The Pitch: Taking your song-writing from ideas and chords to fully worked-up demos or releases.

 Part 1

Hello and welcome to Rough to Release. My name's Drew Stephenson and I'm a singer-songwriter and home-recordist (that's not a real word) from the UK.

In this blog we're going to be looking at how to take your song-writing from a bunch of lyrics and chords to fully worked up demos and releases.

We're going to start with the song-writing, including that vital stage of actually finishing, and turning an idea into a song.

Then we're going to look at recording or capturing those ideas. We'll talk about what you need to get started and, probably more importantly, how to get the most out of it.

We'll also talk about the blurring of lines between writing, recording and producing - which is a theme we'll revisit throughout the series.

Next up we'll get into that production concept, how to establish and support a vision, and we'll wrap up with a bit of discussion about mastering and distribution.

 

So if that sounds like it might be of interest, hang around. Otherwise skip on and enjoy the myriad delights that the world wide web has to offer.

 

[Insert obligatory "Oh, you're still here" joke]

It's never been easier or cheaper to record, produce and release your music. The technical barriers to entry are fundamentally as low as 'own smartphone + have internet access'. But if you talk to aspiring musicians / content creators, and established musicians who normally work with or for others, frequently what actually stops them are two things:

• "I'm never happy with what I create."
• "I never seem to finish anything."

 I can't make you happy with what you've created, but I hope this series of blogs and supporting content might help you finish those half-baked hits you've got kicking around. 

And maybe doing that might help you be happy with what you've come up with... 

In order to navigate this musical journey we'll reference well known (and probably some less well known) songs. I'll add some video of a few things live here and there, and we'll deconstruct and reconstruct a few of my tracks (thereby avoiding any copyright issues) to illustrate some technical ideas.

I'll be linking to things throughout so it's worth reading this with a set of headphones handy.

We'll also conclude the series with a step by step walkthrough of a complete rough to release production.

 

For clarity, it's probably worth me saying what we won't be doing as well.

We won't be musically dissecting songs or closely analysing dorian modal harmonies. Because I have no idea what they are. For that kind of stuff check out Rick Beato's 'what makes this song great' videos or The Daily Doug's reaction videos.

Likewise we won't be getting into the nitty gritty of compressor ratios, EQ curves and pre-amp recommendations. I do know what this stuff is, but again there are people who do this stuff better. Check out Warren Huart's Produce Like A Pro channel and the videos and articles from Sound On Sound Magazine.

 

We're all about getting an unheard song out into the wild.

 

Which is why I'm doing this series. Because I'm a songwriter who juggles a day job, like most of you, and I'm working in a compromised domestic environment like most of you.

 

Before we get into the chunky stuff in part two, I'm going to tell you one other thing you're not going to get from this series.

This is not going to be a 'how to write a hit song' or 'how to get a million plays on Spotify' or anything like that.

There's a thousand videos out there that will try and tell you this, probably with a million views each, but I don't see a billion hit songs coming round every year... So maybe they're not that all that?

But there is one simple, pretty much failsafe, way of getting your song lots of plays.

Ready?

Get someone really, really famous to make a cover of it.

Easy.

Don't know anyone really famous? Sucks to be you. And me.

So we're not going to talk about how to write a hit song because a) it's bollocks, and b) I don't care.

If you're writing deliberately poppy songs with an aim of selling them on, then maybe go check out some of those videos. But if you're writing anything that isn't mainstream, that isn't in a popular genre, that's maybe a little bit more cerebral or quirky, or is just something with a target audience of you alone, then hopefully this blog will help you get that out there and get it heard.

And when it does get heard it'll be your song, with your heart and soul in it. Not a paint by numbers effort that could be churned out by any song-writing factory in the business.

So I don't care about hits, and neither should you.

Maybe.

 

There's a bit more about my background and Trollholm, my little studio here, in the blurb on the side. And while you're there please click follow and jump into the comments to start a conversation.