Wednesday, September 12, 2012
In the Biz Game changers and traditionalists alike still can't knock the hustle
Posted by Shannon Barbour on Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 12:30 PM
- Brandon English
- MEET THE PRODUCERS: Brendan O'Brien, Steve Lillywhite, Bryan Michael Cox, and Just Blaze at the Atlanta Grammy GPS
Last Saturday at the W Hotel Buckhead, the Atlanta chapter of the Recording Academy hosted a series of panel discussions and workshops — Grammy GPS: A Road Map for Today’s Music Pro — created to give career-boosting advice to aspiring and established artists. The event was free for members of the chapter and $100 for non-members.
Depending on your interests and musical tastes, the real reason to be there was one of three discussions: The MusiCares Vocal Tech Workshop, the Producer Super Panel, or Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles with Geoff Emerick. But even better than the supposed professional takeaways were the anecdotes, side conversations, and a sense that the music industry actually gives a damn about what fans want. Here are some highlights and observations:
>> The day started with a panel on Music and Entertainment Law to talk about intellectual property and other unsexy topics. It was one of those things that you know you should attend, but wouldn’t be terribly disappointed if you missed. I spoke to a young corporate attorney who dug the info, but was totally miffed about panelist and GhetOVision founder Kawan “KP” Prather’s frequent comparisons of the music industry to the dope game.
>> Soul power vocalist Ledisi, R&B singer/producer/songwriter Ne-Yo, and larynologist and director of Emory University’s Voice Center Dr. Michael M. Johns made up the MusiCares Vocal Tech Workshop panel moderated by renowned voice coach Jan Smith — best known for enhancing the pipes of the biggest names in soul, rock, and hip-hop, from Usher to the Real Housewives' incomparable Kim Zolciak of “Tardy to the Party” fame. Ledisi humbly spoke about being “where I’m supposed to be today” after rebounding from a 65 percent probability of requiring surgery to heal vocal cord strain. Ne-Yo too shared a “wake-up call” when he once lost his voice mid-performance, facing the prospect of being “that dude with the raspy voice [working] at McDonald’s” if his career were to falter.
>> The Super Producer panel was really the place to be. Led by producer, songwriter and performer, Butch Walker, these guys had something to say in the standing-room-only space. Rounding out the group was Red Hot Chili Peppers’ producer, Brendan O’Brien; Jay-Z’s onetime go-to guy, Justin "Just Blaze" Smith; British rock royalty, U2 producer, and Order of the British Empire member, Steve Lillywhite; and R&B hitmaker, Bryan Michael Cox — who all but missed the program due to a delayed flight. Producers talked about the use of technology — including everything from a hip-hop producer's ability to splice samples from multiple genres into something new and tasty like chefs on an episode of Food Network’s "Chopped" to the universally reviled overuse of Auto-Tune. “It’s possible for actors to be singers [like] Jennifer Lopez,” said Walker. Ironically, Cox arrived minutes later, back from L.A. where he had been working on J. Lo’s upcoming album.
>> The final session of the day was named for the book, Here There and Everywhere, My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles, led my Beatles’ sound engineer and co-writer, Geoff Emerick and co-author/journalist Howard Massey, who put together a program of rare audio and video clips from the Fab Four like the iconic Abbey Road album cover based on a joke from Ringo, featuring the group walking away from the studio because they absolutely hated it.
Perhaps the music industry has taken on a new and surprising customer-friendly approach, humbled by rampant piracy and the erosion of sustainable careers for artists. There was not only an absence of elitism — assuming you got past the $100 fee for non-members, of course — but the notion that musicians and producers really want to provide the quality that the fans demand. "If your fans don't support you as an artist, you can't make it in today's environment," Just Blaze said during the producer panel. And Walker concurred: "Maybe I'm being idealistic, but you just gotta work harder to put more good on [your album]."
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