So let’s focus on one of the biggest mistakes, music production, quality, right? The quality of your music production is key to getting into TV and film. It’s the number one thing that kills any chance you have of getting into TV and film. And the reason for that is that the very first thing that a music supervisor hears, the very first thing that they care about when they hit play on your song, it’s not your song. It’s not who you are and your nice backstory or where you’re from, or what the song was about.
It’s about the production. It’s not the most important part in the grand scheme of things. ’cause there’s a bunch of things that come into play, many of those I just mentioned. But the very first thing that they listen to is your music production. They hit play, they hear the opening chord, they hear that you come into the verse, or an intro or whatever, however you’ve done your music. Or if you’re a composer, they listen to the first like, you know, 30 seconds, you know?
And they immediately draw a judgment about does this get through the gate? Right? Now, if you tick the box on music production quality, they keep listening. If you don’t, you’re out. And it doesn’t matter if you wrote the next most classic song ever in for the decade, right? Where maybe you wrote a song and you did it, and you pitched it and it got rejected, and then later some big artists picked it up, made it famous, and then another bunch of artists did it.
And then you look back and it’s like, wow, you wrote one of the classic songs of all time. It doesn’t matter if you did that or not. The songwriting is not gonna save you if the production is not up to snuff. So how do I do that? So it’s not about being the best. You don’t have to be the best. You just have to be good enough, and you can absolutely do it in your home studio or hire producers who can get that for you online.
especially now in Covid. No one’s going to, in the studios. one of my team members who works at Sing Songwriter is, is in England, and she’s, you know, you guys are in lockdown. Those of you who, who live in England, you’re in lockdown again, right? You’re not going to a studio, right? So, so how do you go about that right now? Hiring producers online is a great thing, or producing in your home studio is perfect. Okay? So that’s the number one reason that people fail. Now, let me talk to you about why, what matters in production and, and what those failures are.
Is it a matter of tempo and key? is it a matter of like, well, I I, maybe my song was, you know, too slow, right? Or maybe I sung it in a place my, my vocal wasn’t, wasn’t, wasn’t perfect. Sure. Those are big parts of that. And those are some of the things that I tackled when I was, you know, in big studios. You know, I’ve been producing records over 20 years. I had the good fortune of winning awards, you know, five Junos, which are Canada’s Grammys.
And I was nominated as Engineer of the Year. And I toot my own horn only so that you know that I know what I’m talking about. Okay? So when it comes to production, that was my bread and butter for years and years and years, and still is with my online studio sundown sessions. But the bottom line is that when you’re producing your music, one of the first things you wanna start with is your tempo and your key. So when you are actually producing your music, if you take your song that you, you know, that you’re, that you’re doing, and then you move it around in terms of tempo, you’ll find that it will resonate better at certain tempos than other tempos.
It’s gonna depend on two major things. One is the lyrics, right? Being able to fit the lyrics into that space. How are you gonna do that? Right? You’re gonna need to make sure that people can hear what you’re saying, that it sounds natural, that it doesn’t drag and sound laggy or it’s not rushed, right?
You wanna fit those in. And then the second big part of it is the vibe of the song, which includes the vibe of your lyrics as well, like the performance. So if you’re singing about something that’s dark, you can have a dark, heavy, fast song. You can have a dark slow language ballad if you want, but where does yours fit in there? And so, one of the biggest first things you should do is take the time to play the song and then find where the tempo what, where that tempo is the best tempo.
Do it at several different tempos. Take a break, come back the next day and check it out. These are things I’ve mentioned before. These are easy things that you can do, but critical to the success of your song, the feeling of where it, of, of, of the song is so important before you decide even how you’re gonna produce it. Secondly is the key. Where does your vocal fit? Or if you’re not a singer, if you’re just a writer and you’re hiring session musicians, session vocalists, what key should it be in so that it performs the best?
Some people just are not strong in certain keys. Some people literally can’t sing in certain keys. So where do you say you’re the vocalist? Where do you fit in there? Where does your vocal fit into that key? Find that key. Do it, do the song. Once you’ve got the tempo down, do it at different keys and then experi time and listen to that where, you know, don’t just say, well, the highest note I can hit is this, so I’m gonna put the key here.
’cause that’ll be the highest note. It’s not what you wanna do. You want to go where the vocal emotes the best, right? Where you really get the message across in the key. And you’re, if you do this exercise after this call, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s gonna really, really matter. So now, once, so that’s the, the begin, the beginning stuff that, that is very important. Now, the next things that you need to decide Is, is you know, your instrumentation and how you’re gonna put the song together.
So the biggest part about that is having a vision for what you want to do with your song. Here’s a little secret from music production that I didn’t understand until I got into music production, right? Even when I was a recording engineer, I still didn’t get it until I was in the studio. You know, the first few years I was doing my thing and then it came to me. It was so, such a simple thing. The deal with music production is you literally can do your song a thousand different ways, right?
More than that. You can, you can make it an EDM song, you can make it disco, you can make it rock, you can make it folk, you all these different things outside of your preference or the way you, you normally play, right? You kind of got it down ’cause you’re like, well, I’m in the genre, this is what I like and here’s how I like to hear my music. So that’s cool. But it’s important to remember that you can have your song in any, any way you want. And within those genres and within those spots, you can move a long way, right?
Between the, I mean, you know, even if you are in the rock category, you can be Metallica or you can be a CDC, right? Totally different. So what do you do? How do you decide how, what’s the best way to go? The best way to go without licensing in mind is do it the way that the song resonates the most. And that’s it. Okay.
So the biggest and greatest songs that have ever come out and blown up from Nirvana to Billie Eilish to back in the, you know, in the sixties and Bob Dylan and all of that. They did it because, yeah, sure, there was a bit of a groundswell in that kind of music, but it wasn’t a major, it wasn’t in the mainstream. They did it the way they wanted. You know, when Teen Spirit hit the airwaves, nothing had had been on radio like that at all. Like, it was just like, no, it’s hairbands. It’s like rock. It’s eighties.
You know, that’s the deal. Billie Eilish made records in her bedroom with her brother, and you know, her, her music is not typical of even now, of what, what is on the radio right now. It’s starting to change because she’s changing it. That’s what you really want to do. You don’t wanna follow the, you know, chasing the tail of the dragon or whatever. You don’t wanna be just going around and around trying to figure out what, what you wanna do, do what makes the most sense to you.
