Recording - March 2011 - 27

How did you go about finding Samantha’s sound and taking your work to the label? We did two songs. Remember— they were not supposed to be demos. We made them as good as they could be. We wanted to make singles with a lot of potential for big success. And it worked. I also made a remix of one of those two songs. That became a hit in Japan before either of the two songs were even out here in the States. Samantha had long ago decided that Electronica/Dance was right for her. In that genre there are really only about five big independent labels, and I knew that OM Records would be the best fit for what we came up with. It is critical to create a buzz before approaching a label and getting a business deal. We did that, not only with the remix in Japan. So two songs bought you the deal— but you produced two albums. Is the album as a format relevant to you, or is it all about singles? The album is still very relevant. The album Rise, our first with Samantha, has been in iTunes’ top 100 Dance category for three years! But it has to be an album of nothing but potential hit singles. Ok, not every fan or DJ will love every song equally, but every effort and focus has to go into every song. No fillers! How is radio relevant to you? Electronica/Dance doesn’t get much airplay... True, although when [LA-based “eclectic music” public radio station] KCRW made “Right Now” the song of the day, which is a cut from the first album, Rise, and we offered it as a free download for just 24 hours, that brought us a lot of traffic. But mostly it’s subscription radio like Sirius and Pandora that is great for artists, because of Shazam (www.shazam.com). That brings me back to the album: The lineup of the songs is hugely important. No two songs that follow each other should be alike, there has to be variety in tempo, in color, in key or pitch... When I am at the premastering stage with an album, I live with it in the car for a week, trying to see if there is anything about it that is tiring. If it’s done right, you’ll find that businesses, stores, some hotels like W will put an album on as background music, and set it on repeat—because it doesn’t get boring or repetitous. Now with Shazam, if a store like Nordstrom or some other public place has an internet radio station on, or an
RECORDING MARCH 2011

MP3 player or whatever, and a song is playing that a customer or visitor likes, he lets the Shazam app on his iPhone catch maybe thirty seconds, and up comes the data for the song and a download link for iTunes. In maybe 98% of cases Shazam finds it. You hear it, you want it, you buy it— all right now! That is huge for artists! Back to the consistent sound you create... It unifies an artist’s work, and fans like that. If they hear one song, download another one or two, and they are consistent, they are more likely to order all the other songs before even hearing them. It

goes further: After the first album, we had about 80% of the sales of the second one pre-ordered without people having heard it! We leaked one song and some excerpts here and there, and people trusted the other songs to be right for what they expected. So an album is still very much a valid concept. But—again— no fillers! How do you go about actually writing a song with the artist? With uptempo songs I like to start with a beat and some elements like a chord sequence and a bass line, with good energy that inspires the artist and myself to come up with melody and

http://www.sennheiserusa.com/truedemo http://www.shazam.com http://www.sennheiserusa.com/truedemo

Recording - March 2011

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