take these tests where you had to compare the ‘plate current’ and the ‘plate voltage’ from transmitter A and transmitter B, and ‘What is the total plate voltage coming out of the station?’ And you had to do all this calculus! It was weird you don’t have to do that now. So I failed it the first time, then drove down to Long Beach again, and finally got my 3rd class license.

SW: Why did you decide to work for public radio back then?

TS: I started working for KCRW in ’77. [At that time] the station was so bad, the signal, rather, was so weak, it could not get over the hill, it didn’t go past Robertson Blvd.

Photo credit: Marc Goldstein

I didn’t really even decide on public radio, wherever the best music was is where I went. I was interested in Coltrane, so I went wherever there was good music, KCRW had really good jazz programming, and I love jazz, I love classical too. KCRW was local, it was kind of user-friendly, and the first demo I submitted was to them. I wasn’t going to probably get a job at a commercial station, I wasn’t going to a classical station, so that was in ’77—April of ’77—I turned in my tape in April, finally passed the test and probably got a show, probably about summer of ’77. I was 30 years old.

SW: Why KCRW?

TS: KCRW wasn’t too far to drive, I kinda liked the feeling of it. KPFK, it just— it was a better fit for me than KPFK, and there weren’t any other public stations around then, except for KUSC and I really didn’t want to be a classical DJ; it’s hard to be involved as a DJ when you’re playing classical music. I mean, you play a symphony or something that lasts an hour, and then come back and say what it was and pronounce some fancy, foreign names, but your involvement is quite different. And people who are passionate about classical music—I’m sure they get off on it just as much—but you don’t have the gestalt you know. Being a DJ at a public station is like having a 6-speed manual shift, you’re active, you’re doing stuff, you’re not just putting it on cruise control.

Coachella 2009. A seething mass of sweating bodies, performers under pressure, and behind the scenes, an epic underworld of all the technical and organizational masterminds who make a production of this size a success.  Sun-soaked and buzzing already from the sounds and excitement of Day 1, the Sonic adventurers headed into the maze of production tents in search of the newest addition to music production’s backstage army: the VJ.

The VJ is part programmer, part video artist. While Sonic Weekly was spending three crazy days at the Coachella Music Festival in April, we had the opportunity to speak to VJ Surya Buchwald a.k.a., Momo the Monster, about what, exactly, his industry is bringing to the show.

Sonic Weekly: “How many times have you been to Coachella doing this?”
Surya Buchwald: “This is actually my first time. The crew that I came with, Xochi Media, they’ve been here for years and years.”

SW: “Is Xochi Media the company that’s been contracted to do this particular event, or this tent, or the whole facility?”
SB: “They’ve been contracted to do this specific tent, so all three days of the festival, anybody who comes in who needs video, either goes through us, or they have us make something for them.”

SW: “Are the bands using this video for their own purposes, or do you guys license it out? Do they pay for it, or, who owns the rights to all this?”
SB: “I’m not sure what the licensing fee allows. I did clarify when I came on as a contractor that I still own the rights to anything I create during this, but I think it’s all considered kind of a one-off. Other than if bands bring their own footage and have us play it. In those cases, I always assume that it’s their footage and their copyright and we can’t do anything with it other than perform it for them.”

Surya Buchwald, a.k.a. Momo the Monster

SW: “You’ve got a lot of equipment here. Can you give us a sense of what you’re doing right now?”
SB: “We do a little documentation just for us, but mostly we’re projecting video. I know at the moment it’s hard to see because of the sun…”

SW: “And what about all the cameras? Are you guys recording the performances?”
SB: “We actually have about six cameras throughout the venue. We have a couple of static cameras onstage, we have one here, and we have taps up at front of stage, and then we have a mixer here that can mix down all the cameras. We combine that with other generative visuals to do the projections. We’re doing them right now actually, even though you can’t see them all that well. As the sun goes down, what we’re doing will be really obvious.”

SW: “So you’re not projecting video of the performers for the people in the back of the audience, you’re giving the audience complimentary visuals to go with the music that’s being played?”
SB: “Right. Before the event, we try to do research on all the DJs and bands that we’re going to be performing along with, get some of their music and spend about two weeks together in the studio, listening to their music, coming up with new ideas of things to play along with them that are gonna match their style, their rhythms, all that kind of stuff.”

SW: “Do the ultimate visuals have to be approved by the DJs or the bands, or is that something you guys do on the fly? They trust your judgment?”
SB: “Yeah, pretty much by this point they trust Xochi Media to bring in good artists. They know we’re gonna provide a good show.”

SW: “So, you’re a freelance videographer?”
SB: “I’m actually a motion graphics artist and flash developer.”

Coachella 2009

SW: “You’re creating visuals to supplement music, cool things for us to look at while the DJs spinning away?”
SB: “Yeah, it’s sort of like creating animation or motion graphics, except on the fly. A lot of what we do is programming, building things that you can play as if you’re animating, but you can react in real time to a DJ so you’re not set with just whatever video you’ve rendered out.”

SW: “Is there a name for what you do?”
SB: “VJing, or visual performance.”

SW: “Like a video jockey?”
SB: “It’s a little different. VJing has parallels to DJing, but people think that it can be just playing one video, then mixing it to another video. But there’s a whole lot of different styles, and there can be a whole lot more to it than that.”

SW: “Examples?”
SB: “One up-and-coming movement is what’s called audio-visual performance, and that’s when VJs step out from behind the curtain and actually play onstage with a band in a really tightly synchronized way. What we do here is really improvisation. We’re listening, we’re reacting, and audio visual performance is kind of taking it to that next level where you’re creating an entire AV experience onstage in real time.”

SW: “How do you promote yourself? Do you network with all the bands? Do you work with production companies?”
SB: “That actually relates to how I met Xochi Media. There’s an organization I started about six years ago called LAVA—the Los Angeles Video Artists, and we meet once a month. Anybody who’s interested in doing video art meets together at different studios around LA and networks, and Brett Spivey [of Xochi Media] came to a couple of them, years ago. I’ve since moved to Portland, Oregon, but he’s been doing Coachella, and this year, they brought me on down. Lots of cities have regional meet-ups like that, there’s LAVA—the Los Angeles Video Artists—here, Portland has NWAV, New York has SHARES, as well as Eyewash. They actually do it weekly, they have artists come out and do all kinds of great stuff.“

SW: “A lot of people don’t even know this genre exists. It seems to contain elements of video art, TV, storytelling, and documentary.”
SB: “It definitely pulls from a lot of different genres. We get a lot of people from TV and film production. We get a lot of programmers who are working on actually creating this visual software.”

It seemed like we were just scratching the surface of VJing, but as we spoke to Surya, a roar went up through the crowd beyond the Sahara Tent. Instantly, the Xochi Media team bent over their banks of computer and electronic equipment. An announcer shouted to be heard over the din. We said goodbye to Momo the Monster. The show was about to begin, and he had work to do.

If you’d like to to get an inside look at Momo the Monster’s experience at Coachella 2009, check out his blog here.

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Next up in our investigation of the webcasting royalty rate debate, we spoke with John Simson, Executive Director of SoundExchange.

As you’ll see, he approaches the issue of royalty rates at a very different angle from that of Pandora‘s Tim Westergren.

John Simson of SoundExchange

SW: “”The focus here is going to be how the internet royalty dispute affects musicians. From your perspective, can you tell me anything about what’s been happening since the Webcasters Settlement Act was passed?”

JS: “Sure. There are ongoing discussions between SoundExchange and a number of groups. The two primary groups thusfar have been the Digital Media Association, which represents the biggest webcasters, which would be Pandora, Live365, Yahoo, AOL, I believe MTV is in there. There’s an ongoing conversation there to try to reach some sort of 10-year settlement which would run through to 2015, and essentially provide a little more of a long-term view. Every 5 years we typically go into a rate proceeding, and it would be great if we could avoid one.”

SW: “Looking to the future, for SoundExchange, what would the best possible resolution involve?”

JS: “Well, I think if we can find reasonable business solutions where we feel that we’re getting fair value and there’s a long-term view of people developing businesses, we’re very excited by that. We’re essentially 35, 000 US recording artists, 4 thousand labels and growing every day. It’s a very delicate balance to find the right spot where we feel we’re getting paid fairly, that people aren’t just using content, building a business based on content, and then selling it to someone else for very high multiples in which we don’t share.

When people use music to build a business, we should be sharing in the value of that business. And we’ve seen it frequently, where people use music to build something, sell it, and walk away, and we’ve gotten nothing. So people will say, gee, what’s the problem with some of the rates that are being proposed? For a lot of these people, on the licensee side, it’s been about amassing an audience more than it’s been about monetizing.”

SW: “Certainly a lot has been said in the media about royalty rates threatening to destroy internet radio. Does SoundExchange see internet radio as something that’s positive and that can increase royalty revenue overall?”

JS: “Obviously, if they’re paying fair rates, we’re very happy, because they’re paying us for content, which they should do. We love people who create great ways of delivering music to consumers. That’s the kind of business we’re in. But we’re also very mindful that there’s plenty of people trying to take content without paying for it, and that’s not something that we support.

These revenue streams that we collect and that other organizations collect and send to song writers or performing artists, or independent labels, major labels, what have you, are really lifelines. They’re very important, and they’ve become more and more important as the world has changed and more people consume through listening than through purchasing.”

SW: “Is there anything you want to say to musicians who are concerned about royalty rates and receiving royalties – how can they get more involved in the process?”

JS: “They should just contact us. Our outreach department is very active, and we love it when musicians get active. Too often, musicians sit on the sidelines. I’m a former recording artist myself, it sort of comes from within my DNA, and it’s true that the first people who jump up and hold a benefit concert, or do something when there’s been a disaster, or some major event, are musicians. They are always there to help other people, but when it’s their own rights, sometimes it’s harder to get them to actually stand up for themselves, and I find that very interesting.

Of course, there are certain outspoken musicians who are very happy to step forward and we’ve been blessed with many of them and that’s been terrific, but they’ve really got to get engaged, they’ve got to get in touch with their congressional representatives. We can certainly help them to be advocates, there’s nothing better than for musicians to come to Washington to see what happens in the halls of congress and see how things get done.

Aside from the webcasting issue, the bigger issue is that over-the-air radio still doesn’t pay the performer when they use their recordings, and it’s a big issue. It’s going to be a big battle, and we need people to step up and so far, it’s been great. We’ve had a lot of people step forward and it’s just terrific when they get engaged and once they come and get engaged, it’s amazing how they want to stay engaged, because I think it’s a very exhilarating experience. It really shows you how our government works, or doesn’t work, and you know, it’s been an eye-opening experience.”

SW: “That’s sound very accessible even to independent musicians, even if they’re going it on their own they can still participate?”

JS: “Yes. Definitely. For independent musicians is, it’s really important for their voices to be heard. We’ve had quite a few independent musicians come to the hill with us, and independent labels, and obviously independents are well-represented on the SoundExchange board.”

SW: “Any last thing you might say to our musician readers about the whole situation as it stands right now?”

JS: “I would just say, learn the issues, understand them, which will just make them smarter about them, and I think, be advocates, because they need to be advocates for fair pay for play, and fair pay from people who want to use their work.”

*

And there you have it. Voices from both sides of the royalty rate debate. Different approaches, yes, but clearly, they both want what’s best for musicians, and they both want artists like you to get involved!

Now it’s your turn to Sound Off! Whose side are you on? Tell the world what you think in the SW Forum!

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Tim Westergren, CEO Pandora Radio

Since the spring of 2007, the debate over royalty rates has been raging between webcasters and SoundExchange, which collects royalties for labels and musicians. To find out where the dispute is at right now, we talked to representatives on both sides of the argument. Some of their insights were included in recent articles, but what they had to say was so interesting that we thought it should be reproduced, in full, right here.

Our first interview was with Pandora founder and CEO, Tim Westergren.

SW: “The focus here is going to be how the internet royalty dispute affects musicians, so with that in mind, could you tell us a bit about where is the situation at now, since the Webcasters Settlement Act passed?”

TW: “I’m happy to be able to use the word ‘optimistic’ in describing it now, for the first time in a while, and I think we’re really on the cusp of resolving it. After a long and painful negotiation, we’re pretty close to turning a corner.”

SW: “And, ideally speaking, what would the hoped-for outcome be for Pandora?”

TW: “For us, it’s about a fair rate and a rate that establishes some sort of parity with other forms of radio and allows our industry to flourish. We’re not done, so I can’t really talk about specific numbers, but you know, I’m a musician myself, I’m a big believer in paying royalties, but they need to be reasonable and fair, and they need to be economically rational, looking at the business.”

SW: “So do you see a fair resolution to the royalty dispute benefiting musicians in the long run?”

TW: “I don’t actually want to comment on the specific outcome. Ultimately, the goal for us is at the intersection of what ‘s fair for musicians and what works economically for webcasters, and that’s where this needs to land. And the answer that the copyright royalty board coughed up in March of ‘07 was not at that intersection. It was a badly flawed decision, and it was one that would crush webcasting.

Unfortunately, one of the problems with this whole process is that the interests of musicians have not actually been well represented.  And that’s begun to show within SoundExchange.  SoundExchange is kind of the collecting point for all the constituents that are negotiating this issue. And really, it’s been that bad that the group has been dominated by the interests of large labels, and those are diverging from the interests of musicians, including the interests of musicians on large labels, ironically, because they were pushing for a webcasting rate that was just unaffordable and if you get there, then you destroy web radio, and it gets replaced by an online version of broadcast radio, and that may benefit the labels because their music gets played on broadcast radio, but it doesn’t help the average working artist.”

SW: “In trying to avoid forcing you to say anything definite about where the royalty thing is going – if it panned out in the best possible way, how do you see musicians benefiting from services like Pandora in the future?”

TW: “Lots of ways. First and foremost, Pandora is a radio of inclusion, rather than exclusion. We play the music of over 60, 000 artists, we have a collection of 600, 000 songs, and 85% of those songs play every day on Pandora, so it is a profoundly democratic medium. We’re essentially exposing an otherwise ignored class of musicians to a massive audience and because internet radio has a characteristic of being connected, it creates all these great opportunities for musicians to benefit from that discovery that happens. Whether it’s purchasing a song instantly or learning about the band and joining their fan club, there’s all these opportunities that translate the connection that happens on Pandora into value for the artist.

If you look at the history of digital music, the last 10-15 years have really all been focused on access, you know, making large catalogues of music available. But that hasn’t solved the most difficult problem, which is promotion. It’s all well and good to be available on Amazon, but that doesn’t do anything for you if someone can’t find you there. And that’s been true of music for decades. And Pandora is solving that problem.”

SW: “What would you say to artists about how they can potentially take a step on their side to support internet radio and help it grow?”

TW: “What I think artists really need to do is support and speak up in the context of their respective organizations. And make sure that their interests are being represented. There are different groups that play that role, and they have a seat at the table with SoundExchange, and they need to hear from their members – that they want a speedy resolution, or they want fair rates, or they want decisions that will support web radio, and allow artists to participate. And artists need to do that in greater and greater numbers, because if they don’t, the only agenda that will be pursued is that of the major labels, who are obviously better organized.”

SW: “So you see the industry benefiting as a whole from the continuing success of internet radio?”

TW: “Undoubtedly. It’s going to change the industry. It’s no longer a radio that caters to a very small slice of music, it’s a much more participative form of radio. It’s going to upset the status quo, but I think that’s good for everybody.”

SW: “Do you see it replacing traditional forms of radio?”

TW: “Sure. Absolutely. And eventually, I don’t see broadcast radio surviving internet radio. Internet radio is now getting into the car. If you can get personalized radio in the car, why would you tune in to a broadcast station that doesn’t know or care who you are? I’m pretty optimistic about it.”

SW: “That would be a very different world. Anything else you’d like to say to musicians about what they can expect from internet radio?”

TW: “Just that it’s their friend. The other thing to consider, too, is that the more internet radio replaces broadcast, the better for musicians, because broadcast radio doesn’t pay them any performances royalties. Part of the injustice of this whole royalty system is that internet radio pays this monster rate, that which is the performance fee. Satellite plays a fraction of what we pay, and broadcast radio doesn’t pay any at all, so if you’re in your car and you’re listening to a song from Pandora, the artist is getting the equivalent of a couple of pennies an hour overall. If you’re listening to a song from KFOG, they’re not getting paid anything, so musicians really ought to be supporting internet radio. It pays them.”

*

It’s clear that Tim Westergren had strong feeling on the subject. Now it’s time to find out what the other side had to say…

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SW:  Would you say at this point that it’s mainly electronic music that benefits from digital?

JV:  Yeah, if you’re making music history, if you’re blowing up song forms—look at Radiohead—the most fucking unbelievable band in the history of music.  I’ve spent more time inside Radiohead than anything else, even more than The Who, The Beatles, The Kinks, David Bowie—the bands that I grew up obsessing about every day.  But Radiohead has unlimited access to money and equipment, and they are using some very fancy stuff to make their albums.  When I see two-inch, 24-track decks floating around for $1000, I don’t see that as an argument for recording on a shitty computer.  I mean, I just bought one of those for nothing.  I bought one of the best sounding 24-track decks for nothing, a deck that has recorded half the albums that you’ve ever heard recorded from 1972 to 1978.

SW:  How’d you come across that?

JV:  I sold it to a friend’s studio, and he moved to Iowa City and sold it back to me.  The market [for buying and selling vintage recording equipment] has utterly collapsed.

SW:  Why is that?

JV:  Because this is not an era of sentimentality.  And, hey, sometimes that’s beautiful. I love that people don’t give a shit about all of these old questions, and they don’t obsess about cabeling and microphones.  They just make art—there’s a lot of good about that.  I have very nuanced feelings about this whole thing, but you can’t say that the last 70 years of recording technology are irrelevant.  I’m not a traditionalist on any level, but I think you have to acknowledge history.  It’s great if you want to go make wine, and you say, ‘Fuck it! I’m just going to make wine.’  That’s the American spirit.  The more I go to Europe, the more I see in relief what the American spirit is.  It’s just “fuck all,” and I love that.

SW:  Is it already getting to the point where there are very few people who are conversant in using analog?

JV:  Yeah, and no one cares anymore.  The debate is way over. Sometimes I just feel like an echo of an echo talking about it.

SW:  Is it just because there is so much involved with using it?

JV:  It’s just death.  It’s the past.  How could that not be something to get beyond?

SW:  Do you have problems with tape-stretching and things like that?

JV:  Do you mean the tension of the deck actually damaging the tape?  No, because we have good tape machines.  If you have properly-calibrated machines, it isn’t a problem.  In nine years, we’ve never had a problem with one reel of tape. We’ve never had a dropout.  We’ve never had anything get zapped by an x-ray in flight. We’ve never had a client lose a tape.  Tape is very stable.  Part of it is that people have been working on magnetic tape for a long time, and they’ve sorted it out.  We haven’t had a problem with data loss, either, if people are backing up stuff.  It can go both ways.

SW:  How long did it take you to understand how to use analog?  Was it the process of learning tricks of the trade and that kind of stuff?

JV:  Yeah, it definitely took a while because what’s harder than dealing with analog stuff is engineering, and [I’ve] learned that over a long period of time by watching people work.  It’s like writing.  There are a million ways to do it, and there are a million ways to be good at it.  And there are so many valid ways to be a good engineer, and I fell in love with that part of the craft.  It’s like surgery; there are so many things you have to know to be good at it.

SW:  So do you record everything on analog at Tiny Telephone?

JV: Yeah, we are strictly analog.  We made a decision many years ago to have rules and constraints, and those rules have changed with every record, but one thing that we’ve never altered is that we are strictly analog.  We don’t transfer into digital until we take the half-inch tapes to Bernie Grundman in L.A. and put them up on his rebuilt Studer deck and do a one-time transfer.  I personally don’t—for me and my own music—I don’t like the sound of digital converters very much.  I’m probably the guy who knows too much.  Like when you know too much about recording or cooking or gardening, you lose some of the joy of pure creation and you become a little too obsessed with the process.  It’s very possible that I’m way too obsessed with the process of making music, but I just can’t alter it, so I’m stuck with it.

SW:  Did you use analog even in the MK Ultra days?

JV:  Yeah, everything was analog except that the first record was recorded on ADATs, and that’s why I stopped using digital.  I had an eight-track half-inch, and I sold it to buy an ADAT, and I think that I’ve never felt more burned in my life. Digital, to be honest, has improved tremendously since the converters and ADATs.  But as it stands in the digital realm, you have to spend serious money to get up to the top, to get converters that are better than shitty ProTools converters.  But, again, it might be better if I didn’t know any of these things.

SW:  Does using analog make the process longer than if you were using digital?

JV:  That’s a great question.  My gut feeling is that it makes it shorter, because there are a lot less things to do.  I’ve seen many albums on the digital formats drag out to the two-year mark—tons.  I would say that half of the stuff done at Tiny Telephone is done on ProTools or other systems, because people bring them in.  I’m beyond the point of encouraging or discouraging.  It’s an absolute waste of time to convince someone about how to record.  I used to, and it was so stupid.  There’s an evangelical aspect that was not very sexy to watch, so I gave it up.

I would say that it’s going to come down to the discipline of the person [doing the recording] more than whether it’s a random access format or a linear format.  I would say for my own record-making that having 24 tracks absolutely makes finite what you can do on a song, and I think that it makes it pretty organized and simple.  You’re finished when you’re out of tracks.  Recording 24 tracks is very easy, considering that you lose eight or nine or ten on percussion and drums right away.

SW:  Why do you lose so many on percussion and drums?

JV:  Well, it’s nice to have instruments spot-miked, like a kick and a snare, and to have a lot more control over mixing.  We actually use a lot less. Scott Solter, [engineer] uses a lot less microphones on drums than most people, but we have always been really big on doing percussion on songs, and doing percussion in a way that maybe doesn’t translate as anything but just adds to the fabric.  Scott, just the other day, put a gong on top of a snare, and you wouldn’t necessary be able to pull it away from the drum set, but it makes the snare sound very clangy and dissonant and odd and unsettling. For us, it’s very useful.

SW:  Can you tell the difference between an analog and a digital recording when you’re listening to it?

JV:  Sometimes.  If it’s a ProTools recording, I can tell very quickly.  But there are some digital recordings that don’t sound digital to me, and there are some analog recordings that sound horrible and fake and digital to me.  I’ve been wrong so many times that I wouldn’t say that I have a lot of accuracy.  But I have really strong feelings right away when I hear something, and it’s more than fidelity—it’s style.  I want to hear style in the recordings.  That would override concerns. Listen, I love the Shins, but those records would sound a fucking hell of a lot better if they were done on a Studer.  That’s a sad thing to me, because it’s not that what they’re doing needs to be manipulated on a computer.  It’s not The Books.  Those kinds of things are agonizing.  I’ve listened to those records five thousand times, and there’s a certain violence that has been imparted into my soul, sonic violence (laughing).  And there’s resentment that there isn’t more of a debate amongst musicians.  If someone comes to me and says, ‘I love the sound of ProTools converters,’ I say, ‘Ok, that’s cool.  At least you have an opinion on it.’  Most musicians don’t even think that there’s a difference.

SW:  So, for instance, how would those Shins albums sound differently if they were done analog?

JV:  Well, the words I would use sound very vague.  It would sound more organic and wholesome.  There’s a brittle, cheap quality to junk-o converters.  Now, when people start getting into Genex and very fancy Apogee converters, you can get away from some of those resolution problems at the bottom end.  But there’s nothing worse than consumer digital.  It will be a shameful period in recording history when people look back on this stuff, especially considering how good it can be.

SW:  So when you hear people talk about how digital has made good sounding albums possible for anyone with a laptop, do you agree with that at all?

JV:  Yeah, because I’ve been stunned at some of the records that I’ve heard that have been done digitally, especially when the source material is not dynamically complicated acoustic-electric music that [are] being recorded for the first time.  If you are Aphex Twin, you’ve written your own programs to do sequences, and you’re manipulating interesting but essentially digital source material, whether it’s keyboards or drum machines.  It just depends.  But if you’re recording drums, and bass, and guitars, and you’re trying to sound like Harvest-era Neil Young or the Byrds, you’re going to be at a great disadvantage if you’re recording on a computer.  That’s right now.  In five years—or even two—all bets are off.  I have nothing but complete faith in computers.  My whole life is sitting in front of a monitor reading blogs, so I’m not a hater.  I’m just a realist.

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Though Oates has worked with filmmakers in the US and Europe, including Finnish filmmaker Samuli Jomppanean, and German filmmaker Joachim Jung, Oates’ notoriety hasn’t made him arrogant. A self-taught composer, he’s financed his production company entirely on his own, by working ordinary jobs and with the help of student loans. And with his recent string of successes, it’s clear this young man’s talent knows no boundaries.

SW: How long have you been composing music?

I started composing when I was in High School, and I’d been playing instruments like trombone, and stuff like that. I didn’t like being a performer that much ‘cause I get nervous around people, and I’m especially self conscious that everyone’s watching you, and you’ve got these lights on you, and you’re like, ‘Oh, what am I gonna do!’ So composing was more attractive to me because I’m more of a guy who likes to kinda sit with myself and think things through. I mean, I started composing when I was in High School, and I’ve just been doing it ever since.

SW: How exactly did you get started?

It’s a very difficult thing to be successful as a composer. While studying at Oklahoma State University, I had changed my major from Music Composition to Computer Science. Then I decided, okay, Computer Science is fun and all, but I’m writing this [music] stuff anyway. I’m enjoying writing music, and I’m gonna try and do that as much as I can. I don’t care what people say, ‘It’s difficult… whatever, it’s hard.’ It doesn’t matter. So I moved out here to New Mexico, switched my major back to Music Composition, and I started acquiring more professional recording equipment—microphones, you know really nice speakers—so I could record people, could produce complete scores of orchestras that they needed. I purchased a different series of samplers, all kinds of software, in order to produce professional quality music—that was exactly what they told us to produce. And all this started about two, maybe three years ago. Then a friend of mine told me to check out the Duke City Shootout, which is a nationwide film competition that happens once a year here in Albuquerque. That’s where I started getting awards for the music. People really liked what I was doing, and I started getting recognition.

SW: Tell me about the first film for which you composed the musical score.

The first movie that I ever wrote music for was called Stalingrad 1943, and this was a short film. I had met this guy on the Internet, named Samuli Jomppanean, and he was from Finland and he said, you know, we’re making movies, and your music is really good, maybe you can write something for one of our movies. I had no idea what was going on ‘cause it was all in a different language; even the subtitles were in a different language. It’s about World War II, about a soldier who’s in the war and all the horrible things in the war that were done to his family. It was shot in black and white and it was very sad and melancholy.

SW: Tell me about the sound effects work that you’ve done for films? Is that something you’ve enjoyed doing?

Well, not so much. I get kind of roped into [doing Foley sound] because I have all the recording equipment, so I’ve been doing the sound mixing and the Foley stuff for movies, but really what I want to do is the music. The reason I sort of allowed myself to do the sound was because the better the sound is, the better the film is, and as a result, the higher the possibility my name will get out there. It’s tedious; it’s not like composing. Foley’s not bad, but doing the sound makes it so much more tedious; just making sure the meters aren’t peaking is pretty meticulous. Foley’s creative; it’s like, ‘How can you make it sound like a guy’s getting punched?’ [I ask myself] ‘How hard do you want him to get punched? And when they put the metal pipe to his head, do you want his head to crack?’ It’s a lot of fun.

SW: Who are your favorite music composers?

Well, there’s a bunch of them. I can’t deny the brilliant works of the famous John Williams. There’s also James Horner, who I like a lot. Clint Mansell is really good. He did Requiem for a Dream. James Newton Howard… there’s a huge list. In my influences, there are not just film composers but musicians in general. You can go into classical musicians—avant garde musicians, and pop—I mean, even Britney Spears has had an influence on me. A lot of people don’t give her enough credit. She’s a cliché pop-icon, but she’s worked really, really hard to get where she is now. She’s very dedicated.

SW: You won awards for Lady Liberty, and Under My Skin, has that success gotten you more recognition?

Yeah, definitely, but I think what’s helped me more than the awards is the networking I do with the people I’ve met. When they did the Duke City Shootout, that’s when I got two awards for films that I did. I met so many different people—John Lore and Armando Kirwin, two editors I work with—and they’ve networked me to even more people, and it’s just great. Networking is proportional ‘cause if you meet one person, you’re gonna meet three more people, and out of those three people, you’re gonna meet three more, from each of them. I was thinking about this the other day; I could tie almost all of the films I’ve worked on so far, to two people.

SW: What advice would you give to other up-and-coming composers?

The most advice I would give is, like in Charlie Brown, what was it that Lucy said to him? ‘The more you fail, the more you learn’, and Charlie Brown said, ‘Well I must be the smartest kid in the whole world,’ ‘cause he fails all the time. But that’s so true, you just have to keep going. Be critical about whatever it is that you’re doing. You have to write everyday. Network. Go to parties. Part of it—the whole industry—is not just being able to write music, but a huge chunk of it is networking, meeting people, talking to people, getting interviewed. Go to film festivals, meet directors, make CDs. Go to different directors’ conferences. One thing I did last weekend is I went to a film festival in Santa Fe. That was good because there were lots of composers trying to network with the directors, and the directors were coming to meet the composers. All of them look [and listen] to your music and you can talk to them that way, otherwise you’re gonna be one of many fish [in the pond.] Ultimately, you’ve got to make yourself stand out.

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