In progress…

A piece of music that might go in the background of a new video I’m working on…

Buddy Zapata live music video: “Boat Ride”

Buddy Zapata is a good friend, a great collaborator, and one helluva musician. We took a few cameras over to Beantown in Sierra Madre, set up, and let Buddy play for a few hours. It was a magical evening. Not only have we filmed him, but

• Hearken Creative built the Buddy Zapata website,
• Mr. Zapata collaborated with Loren A. Roberts on The Fair Trade soundtrack, and
• we’re now working on some new material for the upcoming Buddy Zapata album.

Pretty cool? Yes, but even more so when your business colleagues become some great friends in the process.

See more Buddy Zapata music clips here!

Auto-Tune & Photoshop: embrace the march of progress

So I’m doing a lot more music recording these days. And one of my favorite tools is a wonderful little program called Auto-Tune, which, if used correctly, does exactly what its name implies: automatically pull a note that is out-of-tune back to perfect pitch. Let’s say there’s one note out of a whole phrase that’s a bit off-pitch: why re-record the whole verse for that one note? I just punch-in the plug for that one note, and we’re back in business. [TIME did an article on Auto-Tune, and the company has its own

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so you can hear how the program works.]

I do the same thing with Photoshop a lot right now because I am now selling stock on iStockphoto. They need every photo submitted to be as close to perfect as possible, so I go in and “airbrush” all the little imperfections out, creating (hopefully) a more marketable/usable photo.

But I’m also conflicted. Overuse of Auto-Tune turns out lifeless vocals. And I love to “grunge” up my graphic design work, when the project calls for it. Imperfections are what make things human, and removing all of the human element isn’t always a good thing.

That said, I will never throw the tool out [like these people want to, or here’s Neko Case complaining about Auto-Tune towards the end of the interview, or these studio engineers who are as conflicted about using it as I am). If I can use it when needed but make it practically invisible, and then not use it when we have the time to get it right, then I think everything will be okay.

But taking the time to get things right is another concept that is dying right now — budgets are way too tight to actually try to do something right. So I work overtime even when the client isn’t paying for it, just so that I can be happy with the final result. Unfortunately, that cuts into the time that I’m supposed to be recording…

Sounds of the ’80s

If you were making music in the ’80s (I had a 4-track reel-to-reel in my bedroom with one Radio Shack mic, a Roland keyboard, and a Roland drum machine) you will recognize almost all of these sounds immediately. Thanks to Tara Busch on Twitter for pointing me to this wonderful collection of overused sounds.

It’s interesting: even though the sounds/patches/loops are all horribly overused, I find that they still work. Think about Phil Collins’ gated drum sounds (credited to Peter Gabriel for originating the sound): “Take A Look at Me Now” is beautiful pop ballad fodder, and it resonates with people, or else it wouldn’t have been a top-ten hit. So of course people are going to imitate that sound.

Yesterday in the studio we had a discussion about whether it was good to “surprise” people with the songwriting and sounds, or conform to people’s expectations in pop music. Since we are dealing with pop/country/rock, we decided to conform to expectations. We cut a 2/4 measure out of the chorus, opting to stay in 4/4 throughout the whole song. Was that the right decision? I don’t know, but I know what I hear on the radio, and we’re recording both for the joy of music as well as the possibility of making some money; and what makes money is conforming to people’s expectations.