Recording - April 2014 - 56

Tips For Songwriters... And More

There's humor here, even if it's dry. For example, in talking about how not to deal with an angry artist in the studio, Burgess
writes: "Daniel Goleman coined the term 'amygdala hijack' to describe the explosive rage that is part of the fight-or-flight mechanism ... It is an instinctual reaction from the most ancient part of the human brain. ... Unfortunately, the amygdala does not differentiate between an ego attack and a tiger attack." Or when talking about how a producer's career rises and falls, subsections are
named "If You Are Hot", "If You Were Recently Hot", and "When The Night's Closing In". Ouch.
Burgess does his best in this new edition to address the modern music industry-labels' power and significance dwindling, the
huge rise of online audio distribution, the DIY mentality popping up everywhere-and he's honest about the shrinking pool of
resources available to the old-school producer. He realizes that the traditional producer isn't quite a relic yet, and sketches out the
world of those professional producers who are still managing to make a living at it.
If you had no idea of what a producer is or does before picking up this book, by the time you've read it, you will have an idea.
Will it be a precisely real or perfectly formed idea? Probably not, given how nebulous the title of "producer" can be. But it will be
an idea that you can work with, one bolstered by a whole lot of real-world history and practice. Sometimes it's worth the cost in
money and reading time just to get a question like this answered so thoroughly... and besides, how can you go wrong with the
guy who put the Simmons drum sounds on From The Tea-Rooms Of Mars To The Hell-Holes Of Uranus?

Welcome To The Music Business-You're FU*KED!
By Martin Atkins. 110 pages, illustrated B/W paperback. ISBN 978-0-9797-3131-0. $14.99; Soluble
Books, www.toursmart.tstouring.com

Martin Atkins, musician, producer, educator, and probably a lot of other things, handed out a fair bit
of painful enlightenment in his book Tour:Smart, a guide for bands on how to tour effectively without
killing themselves along the way. We're still waiting for the prequel, Band:Smart, but in the meantime
Martin has tickled us with a lovely little tome designed to help us understand just how fu*ked we are...
and then telling us how to go unfu*k ourselves, in careful, meaningful, hilarious detail.
Every page of this book has something in it you can use... if not now, then eventually. Its truths are
harsh and even bleak at times, but for every explanation of what you're doing wrong in your quest
to Make It, there's solid advice on how to do it right. The book is neatly divided into two parts:
"Fu*ked", in which Atkins explains a bunch of things that are blocking your way forward, and
"UNFu*ked", in which he tells you about what works to increase your visibility, maximize your impact
on your intended audience, get where you want to go, and have fun doing it.
That simple Fu*ked/UNFu*ked split is about all the organization this book has. Each page has a
revelation (or two or three or six), either positive or negative, that's unrelated to what came before or
will come after; the book's meant to be either thumbed through for the random gems on every page
or devoured repeatedly from cover to cover. Some sample quotes:
"Once you understand that the only person paying for everyone else's lack of attention, stupidity, horrifying lack of a CLUE is YOU-your music, your career; then you'll understand that it is YOU that has to take 100% responsibility for
everything that is going to happen with all of it."
"Always choose the smaller venue. Two hundred people in a room that holds 750 is a catastrophe. Put those same people in a
150-capacity bar and it's a riot!"
"You need feedback from your audience (if you're smart). How can you get feedback before something exists? Just release something-in small quantity. The sooner you start the earning and the learning, the better."
"Real stars are nice to people and connect with their fans (that's all that's left, really). The connection you make with people is
fragile. You can either help it along or destroy it."
"The first shirt you design and order will be a shirt that doesn't sell very well in the wrong sizes and wrong colors. You'll know as soon
as you set it out on your merchandise booth that it's NEVER going to sell, but you'll keep trying to sell anyway. (That's natural.) You paid
for them and you should sell them before you order more, right? NO! As soon as you realize it's a SH*T DESIGN that no one wants-
ditch it! [...] That's the value of the first bad shirt-using it as a learning platform for the next one. Practice this with your songs too!"
And that last sentence is key; there's advice here that applies to touring bands, studios, songwriters, everyone doing creative
work and trying to be successful at it. This book teaches you how to think in ways that will make you successful, no matter what
you're trying to accomplish.
Not all the advice is pure genius (whose is?) and some people will take offense at the salty language (there are no strategically placed
asterisks anywhere but on the cover). Also, while the book's illustrations are often as funny and thought-provoking as they are gross, the
deliberately sloppy page design, complete with cigarette burns, coffee stains-and one particularly annoying carefully-reproduced fake
ink smear that actually obscures chunks of text you wish you could read on several pages-will drive you nuts after a while.
But don't let that discourage you from reading the funniest and most eye-opening book for folks doing what we do since someone nicknamed Mixerman decided to write a diary. Oh, and while you could find it on Amazon for a reasonable price, you should
probably go to toursmart.tstouring.com and hunt around a bit first...
56

RECORDING April 2014


http://www.toursmart.tstouring.com http://toursmart.tstouring.com

Recording - April 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - April 2014

Contents
Recording - April 2014 - Cover1
Recording - April 2014 - Cover2
Recording - April 2014 - 1
Recording - April 2014 - 2
Recording - April 2014 - 3
Recording - April 2014 - 4
Recording - April 2014 - 5
Recording - April 2014 - Contents
Recording - April 2014 - 7
Recording - April 2014 - 8
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Recording - April 2014 - Cover3
Recording - April 2014 - Cover4
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