to press the actual CD. I remember that a woman that used to come to my shows at the China Club in NYC had given me a handmade Birthday card with a promise of free artwork. She had just started her company when she gave me that card. I dug deep in my closet, found that card with her number on it and called her up. It’ s been years since she gave me that card and her business has grown into 45 employees. They supplied the film from the artwork I had.
SYNCHRONICITY 3 AND 4- IT PAYS TO HAVE FANS OF YOUR MUSIC IN THE RIGHT PLACES Walking around Manhattan I passed the now closed Tower Records on Broadway and West 4th. One of the managers was outside and greeted me. There were a few people who worked there that used to come to my shows in the city. He asked If I had any new music coming out so I told him about the acoustic record. He asked what label I was putting it out on so he could order some and proposed an in-store performance to help sell it. I told him it’ s not on a label and I have no distribution. They had to go through a distributor to get it in the store. He said hold on and went back inside the store, after a few minutes he came back out with a number. He told me to call a local company that can distribute all over. Distribution often means dealing with some of the sleaziest people on the planet but this time it was helpful.
The distributor listened to the record and agreed to take 25 copies of the record and try to sell them. Tower ordered 75. After a similar run in with one of the managers at J & R music world ordered a bunch as well. The contact at the distributor called me to let me know they really wanted to work on this record. They had sold a lot and wanted 300 copies. I said,“ OK”, but told them the copies were already sold when they agreed to take on the record. The horrors of distribution are another long story for another day.
SYNCHRONICITY 4- TIMING IS KEY Meanwhile, a gentleman from Japan was in
NYC on business. He bought a copy of the guitar magazine and after he read the review he got in touch with me through the magazine. He told me he owned a small record company in Japan and wanted to license my record for that territory. At that time I was not familiar with world rights and territory licensing but I did remember meeting a woman earlier that year at the winter NAMM show who knew what it was about. Angela introduced herself to me as a music lawyer and gave me her card. Her specialty was negotiating music licensing deals. She worked the whole thing out and I now had a record in Japan and the most money( the only money really) I had received from a record company.
KNOWLEDGE GAINED, LESSONS LEARNED All of this taught me: 1. How to record from the other side of the glass. 2. I had amazing friends. I knew that already, but they really came through for me big-time. 3. To trust my faith and get out of my own way and let things flow. 4. Sometimes there are outside forces making things happen 5. I could do this.
I didn’ t need to ever sign another record company deal again. I could make my own records and sell them myself if I wanted to-- even out of the trunk of a car if need be( I didn’ t even drive at this point in life). And all I really wanted to do was to make music, connect with people that like it and play and travel the world touching people’ s lives in a positive way. This experience proved I could do just that.
This whole experience kept me in the music business and helped me realize my dream as an artist. And it gave me a second career, one that would bring me joy as I helped others follow their passion all the while bringing me some of my most rewarding moments in music: winning a Grammy Award and 24 New Mexico Music Awards for production and engineering, teaching a recording techniques class at the college of Santa Fe for a year( I never went to college so it was challenging and rewarding to do that), speaking at and holding master classes in recording and production, and the occasional tech support phone for my friends working on their own projects.
GEAR AND THE LOVE OF GEAR I soon purchased some recording gear of my own and proceeded to try and redo that electric record I had done so badly back in that basement. While living in San Diego several local artists approached me about recording a song or two of theirs. They needed help with arranging and production. That was the start of my love affair with tones, techniques, mics, EQ, compression, strings, drums sounds and drum micing,
HOME STUDIO TRACKING AT 3AM IN YOUR PJ’ S I don’ t think heavy recording is for everyone but in my eyes, light recording is a must for all songwriters. It’ s a great time to play and record music. It’ s not the easiest time to sell music but I have a 16-track recorder and multiple sequences on my iPhone and a 48-track recorder, soft synths, lots of different sequencers and a full guitar rig simulator on my iPad. Not to mention my computers. It’ s a great way to do music. I tell all of the artist that I produce that they should be able to get their songs down when needed. And for some, the next step is to get their parts down in a way that someone else can take those tracks to another producer and / or band and have great tracks built around it. Sometimes you get tracks in search of a great vibe at 3am in your PJ’ s when demoing a song and you have to go with that. You can try to recreate that vibe in the studio for the“ real” thing but most times you just can’ t beat the demo. It’ s good to be able to capture that first demo in a way that lets you use the original demo tracks along with new finely record tracks done in a professional environment.
Thank you for reading a bit of my story. What’ s yours?
Larry Mitchell: Grammy Award winning producer / engineer and guitar texturalist.
LarryMitchell. com
66 Sep � Oct 2017 GearTechRec. com