| Songwriter Confessions
#3
By Bill Dollar
How do you fit a $500,000 recording studio into a small box? Easy.
You buy a decent PC and $1000 worth of software. You can blame this
as the start of the Golden Age of the songwriter, because before
this evolutionary step-up, people like me used to write maybe four
songs a year, badly recorded on the first Sony cassette recorders.
I’d save my pennies, and once a year, I’d negotiate a deal with
a local studio for a special Saturday morning demo rate. I’d pay
four reasonable musicians a straight cash fee and try to get three
songs done in a three hour session. It didn’t help that I wrote
the skankiest chord charts in the world. So I had to get across
to the musos how the songs went, while the clock ticked away, and
like the man said, it was like dancing about architecture.
Nowadays the best player on my songs in my own studio is a guy
I’ve never actually met. He plays rhythm guitar, keeps perfect time,
learns the song immediately, and doesn’t bring his girlfriend to
the session. He lives in a binary cloud of 1s and 0s, and is the
best piece of software I ever bought. Because I live on a small
farm,good guitarists are hard to come by, and this is a bad and
a good thing. Good because it forces me into a minimal style of
song construction. My software gives me 99+ tracks if I want them,
but lacking the handy players, I make do with what I have, and it
turns out that less if often more…and sounds better.
Looking back through the tequila haze, I always had a special liking
for Leo Sayer’s records. They were minimal, but always had exactly
enough to deliver the song and nothing more to get in the way. They
were about the song, not the guitar solo. And in painting terms,
they were a portrait of four friends rather than the main grandstand
at Manchester United.
While we’re taking about musicians, I was working in a studio in
south London back in the day, and few miles away, Rod Stewart was
recording his next chart-topping album at Olympic studios. Parked
in the street outside the front door was Rod’s ride home – a shocking
pink Lamborghini. Inside, the session was running overtime and into
the evening. The assembled musos – (19 with string section) were
getting restless and checking their watches. The producer took Rod
aside and said: Why don’t we send out for tipple for the lads to
keep them happy?.. Great idea said Rod, putting his hand in his
pocket: Send someone out for a bottle of Cinzano and 20 glasses…
And that’s how fortunes are made…and a-one…two…three…
Copyright: Bill Dollar © 2005
Bill Dollar is a survivor of the record company wars. He currently
lives on a small farm somewhere in the southern hemisphere, amongst
cats,dogs and cobras.He writes songs he likes, because he's not
hearing anything worthwhile on the radio. Hear what he calls music
at: Bill
Dollar Music
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