Aug. 26, 1977 cover story: What it takes to make a record
Aug. 26, 1977
Cut a Record? Read This
Robert Klein has a comedy routine
about being in a high school harmony group that sang in the boys’ room. The
echo in there was so intense that they all sounded like Dion & the
Belmonts. So they decided to make a record.
Trouble was, when they got to the
studio, they discovered to their dismay that they couldn’t recreate their
sound. Something was missing. Namely, the tile. Without those tile walls all
around them, they were just another bunch of kids with adenoid problems.
Klein and his cohorts aren’t the only
ones to get the recording itch. Millions do every year. Just as actors dream of
having their names in lights, musicians fantasize about being immortalized on
vinyl. But, like Klein, most of them go into a studio with little or no idea of
what it takes to do it.
The studio is where the artistic end
of the music world meets the business end. A musician goes in with an idea and
emerges, hopefully, with a product.
The chances of this product ever
becoming a big-money hit, however, are slim indeed. The
The big, highly-refined sound that’s
popular these days doesn’t come cheap. The Beatles once laid down 12 tunes in
four hours and put them out as an album, but that doesn’t happen any more.
To put out something that sounds like
what you hear on the radio, you need at least a 16-track recording studio,
instrumental overdubs and the painstaking process of fine-tuning each and every
element of the music. When you’re done, what you’ve got is a tape. Groups have
been known to spend $5,000 on a tape, only to see it thrown into a record
company executive’s wastebasket.
There are two 16-track studios in the
For example, say you’re a songwriter
who wants a simple piano-and-vocals arrangement of some of your tunes or a
musician who wants an unembellished live recording to play for clubowners and
booking agents. Then you should seek out one of the numerous four- and
eight-track recording operations in basements, garages and storefronts around
the area. Trackmaster also has such a studio. The rate there is $40 an hour.
But money isn’t all you have to have.
A working knowledge of the music business is helpful. Trackmaster tells all
prospective recording customers to read “This Business of Music,” a book that’s
considered basic to understanding the record industry.
If you’re going to put out a record,
the other thing you should have is your own original song. In the music
industry, the real money-maker is publishing, which yields a return every time
the song is sold, performed or played for broadcast. That’s why record
companies automatically demand a 50 percent share of publishing rights.
“The first thing we do,” says
Trackmaster chief Alan Baumgardner, “is ask if the music’s protected. It isn’t
enough to mail it to yourself. If you don’t think enough of your song to spend
$6 to copyright it, then you’re kidding yourself. We’ve got the forms right
here. After that, we try to find out if they’ve got enough money.”
How much is enough? Nobody in the
recording business likes to quote prices unless confronted with a specific
request for studio time. Deals can be made, friendships can be exploited.
Basically, the more time it takes, the more it costs. One thing’s for certain,
though. Unless you pay up, you don’t get the tape.
A reasonable figure for a
professional-sounding, two-song single is around $1,300 to $1,500, which is
what one local band’s financial backer wound up paying this summer. This backer
had first inspected the eight-track studios, but chose to go 16-track after he
closed a soundproof door in one basement operation and still heard a dog
barking outside.
The price included a nine-hour day of
16-track recording, four hours of sound mixing (at half the recording rate),
three session horn players overdubbing for 1½ hours at union scale, $85 for the
tape and $360 plus tax for 1,000 copies of the single.
Needless to say, they’ll have to
reorder another 1,000 before the investor can get all his money back.
“One thing I would advise bands,” the
backer said, “is that when the actual mix-down time comes, the band should not
be present. Everybody wants to be louder and they waste more time arguing the
point. We wound up doing both tunes nine, 10 times before we got a final mix.”
Recording can be unnerving, especially
the first time. After one to two hours of set-up, the musicians find themselves
in soundproof isolation, playing or singing their well-practiced lines to the
sound of what they hear through an unfamiliar piece of headgear – their
earphones.
They’re supposed to give a performance
as vital as anything they’ve done live. Not once, but several times. Over and
over again. After all, every little mistake can be corrected. The next take is
always going to be better. It’s easy to wind up working for hours on each tune.
And then there’s the hassle of
communication between the musicians and the folks in the sound booth, who can’t
hear when the mikes are off. It’s a good idea to limit visitors to people who
either essential or inconspicuous.
It’s possible to walk in with a song
in your head and have Trackmaster or Mark Custom Recording Service do the rest.
They can make connections to provide
you with written arrangements, the musicians to play them, the engineers to
record them and the producer to make sure it all goes properly. Then they’ll
send it off to the pressing plant for you. Mark Custom also operates its own
cover-art service.
Albums, of course, cost even more.
A hit group might spend $50,000
getting their newest creations right. The estimated minimum for a local band
recording a live album is between $2,000 and $3,000. One group in town has just
finished eight months of work on a studio album and that one ran into five
figures.
“If I had the money,” their producer
noted, “I could put out three or four fantastic albums around here. For $25,000
an album, you could turn out a (expletive deleted)! You can hire the best cats.
All you need is good material.”
When you cut costs on an album, you
trim your options. With a $5,000 budget, you can’t fly in the Brecker Brothers
to do the horns, much less pay them extra for a sweet solo. Using a well-known
producer, arranger or engineer is probably out of the question, too. What’s
more, there isn’t the extra time to remix and overdub. A five-figure budget
allows more room to maneuver.
“If there was anything that wasn’t
right on our album,” the producer remarks, “we went back and did it over. You can
use the tape like a canvas and paint music. You can take the basic rhythm track
and build. In one place, we’ve got six synthesizers, two piano parts and four
saxophones, most of them from overdubbing.
“We felt that some of our tunes needed
conga drums, so we got this conga drummer in
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IN
THE PHOTO: The main studio at Trackmaster Audio, now called GCR Audio and owned
by the Goo Goo Dolls, as it appears today. The studio website notes that they recorded many of
their early albums at Trackmaster and worked there in a variety of jobs.
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FOOTNOTE:
Those dollar figures sure seem like bargains, don’t they? After 45 years of
inflation, a 1977 buck is roughly equivalent to $5 today.
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