Yet another rant: Making It...
(06 Mar 03)
Hired Guns
Hired Guns
Now let's talk about "making it" as an instrumentalist. Someone who is working as a "hired gun", working with different artists, either live or in the studio, not being a member of one certain band.
I chose that path without really realizing it. In my teenage years, before I went to the MI, I had a reputation as a player who knew a lot of different styles (Blues, rock, pop, metal, funk etc.), being able to play those. That was due to the fact that my guitar teacher taught me a lot of songs from different styles of music.
I never limited myself to only one style of music. I sat at home and transcribed and learned a Black Sabbath song, next I jammed on a song by Toto, then I learned some blues licks or worked on a guitar-instrumental. It was fun.
I also worked on my playing and theory-knowledge. I wanted to be able to improvise in different styles, in all possible keys, and be able to play lots of different things. Well, I got a reputation that way and I occasionally was asked to sit in with bands when their original guitarist was unavailable. Or I was invited to write songs or record with some bands from the local area.
When I was at the GIT, I tried to jam with as many people as possible. Fusion, funk, rock, blues. It took me a while to get into those other styles, and I sure don't play all of them perfectly, but it sure helped me to build a repertoire.
It also helped that I never was able to settle for one favorite style of music to listen to... I always listened to a lot of different stuff (I still drive people insane when I listen to CDs ranging from Dream Theater to Avril Lavigne from Greg Howe to Meshuggah, Faith Hill, Allan Holdsworth, Godsmack, Brad Paisley... all within the course of an hour !)
When I got back from the GIT, I made a lot of contacts, jammed with a lot of people etc. Slowly, I kinda got a reputation and some phone-calls.
I was invited to perform with some pop-singer who needed a backing band, played solo acoustic guitar at a wedding anniversary, recorded some solos for a local rock band, wrote songs with some local artists.
Now, of course all those kinda jobs helped me to gain lots of experience. I played for a lot of different audiences (Don't try to start a mosh-pit in a retirement home!), jammed with a lot of musicians, had to play lots of different styles of music, had to play with gear that wasn't my own, I also learned how to perform on stage in different musical settings (no headbanging and stage-diving when playing with a country-band), I learned that many people don't hire you because you can play fast, but because they know that you are gonna appear in the appropiate clothes (i.e. with pop-acts, it is important... the backing bands of acts like Jennifer Lopez or Christina Aguilera often wear a certain outfit that is supposed to work with the background design of the stage, or all of the band members wear the same stuff, i.e. all white etc. ) , with the appropiate gear etc.
This is important, really. And it took me a while to learn that.
OK... a lot of people want to become
STUDIO GUITARISTS
Now, that is a myth that really became popular in the late 70s and early to late 80's. Due to solo-releases by former session-players like Lee Ritenour, Larry Carlton etc., and due to the success of Steely Dan (who had a lot of session players record their songs), the occupation "studio guitarist" soon became quite popular.
A lot of people dreamt of becoming a busy session-guitarist like Mike Landau, Steve Lukather, Tim Pierce or Tommy Tedesco. And all of a sudden, a lot of guitarists bios contained phrases like "x is a busy studio-guitarist" or "y has been asked to record some guitar parts for many successful recordings" etc.
Guys, basically the dream of becoming a studio-musician is a myth. Very very VERY few people actually achieve that goal. There are several reasons for that. Here are some of them...
1) Becoming a busy studio musician who gets booked a lot requires not only a lot of luck (to be in the right place at the right time etc.), but also you need to have a bunch of gear (because you have to provide lots of different sounds... good ones, especially). Also, you need to be able to sight-read and play by reading a lead-sheet. You will be asked to record difficult parts or creative leads... FAST! Time is money in the studio, and if people hire a session-player, they expect him to be done quickly. To be able to do that requires some experience. At the same time, it's tough to get experience if it's tough to actually get a job as a session-player... vicious circle, huh?
2) In many areas (LA, Nashville etc.), the studio scene consists of a small group of people who do a lot of jobs. Producers and artists are familiar with their names, and they're first choice when it comes to calling a session-player to come in. It's tough to get into that circle, really. There's a limited amount of jobs, and so the established players like to do them themselves... it's a competition, a biz, and it's tough to enter that competition.
3) In the days of harddisc-recording and Pro-Tools, requirements for a musician to record some good sounding stuff are lower than they were a while ago. What I mean is... it is really easy to slice together (looping, Cut / Paste, quantizing etc.) a solo that sounds really good. No kidding. I saw a dude record some short licks with a crappy sound, then he opened his audio-editor and sliced together something really good-sounding... he edited the licks, made some of them faster, improved the sound (EQing etc.), quantized to have every note in time, corrected unaccurate bends with some digital pitch-corrector etc.
It's very easy these days, cuz there are some amazing effect units and audio-editor-software on the market. Some people are extremely fast when it comes to editing tracks with programs like Cubase or LogicAudio. They only need one good take of a riff, and within seconds they can loop or cut/paste it so it's a 4 minute track with every note perfectly in time.
Sure, bigstar-artists like Elton John, Faith Hill, etc. still rely on studio musicians to record solos and backing-tracks. They do it like they did in the older days... the studio-guitarist comes in, plays a few solos and the best one is chosen. Not much editing required, usually.
But for smaller-scale productions, people rely on all the new software and gear. So the demand for players who can nail a full song within a few takes is lower than it used to be.
I recently was part of a production of a pop-song (supposed to be a chartbreaker), and when the guitarist was about to record the rhythm guitar part, the engineer was like "Don't worry... we only need one bar of it, we'll loop the rest"
Does all this sound dis-couraging. Well, it still is possible to "make it" as a studio musician, but it demands a lot of luck, a bunch of good contacts, a load of gear, experience, theory knowledge and playing abilities and professional behaviour.
The luck part also involves being in the right place at the right time. That's how I got my first studio session. And that one helped me to gather enough experience to make it through a couple more.
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