There are always moments in the studio when the musicians and producers talk about music, production, performances, creativity, courage, and issues of the music business. I wish I recorded some of our conversations. Especially when Ben Wittman was in the studio. Ben, Ben, and I had some cool talks.

I know there are lots of artists following BeMyRecordLabel - and it’s these kinds of talks that artists love to listen in on. (I know because I’m one of them!)

Anyway, this is a clip of when I actually did turn the camera on. This discussion started with the topic of fans complaining about overproduction of CD’s.

I asked Ben Wisch (and Ben Wittman, who passed the question to the other Ben) how you walk the line between producing and overproducing a CD project. How do you know you’re doing it right?

This is his answer.

Ben also addresses an earlier discussion topic which was about BeMyRecordLabel — how much does the listener of a CD actually need to know about this behind-the-scenes stuff?

I write this after a long day in the studio with Ben Wittman, drummer extraordinaire. The list of people he has toured with and recorded with is quite long and impressive: Paul Simon, Laurie Anderson, Jonatha Brooke, Paula Cole, Erasure and others.

Most of our time was spent finding the non-predictable percussion and drum parts for the songs while leaving enough space so that the song didn’t get lost. (He loves the drum loops on these songs, by the way! )

Here’s a brief Christine-stalks-the-studio-with-her-crappy-camera video just to show you a brief moment of Ben Wisch at the computer recording onto ProTools — and Ben Wittman doing his first pass at “Wide Awake.”

Many of you have already Pre-Ordered copies of this CD in one of the packages that are being offered on this site. (Click here to view packages.)

So, naturally, several of you have written me to ask how much it actually costs to make a record.

I get this question a lot.

Some people think it’s hundreds of thousands. Some think it’s about a thousand, and they have no idea why it would take much more than that record your stupid songs.

Really, though, there’s no single answer to this question. And there’s no reason why you (or I) couldn’t play our songs once into a microphone and call it a CD.

Low Budget Records

My first CD (This Time Last Year) cost me a total of about $1200 or so. (Not including the manufacturing costs.) It was a huge amount at the time. (My friends and I calculated that if I could just sell 100 CD’s, then I could pay it back.) I’m often told that This Time Last Year is a favorite of all of my CD’s. I think people love that innocent quality of a first project. It’s rare, and it’s fun.

Having a $1200 budget for your CD pretty much guarantees that you’re gonna be working in the basement of your friend’s house. Your musician friends will come play on the CD for about $50 each. And the guy who works with you at the coffeehouse will take your photos. It’s fun that way. And Garage Band makes it even easier and cheaper these days.

Increasing the Budget

Every indie musician I know reaches a point when they want to pay a little more for a CD. Not only does this say to the world, “I’m taking my work more seriously,” but it’s also just plain easier on the artist.

When you’re making a low budget CD, you have to contact each musician, schedule everything, and work with a lot of other artists. (Let’s face it, artists aren’t the easiest people to schedule things with.) If you’re on the road in between studio sessions, this can be quite difficult.

So, you pay a good producer not only to help make your music sound good on a record, but also to deal with all of this stuff. A good producer also provides other ears, some wisdom, and someone with whom to talk things over. If something doesn’t feel right after you listen to it a few times, you usually both know it. To me, this is worth the extra cost. There’s only so much any artist (or any person, for that matter) should try to master.

So, to give you some actual numbers here — my most recent studio CD’s have cost in the neighborhood of $25,000, not including manufacturing costs.

For some, this sounds like a lot. As an industry average, it’s actually pretty low.

So, what makes the big difference in these costs?

The difference is talent. And time.

Let’s talk about talent. So far, Ben and I have been the only two people involved in this CD. And Ben’s pretty remarkable. He’s a speed demon in ProTools, and can do things that simply blow me away on the computer.

Note: I’m obviously not including the element of fame/reputation/connection here. For instance, someone like Mutt Lange makes many hundreds of thousands of dollars or more per CD. (And what with a wife and a girlfriend, I imagine Mutt wants the extra bucks.)

Then, there’s the musicians.

You’re about to meet some pretty heavy-hitters in this production. And good musicians cost money. For one thing, they learn fast, they listen to a song once, they “chart” it, and then get their ideas going. With your friends in the basement, you might spend all day on one track trying to get one song right. Great studio musicians can burn through an entire batch of songs in one or two sessions. But most of them like to have some time to get the perfect tracks down – the tracks that make you go, “Holy shit” when they start playing. This is why I usually book them for two days.

Time and Creativity

The other thing is time. This is huge.

You’re joining in as Ben and I merrily play these songs, and then work on arrangements and play around with background vocals. THIS is a luxury. This is studio time with a producer/engineer. This is the creative stuff that I’m willing to pay extra for.

Think about an album of an indie artist that you love where the whole soul of the music was kind of gone. It’s tempting to think that the artist “can’t produce.” Or that they “overproduced.” But often, it’s about rushing in the studio. When you rush, the musicians all sit down and play the expected thing. There’s no time to think of creative ideas. Time is money, and everyone gets a little panicky in the studio. So, they settle.

Good production is a lot about spending the extra money and time, and asking for what you want. Then it’s about getting a lot of creative ideas going. Then it’s about being wise and brave enough to pull lots of those ideas way back when you’re mixing the CD.

(The songs you’re hearing on this site might get a little weighted down and “busy” as we try to figure out what works and what doesn’t. You can’t know what doesn’t work until you sit with it for a day or two. That is…except for when Ben cranks out his many harmonicas and goes nuts.)

Stay tuned! Part 2 will focus on the WHY’s of having a larger budget for a CD…

Yesterday we hit the wall.

Actually, I hit the wall.

And Ben said that my wall was so big that he couldn’t help but run into it.

I think we’re ready for the next round of recording - when other musicians join in on the fun.

Meanwhile we spent most of the time yesterday being frustrated.

Here’s a 23 second snippet of when things started going bad. I had just played the guitar, and sung the final vocals on “The Real World.”

This is me trying to sing harmony with myself standing in the vocal booth. At the same time, Ben is trying to get inspired on the Wurlitzer.

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Here’s what Ben and I did this week in the studio after my report about our first day…

1 - We worked on the song arrangements of four songs

Arranging means that you decide about the lay-out of the song, and the mood, etc.

For instance — the instrumental section. Sometimes, I’ll already have written one. And sometimes, Ben will suggest that we go to a different chord progression so the song doesn’t get repetitive. Or, sometimes, without thinking, I’ve added unnecessary bars to a riff, and Ben will say, “What IS that?” (”I am the Moon” was one of those riffs.)

The introduction of the song isn’t as important - because sometimes one of the studio musicians will come up with something you weren’t expecting. For instance, Larry Campbell came up with the riff at the beginning of “Everything Green” - which used an entirely different chord progression than what I had played. So, we just edited out my guitar and let Larry have his way with my song!

(This, of course, can happen even after you’ve done all the arranging in the instrumental section too. This is the nature of the creative process.) Ben likes to at least get a great starting point recorded. He can fix just about anything in ProTools — the recording software that is the industry standard.

2- We laid down all of my guitar tracks to a click track for each song.

A click track is basically a metronome. It plays in your headphones as you record your instrument so that you keep time. This makes it easier if you add drums or any other percussive instrumentation. Lots of people don’t use click tracks. The argument against clicks is that they take away the soul of the song. I understand this argument - especially when you’re recording a band all at once. But in our case, it makes sense because it will be helpful for the other musicians who record on this project.) We don’t always use one.

3 - We recorded final vocals on the four songs

I’ll write an entire post about recording vocals soon. So you’ll get a better understanding of why that takes a good deal of time.

4 - We moodled. A lot.

We pretty much worked on a song a day. By the time we were finished with the things listed above, we’d only have an hour or two left in our studio time.

So, I’d go into the singing booth, put on the headphones, and tell Ben to “give me a track.” He’d give himself a track for keyboards, and we’d just wing it. (Me singing harmony and him on keyboard.) This is where you simply have to just let yourself feel stupid. Cuz I’d sing some lame off-key harmony idea - and Ben would hear it and say, “That was really cool. But what if you did it like this?” And we’d spend the rest of our time recording more concrete versions of the moodling we each did. I’m not sure, but I think this is a pretty unusual approach. We didn’t do Rain & Mud like this at all.

So, here’s where you come in…

Would you like to hear some of the first versions of these songs and lend your thoughts? (”More cow bell!”)

Or would that ruin it for you?

I can’t promise that we’ll use anyone’s ideas - but it might be fun. As I wrote in the “About” page - this entire site is an experiment.

Here’s what I’ll do –

If I hear at least 15 positives (”Yes, I want to hear some of the beginning versions!”), then I’ll post the first song - with a brief description of the process. You can then listen and say what you think! Or just listen, say nothing, and see how the final product ends up!

If no one responds, well, then, I’ve been taking pictures of all the dogs I’m meeting in NYC - and I’ll just have to do some posts about them.

Waiting to hear from you…

P.S. If you SUBSCRIBE to this blog (via the “subscribe” link on the right sidebar), you’ll know when/if these songs get posted!