How to Make It in the Music Industry

Apologies for the long time away, I have been extremely busy with work. Still, I will not let it lie.

I have been playing at least a couple of nights a week on London’s open mic scene. I cannot describe to you how beneficial this has been for my confidence and my ability to perform. For all my peers who sit at home smoking and dreaming, you need to get out and do this, it will make you so much better.  By chance I also met Tony Kaye, director of American History X, who invited me to the premier of his new movie, Lake of Fire. If there’s any reason to play out, that’s got to be it! And it proves that you never know who will be in the audience.

A band has expressed some interest in jamming. They are a tightly nit group and I hope that something will come of it. They heard me play and seemed very interested, so will keep you posted.

I’m certainly feeling the pressure to write more songs; the last month has been pretty slow creatively!

I’ve also recently watched the film Once, starring Glen Hansard, the famous irish singer songwriter. It is absolutely brilliant and I would recommend everyone watch it. Some of the performances are staggering; it’s something we can all aspire to be!

I will write more soon, I promise!
Take care,
Chris.

Straining when singing is a common problem. It is usually caused by trying too hard, which in turn may be caused by any number of factors. Strain usually manifests itself in poor vocal tone, poor tuning, pops, squeeks and discomfort in the vocal chords.

Most strain can be reduced almost instantly, and any remaining strain can often be fixed with long-term singing practice.

The most common causes of strain are:

• Notes that are too high or sung with a chest voice instead of falsetto (high/head) voice.
• Trying to get increased volume in the belief it will sound better.
• Trying to make a song sound more emotional than it is.
• Trying too hard to be a rock star (when you aren’t).

I’ve experienced (and still frequently experience) all four of these sources of strain. The trick is to beat it.

Notes Too High

Where notes are too high, unfortunately, you not be able to sing them, no matter how hard you try. If you can’t hit the note easily, it will sound terrible if you just ‘go for it’. Trust me. The only solution is to make the note lower, and this is best achieved either by changing the melody for this bit, or transposing the whole song down a couple of steps. It will sound much better if each note is in your range.

Increased Volume

Many people believe that if you sing harder, you will be singing louder. This is true, but the increase in volume will be accompanied by a nasty (as opposed to well controlled) ’shouty’ quality to the music. Increasing volume is better achieved by using your mind and projecting the sound, this way your vocal chords and breathing will naturally do the right things to increase your volume. With a little practice, doing this will become second nature.

Increased Emotion

Some singers will try and make a song sound more emotional than it is. The emotion of the song is best conveyed when it ‘just comes out’. If you try adding artifacts or accents to the vocal, it will sound naff, and less emotional. Listeners are not stupid, they can spot the difference. Spine tingling performances are completely effortless to pull off. If, when you perform, you aren’t enjoying it totally, and it feels like a lot of hard work, then you need to sit back and relax and not get so worked up about it. Remember, effortless i.e. don’t try and put in emotion that isn’t there.

Trying Too Hard to Be A Rock Star

Now we all want to be rockstars, and we all can be, if we find our niche. However, if you idolise the Foo Fighters but have an emotional, quiet listener kind of voice, don’t try and sing like your idol. Accept what you sound like and make the most of it. Maybe you would make a better Radiohead or Coldplay.

It is worth pointing out that on most recorded vocal performances there is a lot of processing done on the vocals which make them sound extrememly loud compared with roaring guitars and crashing drums. A voice without this kind of processing will sound much weaker- in other words, they didn’t have to sing like that to get that sound, so don’t try and copy it exactly.

Remember what you can’t see about yourself, if you are trying too hard, the audience will see this, and label you as a ‘try hard, fail often’. This, is a bad thing.

I Don’t Know If I’m Straining

Sit down and play a friend your song, and ask for an honest opinion on whether your voice sounds strained. It doesn’t require a music degree to spot.

Conclusion

Don’t try too hard, and don’t worry about it.  Strain is something every singer will run into as they explore different parts of their voice. Learn what your individual voice is capable of, and what it isn’t, and maximise what you have. And always, avoiding straining.

Many musical people cannot sing like a pro. The reason for this is because, unlike the instruments they play, which are well practiced, often they will have neglected to pay as much attention to their singing as they did to learn their instrument.

Singing is like any skill. Some are born with it, but everybody can learn to do it. The learning of proper technique will correct the vast majority of ‘poor singing’ ailments, notably strain, squeeking, duff tuning or exhaustion. To develop control over your voice, like any instrument, skill, or sport, requires a lot of time and effort, especially to reach a professional level. This is true even of rock and roll singers, such as Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters. Grohl uses his voice in an agressive way but it will never squeeks, pops or sounds strained, and this is because he has learnt to use his voice in this way over a number of years.

The development of the voice is two fold: partially developing the skills (an exercise of the mind and ears), and developing of the muscles. With practice, both will be improved and so will the singing.

How to Improve Your Vocal Range

Improving your vocal range is easy but takes effort. Every day, you should sing notes on a scale, going up, and going down, and listening very carefully to your voice and how it sounds. Use a piano or guitar if you can. You want to eliminate all signs of strain, and make it sound controlled and even throughout the range, right up to as high or low as you can get.

Keep doing this and you will find your range substantially extended in both directions after several weeks, as your muscles develop and you gain new control over them.

Remember, do these exercises slowly. The purpose is to develop control and accuracy. Try and relax. Too much effort will only work against you.
If you have the facility, also try doing this with a microphone and headphones to listen back to yourself simultaneously. This is a very different experience from doing it acoustically and benefits people who make recordings.

Why do this- it’s not very rock and roll

Granted, vocal training is not the same as snorting cocaine off toilet seats. It isn’t rock and roll. But it will make you sound a like a pro, not like an amateur. If you want to be a pro, then you need to put in the work.

I must admit  I still find this difficult. I am not a natural singer, but I have come along way from sounding like a juvenile in a punk band and it has been 100% rewarding all the way. I’m taking vocal training as seriously as any other instrument now and I hope my voice will improve further over time.

Stratums are ‘note-ranges’ in music, and planning stratums are important for making tracks sound professional. They will prevent the melody getting muddled up and losing focus. The listener will naturally hear the melody as the highest note, so it’s important not to have higher notes from elsewhere above the melody line.

Typical stratums in music are the bass stratum, chord stratum and melody stratum. Crucially, if the tune were played on the piano, you would be able to divide the keys for each stratum, and the notes relevant to that stratum would never leave that range. This prevents, say, for example, a note of chord stratum appearing inside the melody stratum. Working in this way will produce a much more balanced, less ‘messy’ and more ’solid’ sound.

My Chords Don’t Fit

For bass notes that drift into the chord stratum, drop them an octave.

For chords that do not fit within their stratum, you should invert the chord. Inversion means playing the same chord but reordering the notes… e.g. C Major - C E G might be rearranged and played (from low to high) as E G C. Notice that this now means that the root note of the chord, C, is now the highest note. This might make the chord sound ‘thinner’, however, when played with the bass stratum, this illusion vanishes, and the chord will flesh out.

Don’t Clutter Vocals

If you are using harmonies for vocals, consider carefully how using the harmony will affect the listener’s perception of the melody. Usually, harmonies lower than the melody will not affect the way the melody sounds. If the harmony is higher than the melody, you might find the listener singing the harmony instead of the melody, and this will weaken the melody. Make sure you consider how any arrangement will be perceived by the listener.

Conclusion

Stratums might seem like a chore to think about, but the only reason that this discussion exists is because it is a more advanced technique of improving a track in a methodical way, and you should at least try arranging your tunes with the stratums in mind and seeing if they sound better. Often, they will.

Jack, the producer, and I, have been working in the studio to record “Don’t Fall For Me’, my latest tune, and hopefully the one I need to get me on my feet. The quality of it is sounding tip-top and am very excited about playing it to you.

I’ve also been playing a lot gigs around West London, mostly open-mic nights, and the response has been lukewarm to astonishing, depending on the crowd. I’m optimistic that it will improve as I finish off some new songs I’ve been working on and introduce those to the set. We shall see :-).

I’ve also been hassled a lot to get a MySpace. I promise I will as soon as ‘Don’t Fall For Me’ is finished.

Lastly, if anybody has any suggestions for a band name or act name, other than my own name, please make it known!

Take it easy,

Chris xx

If you are the singer or songwriter of a band, you have a pretty substantial responsibility. One way or another,the music will be cast in your own image. If you do not play any instruments but only sing, the challenge can be tougher when having to write songs. You will need to write with a band.

So here is my golden rule for songwriting with a band: turn up with lyrics. Ideally learn them. Do not come in hoping you will be inspired during the practice- you probably won’t. Make sure you have a decent selection, a lot of stuff might not work the way you planned. Turning up without anything is seriously bad form.

The process of writing songs with a band can sometimes be more natural than with a solo artist. The guitarist will probably play something, and everybody else will join in. You then do your best to adlib a melody for your lyrics over what is played. Usually this manifests in a variety of revisions suggested by different band members until the song begins to sound pretty good. Funnilly enough, this doesn’t always depend on the talent of the individual members of the band. Often a band will be formed with very capable musicians, who are incapable of playing together (’Dreamtheater’ is a good example of this). Such a substantial part of it is chemistry that nothing could be better than a bunch of friends getting together to have fun playing (e.g. ‘Arctic Monkeys’).  Consquently, chill out and don’t worry too much about it. Ego and music rarely mix.

Remeber the golden rule number 1, always make sure you turn up with well penned lyrics. The quality will be much higher and all the other problems will work themselves out.

Have you ever met somebody who says they play a little piano or sing a little, and you ask them to play something for you, and they go ‘Oh no, no’ and a multitude of excuses come out. We’ve all been there, on both sides of the fence. But for a musician wanting to go pro, this isn’t good enough. What this means is, if somebody asks you to play, or the opportunity arises, you damn well get up and play.

I’d like to tell you about an acquaintance of mine from Manchester. This gentleman, at 21 years old, was quite an exceptional singer/songwriter. He played most nights of the week in the bars around the city, and I even found him playing to a queue of people outside a nightclub, doing an impromtu, uninvited, gig. Here is the mark of a true performer; one who loves to perform. This gentleman, at the wise old age of 22, was signed to Lavolta records, recorded his first album with Danton Supple, the producer of Coldplay’s mega successful ‘Rush of Blood to the Head’ and ‘X&Y’, and went touring the UK. You can look him up, his name is ‘Liam Frost’.

My point here is brash, and will come across as too strong for some people, but this is only because it is what they do not wish to hear. In order to play successfully, you must play as much as possible. There is no use ‘working on the album’, or ’searching for ideas’. It’s all about performance, if you do not like to perform then you had better quit now. If you do like perform but don’t, you had better put your singing hat on and get started.

Performing can be difficult. Everybody has bad nights, and every so often a night will be a disaster, where you hang your head in shame, and leave quickly and silently. When you start out, it’s the most difficult because this tends to happen more often, and lessens as you improve with performance experience.

Performing is a skill that is only learnt by doing; it isn’t something you can learn from a book. The only way to become a good performer is to start by being a rubbish performer and improve. It’s not often that you will be the best performer of the night, and if it is, often enough somebody will come along and show you up. It’s just the way art works.

The ‘Edge’ - Experience

There are dreamers, and there are do-ers. Getting experience means going on stage, swallowing the nerves, cocking up royally, taking the abuse and lack of applause, and then going back and doing it again. This can be a relatively traumatic process, but it can be made relatively painless if you see it as a means to an end. Unfortunately, you have to go through this process to go from a bad performer to a good performer.

Eventually, after having done enough shows like this, you will become much more able and develop a thicker skin, so when things go wrong, you can just laugh at yourself and forget about it.

Experience Will Make You Better than Everybody Else

People who are born with talent annoy me. The rest of us have to work at it. It is, however, what you do with it that counts, and by playing more, you will gain something that they do not have, so even if they are better musicians than you, play more instruments, write more songs or whatever, you will be able to upstage them with your performance. The ability to do this is essential to being singed.

Conclusion

The simple conclusion of this article is to dream less, play more. If you haven’t played many shows, do it. It is scary at first, but it won’t kill you. Do it a few times and you’ll wonder what you worried about. If it all goes horribly wrong, don’t worry, just book another gig and try again. Success comes from unwillingness to give up, so that if you can make that a virtue of yourself, all will be well.

When performing a show, it’s important to always to speak to the audience. In my experience, they are much more likely to listen to you play if you’ve spoken to them before. It’s also a good chance to ‘break the ice’, tell them who you are, when you are playing next, if you have a record and crack a joke or two. Generally, it’s unfriendly not to at least introduce yourself. You don’t need to bother with song titles unless you have good reason to, but if you fancy explaining the story behind the song go ahead. Relax, and laugh along with audience, and this will create a much better impression, and you are also more likely to enjoy the gig.

When Not to Speak to the Audience

I saw famous American metal supergroup A Perfect Circle play live a couple of years ago, with James Iha on guitar. For anybody who knows what kind of music they make, it is very heavyweight, serious, emotional music, and the show was in a very large auditorium. Between the songs, they cracked rubbish jokes and talk about nothing, and this completely and utterly destroyed the mood. Consequently, the impact of the band was substantially reduced.

Often successful bands will elect not to speak to the audience, but to go from one song the next, to deliver maximum ‘bang’. This only works if you’re in the right setting, so consider carefully.

Conclusion

A good rule of thumb is, when playing a small gig, is to always speak, and when playing a larger gig, with a band, speak less.  Make sure you thank the audience for listening, and for clapping, and pay them a compliment or two. That way you’re sure to get the keenest ears and maximum impact from your performance.

Writing a song without physically ever writing it down, but just working it out in your head and on instruments of your choice may seem tough, until you’ve done it. But it’s a practice I find works well. Celebrated rapper Jay-Z (reputed by some to be the best rapper in the world) is well known for writing his tracks simply by listening to the backing on loop and working it all out, without pen and paper, and when he’s ready, he delivers it to the mic.

Why You Might Want to Try This

In my experience, this method of writing produces better songs. This is for several reasons. Unless the lyric you come up with is any good, you’ll forget it in no time. This is good because it disposes of less than golden lines. Secondly, working something like this out will require you to practice over and over, and use your ears. This means that the finished product is very well rehearsed, and all the writing and lyrical glitches and bumps are ironed out. Most experienced song writings will be able to relate to this in some shape or form.

The best songs I’ve written have been mostly or entirely worked out this way. These days I write down much less than used to, but conversely play much more.

How to Do It

Easy. Play your guitar/piano /whatever over and over again and sing over it. Just make up the words, any crap, doesn’t even have to make sense. That will give you a natural hook all on it’s own. I find if you don’t constrain yourself you automatically gravitate to a strong melody. Now repeat, over, and over, and over, everyday, and the ideas will surely come. Sometimes I am cycling ideas around literally for months, a few times every day, and the end result is then a masterpiece.

It’s Easy

This is a very easy thing to do and very effective. Don’t be put off because you sound stupid just babbling at first, or because the songs you are singing naturally aren’t the songs you want to sing (e.g. if you want to sing about death but all you end up writing are love songs, get over it, you’re a romantic). Make sure you don’t try and force yourself in any particular direction too early on.

Probably my best song to date (’Don’t Fall For Me’, which you will hear when the studio sessions are over), was written this way.

Conclusion

There is a case against this method- I have also had brilliant success writing by other means, and this merely proves there are no rules in songwriting. The best thing to do is keep this in mind, and one day pull it out of the hat and write a splendid tune with it.