Recording - March 2011 - 26

By Lorenz Rychner

Songwriters don’t all operate the same way. Some write their songs and make minimal demos to arouse interest in artists or producers who, it is hoped, will more fully produce and record the songs, maybe even—fingers crossed—turn them into hits. Another type of songwriter is also a producer who writes or co-writes songs that are tailored to a specific artist, and who then records and produces that artist’s interpretation of those songs, all they way through to the finished mastering-ready single or album. L.A.-based Berklee-graduate Sebastian Arocha Morton is such a songwriter/producer when he’s not doing other things in his studio, like producing music for film or TV or doing hit remixes... see our introduction to his body of work with artists from Sting to Seal in our May 2009 issue. For this issue of Recording that focuses on songwriters and their challenges, we asked Sebastian about his work with Samantha James—two albums to date that have racked up impressive sales numbers and produced hits that are high on Billboard and other charts.—LzR

How did you come to work with Samantha James? Sebastian Arocha Morton: Through a mutual friend. She had been writing lots of songs for about five years, and she had about four songs that other producers had turned into recordings, but she didn’t feel that her vision had been met yet. You are credited as songwriter and producer... That is the typical role these days. Shane Drasin also had a hand in several of the songs on Subconscious. I finished all the production on her two albums. When you met Samantha, how did you go about it? First I set out to find what her sound should be. To me that is the most important step, to find a sound for an artist that makes the artist comfortable in expressing who he or she is, and that allows for consistency from one song to the next, so that the fans are comfortable with the work of that artist. Did you use any of her earlier songs? We decided to leave everything from her previous efforts behind and start from scratch.
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Did she have label interest at that stage? No, she had done all her previous writing and searching without a label. The songs she had produced earlier were meant to function as artist demos to get label interest, but that doesn’t work any longer. Think about it—what was an artist demo? A crappy recording that was supposed to show an idea, to get the artist a deal so that they could do it right and make good recordings. Now nobody wants to hear a crappy recording any more, not for any reason, now that you can produce a good-sounding, mastering-ready track for maybe a thousand dollars. That kind of artist demo is dead. It’s no longer about coming to the label with a song, even a good song well recorded, but it’s about coming in with a sound. It’s about getting the sound, the vibe, the character. Even at the early songwriting stage, you need to think about the sound. Even if it’s just a guitar-and-vocal first recording, a demo to sell the song for someone else to produce, make sure you get a good guitar sound, and a good vocal sound. If its purpose is to sell not just the song but to land a business deal for the artist, then make it into a finished record!

Recording - March 2011

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