Last month I promised you that we’d get to the final eight bars of the “I Am Legend” intro, so here we go
The six bars that go from 1:29 to 1:40 involve a circular picking pattern and the always-spooky E(b5) tritone chord (see Figure 1). For the final two bars, stomp on your distortion box or channel-switcher and start chugging away on the E5 power chord shown in FIGURE 2.
It seems like we spent a year on that little piece of music. Now we can finally move on to some more of your questions. We’re tight on space this month, so I’m only going to be able to get to one this time. But that vacation I thought I had coming is nowhere in sight: I’ve already gotten way more questions than I thought I would (good ones, too!), so it looks like we’re going to have to keep Astro Ink going for a while!
J., How do you play the rhythm and chorus to “More Human Than Human” and what effects are you using? – Curt Pazz via the Internet
The tablature for this song has been published a couple of times (in the June ’95 Guitar World and in the Warner Bros. Authentic Guitar-Tab Edition of White Zombie: Astro-Creep: 2000), and the main parts are shown below. There aren’t really any effects on the guitar in this song, just a lot of amps turned up really loud. I’m playing an Ibanez Iceman guitar detuned a minor third (low to high: C# F# B E G# C#), and I use a chrome slide for the main riff (see Figure 3). I prefer metal slides over glass ones because I’m able to get more of a slashing, in-your-face kind of sound with them.
As for those loud amps I was talking about, I played through four different half-stacks at the same time. When you use more than one amp, you can get huge sounds by blending the different tones. To do this, you need some kind of splitter box-I like the four-output one that Mesa-Boogie makes. Anyway, the amps I used are: a Randall solid-state head through a Randall 4×12 cabinet, a Randall head through a Mesa 4×12 cabinet, a Mesa Triple-Rectifier head through a Mesa cab and a Marshall Valvestate head [VS100RH] through a Randall cab. Each speaker cabinet was close miked with a single Shure SM57.
The slide part sounds like it may have an effect on it because it was doubled-i.e. the guitar performance was recorded twice and then those two tracks were panned left and right for a stereo image. To duplicate the thick sound of this part, try using a chorus pedal (in stereo if possible) or a short delay.
Crap, we’re out of space! We’ll cover the outro-chorus riff to “More Human” and answer more of your questions next month.
Jeez, I thought I was off the hook. I was pretty sure I’d talked about everything you would need to know about how to form and play in your own band. But I also said that if you had any questions, I’d be happy to answer them. Apparently I’m going to be doing this for quite some time because the letters and E-mails have been coming in like crazy.
Dear Astro Ink, I’ve already formed a band, and your column has helped me immensely. It has saved me more than once from finding things out the hard way. A few months ago, you wrote about the differences between digital and analog recording. My band isn’t signed and would like to start recording our own demos instead of paying an arm and a leg for the pro-studio route. What is the most economical way for me to go? – Elliot Hudson Kanaga, Canada
Elliot,
The easiest thing to do is to record in your rehearsal room with a boombox that has a built-in mic. First, try to deaden the room by hanging up blankets (you can get ’em cheap at your local Salvation army or U-Haul place) or carpet scraps, or put mattresses up against the wall to help absorb stray sound waves. Then start experimenting with the placement of the amps and drums, and even of the boombox itself. Try recording with it in the middle of the room, near a wall, on top of something, with a blanket over it, etc. You never know; you might be able to get a decent recording this way. I’ve heard several such demos that were pretty good.
If you want to go to the next level, learn recording techniques and put together a basic system that you can build on later. Get a regular consumer-grade two-track (i.e. stereo) cassette deck and a small mixer (Mackie makes a nice one). You can start with one microphone in the middle of the room and pan it to the middle for a mono recording. Add another mic and experiment with stereo recording. Add another and devote it to vocals or drums, and then add another mic every time you get a little money. Before you know it, you’ll have a versatile little demo-recording factory.
After you get six or eight mikes (I recommend Shure SM57’s for guitars and drums and SM58’s for vocals-they’re cheap, can take a beating and are used in many professional recording studios), you can experiment with isolating the amps and drums by pointing them away from each other or building baffles (sound absorbing walls) between them. This will help you get a cleaner recording and have more control over the individual sounds of the instruments.
As you learn about EQ, recording levels and mixing straight to tape, you’ll probably want to start overdubbing. With a four-track cassette recorder (I recommend the Tascam 424), you can make a live two-track recording and then add tracks to it, such as a solo (this is very cool if you’re the only guitar player in the band) or some background vocals. You can also bounce tracks (copy multiple tracks onto one to free up tracks for additional overdubs) to add even more stuff. If you want to make the jump to digital, check out the four-track hard disk and MiniDisc recorders on the market or the modular eight-track digital recorders by Alesis and Tascam. Moving up to this level means spending more money, so see what’s right for your budget, as well as your needs.
J., I’ve been reading your column since day one, and I think it’s so cool that somebody is relaying the real-life shit without sugar coating it. My band’s been together for a little over a year, and we’ve played at a few parties. There’s this big “Battle of the Bands” thing coming up, and we really want to sign up for it. A few columns back you said that bands should play anywhere to get used to crowds and their reactions. So, even though we know we’re gonna get our asses kicked up around our ears by those other cool local bands, should we play anyway, just for the hell of it? What would you do? -Matt Swift Guitarist with NONOXYNOL-9 Merritt Island, FL
Matt,
Do it! If you really have what it takes to be in a band, you’re going to get your ass kicked (literally and figuratively) every night for many nights to come anyway, so you might as well get used to it. Practicing is good, but you can’t stay in the garage forever. How did it go when you played parties? What do your friends really think?
What I would do is sign up for the battle and start practicing every day. Also, see if you can organize a party to play at with the express purpose of warming up for the “big show.” Listen to tapes of your songs, and really think about making them the best they can be. When you play the gig, look the audience straight in the eye. Oh, and one final piece of advice: never practice the same day you’re performing. It’s bad luck.
Hi J., I recently purchased a video with an assortment of White Zombie concert footage on it. On one song, you place your fingers on one of the frets near the nut while you jerk on the whammy bar to produce a high-pitched squeal. I can’t figure out exactly how you do it. – Mick Ende Gainesville, TX
Mick,
I have to admit that I copped that trick from one of my favorite guitar players – Dimebag Darrell of Pantera. What we’re talking about here is a natural harmonic-you know, when you place a finger lightly on the strings directly over the 7th or 12th fret and strum the strings and get that chiming sound? This is essentially the same thing, only a little harder to do. You need a high-gain setup and a floating whammy bar (“floating” means you can pull the bar up as well as push it down) to really make it work. Try hitting natural harmonics on all six strings just below the 3rd fret, and then yanking the bar up and down for a rocket ship kind of sound. Then try to pick out individual pitches on the G or B strings anywhere between the 2nd and 3rd frets for that super-high-pitched squealing sound. There are lots of crazy harmonics to be found down towards the nut and they’re naturally kind of soft (i.e. hard to make happen), so it will take a little practice to get them to really pop out. Try stepping on a wah pedal for more high-end scream!
I’m all outta space, so we’ll have to finish “I Am Legend” next month. We’ll also look at some riffs you’ve asked about and answer more of your letters.
When Guitar World first asked me to do a column I thought, “Sure, as long as it’s about something practical instead of all that minor-flatted-third-aolean-fifth-position scale crapola that I slept through in music theory class. How about if I share what I know (and believe me, everything I know I learned the hard way) about how to form a band? I figured it’d be hard to fill more than four or five columns, let alone 18!
We’ve talked about your van, your T-shirts, your lawyer, your publishing deal, your guitar tech, the Internet, spare batteries, MTV and your set list. There are a lot of details to worry about and a lot of business to get bogged down in, but try to remember that in the end it all comes back to the music – always. The only topic I can think of that we haven’t touched on is recording your first album. What happens in the studio? What does an engineer actually do?
It used to be that unless you were recording your band in your basement on a boom-box, you had to go into a recording studio. There were “demo studios,” which were little rooms with 4- or 8-track tape machines that were used to record demos and local radio commercials. You’d set up your gear in some guy’s basement and, for the $8 an hour he’d charge you, you’d hope you would come out with something you could play for people. Then there were the middle range studios-16-track facilities that, while probably still in somebody’s garage, were a step removed from the “hobby” stage. If you were lucky, you’d have an engineer to work with who knew what he/she was doing, the ability to isolate the instruments from each other and some decent microphones. This is where you might’ve recorded your first single or album if you were doing everything yourself.
Finally, you had the pro studios which were pretty much off-limits unless you had a major label behind you. These were the fully-staffed 24- or 48-track facilities where, at $1,000 a day or more (plus producer’s fees, tape costs, gear rental, and, keeping in mind that I’m talking about the Seventies and Eighties, whatever other high-dollar items were deemed necessary to the creative process), you would work at a frenzied pace to turn out an album as quickly as possible.
The science of recording has changed drastically since the dawn of the rock and roll era. Once upon a time, a record was a document of a live performance-a monophonic analog wave, cut directly onto a master disk on a hand-cranked or spring-driven machine. Later, disks were cut electrically, and eventually recorded to tape. In the 1940’s, people started to experiment with hooking two tape machines together for a stereo image. In the Fifties came the idea of recording two, three or four simultaneous tracks on one piece of tape (Les Paul is more than the name on a guitar; if you’re interested in recording, do some research on this guy and his ideas), and it wasn’t long before there were 8-, 16-, 24-, 48- and 72-track recordings.
At the same time, with all of this new freedom to fix parts of a recording and add things to it, the idea of what a recording was went from being a “picture” of a live situation to being its own thing-a carefully crafted piece of music that would then have to be recreated in a live performance.
In the preceding section, I said “used to be” because the process of recording has changed so much, especially in the past ten years but has it? When you hear a hip-hop or techno record, chances are that at least part of it was recorded in somebody’s home studio, maybe even in their bedroom on their computer! With digital recording (encoded numbers on tape or in a computer’s memory that represent sound, as opposed to an analog-wave model of it) and the proliferation of low-cost, high-quality gear, almost anybody can make a good sounding, low-noise recording.
Buy an 8-track digital recorder, a mixer and some microphones and you can record your own demos-and your own records, if you get good enough. So why would anyone still spend thousands of dollars in a “real studio” and get nothing in return but a tape when they could use their recording advance to buy their own studio set-up?
Here’s another question: If you could use a transistor amplifier, why would you play guitar through a tube amp? Tubes give off heat, burn out, sound different every day and are an obsolete technology-apart from guitar amps, no other appliance has been tube-powered since the 1960s. In fact, tubes are no longer even made in the U.S.! Answer: The sound. Nothing sounds like a tube amp and, as it happens, nothing sounds like an analog recording. Sure, 4- and 8-track analog cassette recorders are affordable, but the stuff that your favorite albums were recorded through isn’t-what you’re paying $700 to $2,000/day to record in a pro studio for is millions of dollars worth of gear and a staff that knows how to use it. For electronic music, where the sound source is synthetic or digital, I would recommend keeping it in that medium and build and learn how to use a home digital studio. For guitars, drums, and microphones, your best bet for making the best recording possible is still old fashioned analog tape.
More on recording, what you actually hear on an album and what a producer does next time. If you have any questions-about anything-you can write me at [redacted], or you can email me at [redacted]@aol.com. I’ll keep the column going by answering your letters.
Here are the next eight bars of the “I Am Legend” (La Sexorcisto) intro (Figure1).We’re almost done!
In the last few columns I wrote about what happens when your band finds itself at the crossroads between the do-it-yourself world and the pay-someone-else-to-do-it-because-you-can’t-keep-up world. We’ve covered a couple of ways that you can actually make money (publishing, soundtracks, album royalties) and some unavoidable ways to spend it (lawyers, managers, business managers, tour managers). This month I’ve got one more of each-adding a booking agent to your team and signing a (hopefully) money-making deal with a merchandising company.
As your band becomes more successful (and your life gets more insane), one responsibility you’re going to want to delegate is booking gigs and tours. Having less to worry about, however, isn’t the only reason to hire an agent; your agent’s contacts with venues and other artists should help get you better gigs.
Booking agents usually earn a commission from concert proceeds (usually 5-10 percent). The unusual thing about hooking up with a booking agency is that you generally won’t sign any kind of contract, and you’ll generally have dealings only with your agent specifically. If you’re a gigantic, profit-generating arena band, your tour may have tie-ins with other things (sponsorships, promotions) that require you to sign something, but on any other level, a contract usually indicates something’s up. Anyway, you shouldn’t even consider signing something unless your lawyer has seen it (and maybe your manager and business manager, too), but you already knew that from reading this column, right?
The upside to all this is that if you start with a small agency (maybe through your independent record label or a music industry sourcebook) and need to then move up to a bigger company, you’re not legally prevented from doing so in any way. Also, if you have a really good relationship with your agent and he or she moves to a different company, you, by not being tied to any agency, can follow them.
Stuff that sucks, anyone? As with publishing and just about everything else in music, the touring business has changed a lot in the past 10 years. There are many booking agencies, but there are also thousands of bands playing every night, and with music videos and the Internet competing for people’s attention, interest in live music is down. Believe it or not, there are actually quite a few bands that sell records and have hits on the radio and MTV but can’t manage to make any money on the road. Being on a major label is no longer a guarantee that you can get a tour booked or get a merchandising deal.
Ten years ago, when commercial heavy metal was the biggest thing since sliced bread, signing a record deal pretty much made a merchandise deal a sure thing. As bands who had signed million-dollar t-shirt contracts became unpopular or broke up without recouping their advances, merchandise companies went out of business-or totally restructured the way they did business. These days, new bands are offered small deals and small (or no) advances.
Early on, we talked about how to make your own shirts (and stickers, etc.) to sell on the road. This is a cool way to make money and promote your band, but suppose you can’t keep up? Suppose you’re on tour and (here’s some wishful thinking) your Houston gig is packed with twice as many people as you had expected. Not only do you stay in tune the whole show and break no strings, but your set rocks like crazy. Bang! All your shirts for the next week of shows sell out, leaving you with nothing for the next day in Austin. You call the guy who screens your shirts in his basement and he’s only got 10 shirts that are dry enough to send to you, and since it’s 2 a.m., even those wouldn’t get to you by the next evening. Been there, done that, it sucks. Just like publishing, the longer you hold out before signing a merch deal, the better the deal you’ll get. When you make the initial jump to signing with a company, a smaller one may be just right for you: some have in-house designers and artists, some don’t. Some can offer you a fairly good deal, some can’t. Sometimes a deal can even be part of your record contract, as with Blue Grape, which is Roadrunner Records’ merchandise arm.
Besides the fact that with a big merch company you don’t have to worry about designing, moving, selling, or running out of shirts, an important advantage is that you have access to retail sales-i.e. your shirts will be sold in record stores, t-shirt shops and catalogs. Although these sales don’t usually account for as much profit as sales at gigs do, they can go a long way toward paying off your advance.
The way a merch deal works is pretty much the same way a recording or publishing deal does: you sell a company the right to use your name and image and you get an advance, which you then recoup at a rate of (depending on your deal) 20 to 40 percent. Well, enough of that. Play some weird chords while I try to think of what to write about next month.
Sure could! My last couple of columns have been about ways to spend money, ways to make money, and doing things at a level that’s right for you. I’ve been writing about how a record label is like a band, and I’m gonna back that up right now by explaining exactly what happens when you sign your deal and how all this money stuff ties together.
If you’ve been thinking that when you get signed a guy in a suit will hand you the keys to a Cadillac and make all your troubles vanish, think again. Unless you’re a band that has had some success previously or are the subject of a “next big thing” – type bidding war, your life probably won’t change that much upon signing. It’s fairly difficult to get money out of a label, and, outside of signing bonuses, pretty much any money you get is recoupable. Here’s where the additional members of your team come into play. Every deal is different, and it’s up to your manager to negotiate a good one for you. You’d like to assume that you have certain “rights” when you sign: the right to some money to live on, the right to make a video, the right to spend enough money in the studio to get everything perfect, the right to buy decent equipment and the right to tour support (I’ll explain that in a second).
These things are not automatic, but are determined by the deal you cut. As far as this band or that band signing a “million dollar deal” goes, don’t believe that either. You might eventually get a million dollars (to split between the members of your band, less half or so in taxes, less your manager’s twenty percent, your accountant’s five percent and your legal costs), but spread out over the release of however many albums you’re signed for, if you don’t get dropped first.
After White Zombie got signed, I was washing dishes up until the night before we went into the studio to record La Sexorcisto. For a while I managed to live on the meager advance I got, but our release date got pushed back and I had to get another crappy job until it was time to go on tour. There’s the reality of my rock and roll dream-guitar player in a signed band, trying not to get mugged on the subway on my way home from work.
So we’re clear on what the term “recoupable” means, right? You may get money to live on and to buy gear and road cases, but you gotta pay it back. You want to go into a real studio with a good producer, and depending on recording budgets specified in your contract, you can do that – but you gotta pay that money back. (Multiply $150 an hour by four or five weeks and then add 30 percent on top of that to pay your bigshot producer!)
As far as videos go, what was a sure thing ten years ago isn’t at all true today: unless your label really believes that you’re the next big thing, chances are that you won’t make one – and why would you? Videos are enormously expensive to make (a $30,000 video is considered a bargain) and since there’s really only one major outlet (MTV), most videos don’t get shown. Recoupability for a video breaks down in different ways, once again pertaining to what kind of deal you signed, but a common practice is for the band and the label to split the cost evenly. Do you really want to spend 15 grand to maybe appear on MTV once at 4:00 a.m.?
Of course, there are lots of cool local shows and The Box, and most bands do end up making some kind of video, but I’m thinking about what may be a coming trend as the market becomes more and more saturated and heavy music gets driven further underground. Have you noticed that you didn’t see a video from the last Pantera album? That’s because they knew their music wasn’t going to fit in with what the media deems acceptable right now, and a video therefore wouldn’t be aired. They decided to rely on their fan base for sales and forego spending crazy amounts of money on a video nobody would see. Smart!
Another important part of your dealings with a record company is tour support. When you put your first album out and need to go out on the road to publicize it, the label may provide some money to help you stay out there, be it to hire roadies and a soundman, buy a van, rent a bus and pay a driver, or whatever. You guessed it: you gotta pay it back. Some bands break out on radio and MTV right away, but the other 99.9 percent of us have to try to become known through touring, and the best way to play in front of a lot of people is to open for an already popular band. This is great work if you can get it, but unfortunately, for you as a new artist who’s adding absolutely nothing to the drawing power of the tour, the pay is usually shockingly low. If you’re trying to live somewhat decently (hotel rooms, showers, somebody to help carry your bass player’s SVT cabinet which feels like it’s filled with cement), you’re going to go into debt very quickly, and tour support can keep you going until you hopefully can build up a following a start making a profit.
If you’ve developed a self-sufficient lifestyle for your band and have decided to go the major label route, you’re going to have to start giving up control of certain aspects of what you do. It’s just simple math – if you’re out on the road, you can’t print t-shirts (we’ll talk about merchandise deals next month), set up future gigs (we’ll also talk about booking agents), figure out how to feed the band and crew and where to get gas, and keep in touch with everything that goes on at your label all at once. What you can keep under control is what happens to your money. Don’t be afraid to ask exactly what’s going on, what things cost and who’s paying for what. Remember, there never has been, nor will there ever be, such a thing as a free lunch.
Still with me? Still want to be a rock musician? Actually, this won’t be so bad-remember a couple of columns back when I promised to talk about “publishing: a way for you to make money”? Well, I digressed and got all philosophical on you last month, but, finally, here it is.
You may have heard your grandparents talk about the days when the whole family would gather around the radio at night-which is strange enough in itself-but did you ever wonder what people did before that? They made music. That’s right, in the years leading up to the popularization of the phonograph in the 1890’s and the radio in the 1920’s, many people played instruments purely to have something to do-unless you were a concert violinist or played piano in a saloon or something, playing was considered to be more of a hobby than an artistic skill. Almost every city block had its own little string-and-jug band, everybody who could afford it had a piano in the parlor, and people would have little “music parties” where they’d get together to sing the popular songs of the day. The publishing business retains its name from these times: songwriters sold their tunes directly to music publishing companies, who sold sheet music to the public (and lots of it-30 million copies in 1910 alone).
With artists writing their own material and the sales of sheet music so low (do you even know anyone who reads music?), the publishing business works completely differently than it did 100, 50 or even 20 years ago. In a nutshell, what your band is doing when you sign a publishing deal is selling partial ownership of your songs to a company for a given amount of time. You receive an advance (once again, an advance is a loan that will be repaid by money you earn) and the publisher attempts to make money with your songs by licensing them for movies, commercials, TV shows , having them sold as sheet music and even getting them recorded by other artists. After your advance is recouped (paid back), you split the profits with the company, usually in a 50/50 deal. In addition to this, publishing moneys from record sales are called “mechanical royalties” and are also split 50/50 between you and your publishing company.
Pick up an album you like, and look at the songwriting credits. If it’s a Soundgarden record, you’ll notice that the songs are published by “You Make Me Sick I Make Music.” Sonic Youth’s albums say “Sonik Tooth,” Slayer’s say “Death’s Head” and Alice In Chains’ say “Buttnugget.” Okay, that’s pretty wacky, but what does it all mean?
I’ll use my own band as an example. On a White Zombie record it says “WB Music Corp./Psycho-head Music ASCAP.” This translates into “we’re signed to the Warner-Chappell publishing corporation, our own company is called ‘Psycho-head’ and our performance royalties are administered by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.” ASCAP, BMI (Broadcast Music Incorporated) and some others are companies that collect royalties for you from radio and jukebox play. This is something else that goes back to the turn of the century: begun as a board of music publishers as a way of paying artists for performing songs live, ASCAP evolved into a company whose purpose is to make sure songwriters are paid for the public performance of their songs. When you sign your deal, you too will have to create your own company to administer the percentage of publishing that you own-a legal corporation recognized by the state. Don’t sweat it, get a lawyer and give your company a nutty name.
Unless your name is Paul McCartney, you’re not going to make a bundle from performance royalties, but I wouldn’t knock any situation where you make a profit from doing nothing. You are, however, very lucky to be making music now and not 50 years ago. It used to be that a publishing deal involved selling 100 percent ownership of your songs forever. Today, the system is much more musician-friendly: deals are usually for a 75 percent (you)/25 percent (them) ownership split, and only for a certain period of time. After that, you’re free to sell your publishing again. If you write a classic song that remains popular for years, this can be a very good thing as far as royalties go. Now figure in movies, commercials and TV. Get my drift?
Typically, bands sign a publishing deal at the same time they sign a record deal (once again, get a lawyer), or even before as songwriters. This is cool if you need the money, but as a new, unknown group (they call them “baby bands” in the industry) you probably won’t be getting a giant advance. If you possibly can, hold off on signing a deal. Then, if you have a successful record you can make more money, or sign a larger deal later.
Hopefully, that all made some kind of sense. Next month, I’ll go into how a merchandise deal works, and then we’ll stay away from the boring stuff for a while. If you want to learn more about the music business, I suggest you read Billboard magazine. There are also several very good books currently on the market that address all the complexities and pitfalls of the music industry. I recommend a book by Russell Sanjek called Pennies From Heaven: The American Popular Music Business in the Twentieth Century (Da Capo Press). It’ll tell you everything you need to know about the way this crazy business works. ‘Til next time, here are the next four bars of the “I Am Legend” (La Sexorcisto…) intro. See you soon.
Okay, I know I said we’d talk about publishing deals this time out, but I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about what I call “Fallout from the alternative revolution” and I want to talk to you about it.
Hark back to the Eighties with me (yeah, I know it hurts): remember staying in your room playing your guitar for hours? Remember turning on MTV and having your choice of either M.C. Hammer or Paula Abdul? Remember wondering why everybody looked so stupid and why everything sucked so much? Ah, but do you remember Metallica, that huge but somehow underground band who brought hard rock back? Remember Jane’s Addiction, the deranged genre-busting art-metal band who sparked off Lollapalooza? Do you remember the first time you heard Nirvana on the radio?
It was pretty exciting in the late eighties/early nineties when things started to change and real bands started to get exposure. The utterly fantastic concept of making music that you wanted to make, being who you really were, and actually getting signed because of it became a reality. Now, at the end of ’96, a lot of people who “got with the program” during that time (Let’s record with a big-name producer! Let’s spend a lot of money on the video!) are bitter about the choices they made. You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve heard, “we kinda got screwed,” “there was no time to think” and even, “it sort of made me hate music.” I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again (especially now that labels are snapping up everything they can get their hands on): think about what you really want.
I’m not saying that getting signed to a big label is an expressway to hell or that you’re guaranteed to lose all control-my experiences have generally been pretty good. What I want to get across is that you don’t have to automatically assume that it’s the right thing to do, or that all bands on small labels (or who do everything themselves) are suffering while they dream of their chance to work with a major.
Consider the nutty punk band NOFX: they play packed clubs wherever they go; they make their own merchandise and sell tons of it. I haven’t seen an NOFX bank statement, but I’d be willing to bet that by eliminating the major label middleman (keep reminding yourself: a record label is like a bank-anything you receive money for is recoupable, i.e. a loan to be paid back out of your royalties), they are not hurting for cash.
There’s a trade-off here: because do-it-yourself bands, well, do everything themselves; they keep a much greater percentage of their profits while actually selling their records for a lower price than stores would. With the giant overhead involved in making, promoting and selling a major-label record, oftentimes an indie band can make the same money selling 200,000 copies that a signed band would make selling 1,000,000! Of course, an indie band without the benefit of the aforementioned label machine will have a much harder time selling records at all: no MTV, no promo people to get the songs on the radio, no distribution company. Selling your records to distributors, doing mail order, producing your own recordings, booking your own tours-I’m not saying it’s easy to do these things, just that it may be more satisfying, and in some cases even more profitable to control your own destiny.
That’s my thought for the day, now let’s get back to normal and into some stuff that sucks
Here’s something else to think about: along with hiring a lawyer (we talked about this a couple of columns ago), you may want to hire a manager. This is another area where there is no “right way” to do things, and a lot depends on where you want to go. If your aim is to get signed and conquer the world, you may want to employ the services of a professional manager. Hooking up with one can happen in a number of ways-through your label after you’ve gotten a deal, through your lawyer, or sometimes even from soliciting a management company yourself (remember, though, what we said about sending out tapes. . .)
You don’t necessarily need to hire a professional. If you’ve just started gigging, the jobs that you, your roadie, and your manager do are going to be pretty similar. A friend who wants to help out, has a lot of common sense and can deal with problems (and can’t tune a guitar to save his/her life) may be the someone to make part of your team and to grow with. If you want to know what it’s like in the “big leagues,” pay this person 20 percent of everything you make-it sucks, right? Get used to it.
At first, your manager will probably be doing things like booking shows, basic tour managing, writing the rent checks for your rehearsal room, things that you could do but would rather leave to someone else so you can concentrate on your music. This doesn’t mean that you should call anyone who hangs around and puts up a flyer “manager.” Along with your roadies and your lawyer, your manager will at times be like an extra member of the band-someone to grow with you, who you trust to represent you.
There are a lot of bands who are self-managed, even big groups on major labels! It all comes down to how much work you’re willing to do yourself and how much control you want to keep over your own career, versus using (or maybe being used by) the giant network of labels, managers, publishers and lawyers known as the music industry.
Here are the next eight bars of the “I Am Legend” (La Sexorcisto) intro (see FIGURE 1)-some real “clawfinger” chords. Next month I promise we’ll talk about publishing. See you then.
* The first 4 bars are the same as the last 4 bars from last months lesson, minus the opening slide.
J Yuenger Photo: Lisa Johnson Photography http://lisajohnsonphoto.com/
Yow, time flies. Column #13 means that we’ve been talking about this stuff for a year already. I hope all of you have come a long way, or at least closer to being able to do what you want to do. I for one, have managed to drag my sorry ass into the Nineties: I used to write this thing out longhand (on a tour bus at 4 a.m., usually) and then go looking for a store with a fax machine-now I just send it in via E-Mail. Anyway, this month we’ll continue discussing boring and unpleasant things that you need to know if you’re planning on swimming in the murky and shark-infested waters of the music industry.
I think that one of the craziest things about the western scale we’ve all agreed to use is that, while there are only 12 notes, musicians come up with new combinations of these notes all the time. What’s really amazing is the number of times only three or four notes have been combined into instantly recognizable and classic guitar riffs. Think about it; you can recognize the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction,” Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water,” Pantera’s “Cowboys from Hell” or just about anything by Black Sabbath almost instantly. Hell, the “wah-wah chiks” in front of “Voodoo Child” say, “Jimi Hendrix, genius” before you even hear a note!
What I’m getting at is that while we’re talking about any kind of rock music, the riff’s the thing and as the guitar player in your band it’s your job to come up with that next great combination of notes. It’s getting harder and harder to write original music and when you do come up with something that you’re really proud of, you’re going to want to protect it.
Have you heard about this? Guy wants to be a songwriter, sends his demo to some record labels. Next thing he knows, he hears what he swears is his song on a Michael Jackson record and sues-I don’t remember who won, but I bet it was the guy with more lawyers. But it’s not only a good idea to copyright your songs because people steal good ideas; it’s also nice to legally “own” a tune after doing all that work on it.
Good question. As I’ve been writing songs with White Zombie since 1989, I should know all about this stuff, right? Wrong! When it came time to talk about copyrighting, I realized I’d never dealt with it myself, and therefore had no clue. Jimmy Brown from Guitar World was kind enough to help out with this info.
I’ve often heard that the easiest way to copyright a song is to put it on a cassette and then send it to yourself-the idea being that, providing you leave the envelope sealed, the postmark date will prove that you had written the song by a particular date. This is often called the “poor man’s copyright.” Sounds simple enough, but the trouble is that this method won’t hold up in court if you’re trying to prosecute someone for ripping off your material because (remember your report card?) it’s pretty easy to steam open an envelope and reseal it. You gotta do more…
Yeah, I know this takes something that was cool and makes it about as much fun as taking a test, but like I said: you bust your ass writing songs, and those songs are the key to your future in music. The best way to do this is to register them with the US government. Call the Copyright Office’s Request Hotline (202.707.9100) and ask for some copies of Forms SR or PA. Then, fill in the form and return it along with a recording of the song you want to register as copyrighted. It costs $20.00 per tape but if you want to save some money, you can put more than one song on the tape-they’ll all get copyrighted at once providing you give the collection just one title (like “The Songs of Hal Jalaikakick,” or whatever). The Copyright Office will keep your tape and then send you a certificate. If you can notate your music, you can also register your music and lyric sheets too. The Copyright Office also has an information line (202.707.3000) you can call if you wanna know more
Next time I’ll talk about some ways to MAKE MONEY. Did I get your attention? In the last column we looked at the opening four bars of the “I Am Legend” [La Sexorcisto] intro. FIGURE 1 is the next eight bars of the piece. Later.
J Yuenger Photo: Lisa Johnson Photography http://lisajohnsonphoto.com/
Like I said last month, welcome to the club. C’mon in and set a spell! You’ll like it here with us touring musicians-we’re all either crazy, stupid or both. So let’s see… You’ve been on tour and you’ve frozen and starved all over America-in fact, maybe you’ve even managed to starve and freeze in exotic foreign countries! By now you’ve probably been ripped off by club owners and promoters; your van has broken down in the middle of nowhere at 3 a.m.; you’ve been stopped and searched by the cops; you’ve managed to lose seven different guitar tuners. Believe it or not though, these are “the good ol’ days!” Someday you’re going to look back and laugh (keep telling yourself that-it works, believe me) but for now, we have to get into some stuff that really sucks-namely, business.
Believe me, I’m with you. The only business I want to concern myself with is the business of SOUND-making it, listening to it…. hooking 12 stomp boxes together just to see what it sounds like. You know, the cool stuff. More often than not, creative people aren’t very practical, and vice-versa. This is why there’s a long line of sharks waiting for fresh talent to come along. The industry will chew you up and spit you out and that’s the way it’s always been. You have to protect yourself and your music and you really have to keep on top of your business.
Once your band has become a solid “thing”-you write your own songs, you tour, you make a little money here and there and people dig you- you should start thinking about moving up to the next level. For example, you’ll want to start thinking about what kind of deal you’re going to set your sights on: whether you want to press your own CD or vinyl (and maybe start your own record company) or if you want to sign some kind of a deal with an independent company. Maybe you want to concentrate on getting a major label deal. Whichever path you choose, you have to start making business decisions.
I know a couple of musicians that are right on the brink-they’re just getting into dealing with little labels and all of a sudden they’re freaking out. They aren’t sure about what they’re signing and the labels are trying to get them to do things that they don’t want to do. Project one, I tell them, numero uno-the most important thing to do-is GET A LAWYER. Entertainment lawyers don’t come cheap, but there’s really no way to avoid using their services. It takes some of the fun out of it, but if you learn to think of a record label as a bank (they lend you money to record and make videos, and they take a lot of vacations), and your band as a business (you have to work really hard all the time to sell your products and services), then the need for a lawyer becomes more obvious. You wouldn’t want to bankrupt your business, right?
If you’re going to move up to this new level that I’m talking about, you’re going to start having to make decisions that could really screw you later on-that’s where a good entertainment lawyer comes in. As well as helping you to make the right choices and to understand the music business better (make your lawyer explain everything in simple terms; it’s what he or she gets paid for!), a good lawyer can actually help you shop your demo. As I said several columns back, labels don’t generally listen to unsolicited tapes-a single demo tape in the hands of a well-connected lawyer could do more for your band than mailing out two hundred.
Don’t automatically go with the first entertainment lawyer you find. Just because someone has a law degree and specializes in music doesn’t automatically mean that they’re going to be good for you. It’s important to hook up with one that has a good understanding of what you’re trying to do and is hip to the type of music you play-meet with a few before you make your choice.
One of the first business-type things that you’ll want to do is to do a title search of your band’s name. Good names are getting harder and harder to come up with and it would be a shame if, having finally found one you really like, some other group ends up claiming and using it. You’d have to modify yours if you didn’t want to just give up and find another. This happens all the time; have you heard of The English Beat, for example? The L.A. power pop band The Beat were around first, so the English band had to change their name. Other good examples are Wrathchild America, The Mission U.K. and Dinosaur Jr. Also, did you know that in Canada, Bush are called Bush X? It should go without saying that it’s not a good idea to borrow a name that you know is a registered trademark-just ask Redd Kross and the Low and Sweet orchestra! I can’t for the life of me figure out why the bug spray company never came after Black Flag. Lucky for them, I guess…. Anyway, we’re out of space. More on trademarks, copyrights, business, the law and other things that suck next month.
People sometimes ask me to show them how to play the clean intro passage to “I Am Legend” (side two, song one on La Sexorcisto). Over the next few columns that’s what I’m going to do. It’s mostly based around chords I stumbled onto while messing around; FIGURE 1 is the first four bars.
Let’s assume you’ve decided to do it. That’s right, you hocked the family jewels, your significant other is crying, and your parents think you’re a freak (so what’s new?). You’ve got strings, picks, extra tubes, extra fuses, an extra strap, a road case for your head, extra instrument and speaker cables, a sleeping bag, a reading light, 10 to 20 good tapes, a third-hand van (get AAA-trust me on this!) and a burning desire to rock anywhere, anyhow, anytime. Cool. You’ve just joined an exclusive club who’s members include everyone from Django to Les Paul to Jimi to Eddie Van Halen. Have a good tour and let’s talk about what to do when you get back.
If you’re in a band, you probably need a day job (those of you named Vanderbilt proceed directly to this month’s lesson), but the screwy thing is that most jobs that aren’t embarrassingly uncool involve nighttime hours or weekends (record stores, guitar stores, clubs, bars). Those are times when you’re supposed to be playing or practicing! Another problem: employers don’t take very kindly to the attitude of, “Well I’m gonna keep my hair the way it is and I don’t care what you say. Basically, I’m not really interested in you or your job but I’ll force myself to do it because I need to make money right now. And, by the way, I have to leave all the time to go on tour so please hire me again whenever I come back.”
Whether you like it or not, starting your first low-level tour will invariably involve quitting your job (I fondly remember the feeling of telling my boss to stick it, pulling away from the curb and heading into the wilderness of New Jersey), which may or may not be a good thing. If you’re still in school, you might be able to save up some money and tour during the summer, but if you’re working, it may be really hard to find one of those kind, understanding bosses who’ll keep your job waiting for you. Of course, there’s usually a place in every town where people in bands work-try your local espresso spot, comic book store or groovy toy shop: the last “straight” job I had was working at a toy store that, at various other times, employed members of Hole, STP and Redd Kross. The pay was crap but you could look like Satan and go on tour. ‘Nuff said.
The scary thing about touring is that you’re really on your own. A lot of smaller bands enjoy going to Europe (an entirely different can of worms that we’ll open at a later date) because the clubs over there generally feed you and a lot of times will put you up for the night as well. Clubs over here basically couldn’t care less about you. I’m serious: it’ll be hard to get a lot of places you’ll be playing to even give you water, let alone food or decent money. As I see it, you’ve got three priorities on the road:
1. Keep the van running. 2. Keep the gear working. 3. Keep everyone fed.
Most of what you make will go for gas, but why not take what’s left over and establish a food allowance (show me a band member and I’ll show you someone who is very capable of living on five dollars a day). It’s not a bad idea to keep stuff like peanut butter and rice cakes around and a lot of bands even bring a little sterno-stove with them. It’s not very much fun to eat cheap (how many ways can you make macaroni and cheese?), but you’ll be really glad you have some money saved up when your transmission falls out on the highway.
Life on the road can be harsh, and don’t think that getting a record deal will miraculously change things-it won’t. I was still riding in a van and hauling Ampeg SVT cabinets at two a.m. six months after we released our first major label album. It’s funny, but even at a relatively high level of touring comfort with buses, a crew, catering and hotel rooms, people will come along for a few days and say, “I don’t know how you can live like this!” to which I reply, “Try spending two months using your Marshall head as a pillow!”
If you think you have what it takes, and most people don’t, why not set yourself a time limit of, say, two years where you do nothing but work towards making your band happen. You will probably suffer, but you won’t be alone. Ever hear the story about Metallica living in a rehearsal room in New York? The guys in Anthrax lent them a space heater so that at least they wouldn’t freeze while they were starving. The positive side to all this, and I know I sound like your crusty grandpa, is that sleeping in practice spaces and in stuffy vans definitely helps you develop character. So, if you don’t give in or break up, you’ll have one of the tightest, strongest bands around by the time you finish your first tour. The really bad thing about the “alternative explosion” or whatever it’s called this week, is that a lot of bands are making records without going through some of the things that really give music its soul. Biff, bam, pow: form a band, make a record, get on a tour bus, complain that life is hard.
Sometimes I think there oughtta be a law: no record deal until you tour for a year. There are some great bands that get to live well right out of the box, but there are also an awful lot of mediocre ones.
Well, enough of my bitching. Over the last couple of columns we’ve learned the intro solo to “Super Charger Heaven,” from Astro Creep 2000… This time we’re gonna zip through the first half of the second solo in the song. It’s more of the really straightforward, “Chuck Berry from Mars” stuff and is shown in FIGURE 1.
