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What Goes Into Producing a Dream Vampires Track


By Mike Puskas

29 July 2010


The Recording Process – School 101


A few of you have asked what is going on here. Let me explain if I may. Every song that I write starts out as a scratch on an acoustic guitar with my own way crappy vocal. The only saving grace is I can actually pitch. Once the scratch has been demo’d it’s sent to either Nick in Phoenix or Dave in Oklahoma to produce the track bed which is based on various scratches that I send over which may be a string arrangement played on guitar or a load of colors to enhance the mood and feel of the song also recorded on guitar and sent over. Once the bed is done, it’s sent back to me in Aust and I then record a scratch vocal over it and this is designed to show how the phrasing of the song will work in the arrangement. The next step is to pitch the song in that form to a number of vocalists in the team to both male and female to see who likes it and who would be the best fit. We then record those vocal files with the artist in the studio and then they are uploaded to our server and sent via ftp site to the producer mixing it. Sometimes we may record the lead vocals here with Sherri or Sarah and then do the harmony’s and the backing rounds in the US and then fuse the two together before allocating the team for the mix. Once mixed, the song is sent back to me for final review and or any adjustments and then we allocate a mastering studio and engineer to take the production to the highest level before we post it and generate feedback on the tune.

Choosing the right team for the job – School 101

Choosing the mastering engineer or studio is all important and we are lucky to have a nice bunch of options to choose from. We have Drew Lavyne who just re-opened his NY mastering studio, All Digital after being at the infamous Sterling Sound for the last year. This gives us a very high end option for getting the track or album to sound very American sonically. We also use the amazing talents of Maor Appelabaum who gets us that big European Sound and is now based in LA. If it’s big beats and more production sample based then we turn to Ed Farris also based in LA who can tweak an incredible master out of limited outboard and a load of limiting plug ins. We also can master with Brian Gardener at Bernie Grundman in LA or Julian Lowe at Abbey Road in London and finally if it’s a homegrown situation then we turn to the talents of Matt Lefroy who like Ed uses a mix of both outboard gear and plug ins to create that perfect balance of radio friendly and organic sounds to create the mix. So that’s how we do it.

The Review Process before Marketing – School 101

Now once the master track has been created the nexct step is to road test the tune with people outside of the music industry first and then once we get the relevant feedback in from the FANS we then turn to the professional industry to help us nail it and get it right. So we set up an account with Slice The Pie in the UK and on our profile page we can upload NEW tracks to our scouting rooms and there the average everyday music lover get’s a chance to listen and review the track. Once 70 reviews or so have been generated we get an email saying that we have unread reviews on the site and that we can log in and download a full report. I circulate a copy of the report to all the players in the team for their input and thoughts. From this report alone we can ascertain by the song score and the tone of the reviews if we are on the right track here. Once we all agree that we are we then pay US50 to have a Soundout Report generated by Industry pro’s by a very well established A&R Review Commitee. About a week later we get the said report and from that we decide on how we will go about promoting the track to stimulate sales on our Online Store Platform and encompassing websites. At this time we will also generate what are known as Musix X Rays which are mini EPK’s or RPK’s for the song that are sent to industry pro’s in the game for a fee. As part of the payment process the Industry Pro has to do two things no matter what.

1. They must tick a box which notifies us that the submission has been received

2. They must rate the song on (5) levels and these are: Composition, Arrangement, Performance, Production, Hit Potential

If you pay between $20 and $50 you can get a full written critique of the song from the industry pro and this will detail where it’s right and where it’s also going wrong (very good tool to use)

Viral Promotion & Marketing – School 101

Now we know we are on the right track it’s time to get the song out there and generate some revenues. So how do we do that? Well first of all we go to our Jango Radio account and allocate a 1,000 paid spin campaign. This is where the FANS and people who like similar music are introduced to the new song and have the option to add the song to their custom players, leave a comment or subscribe as a new FAN. We will also add the song to our Reverbnation profile, IAC Music profile, Facebook band Page, My Space site, iLike Artist Page, Our Stage profile, Reputation Music profile, Official website in the FAN section (where you are now) and Australian Internet Radio as well as IAC Homegrown radio stations on which we are featured on around 30 plus stations.

We also add the song to our Reverb store as well as earmark it for digital distribution as part of an album project. All our digital distribution is handled by Reverbnation Digital and that gives us (4) week turn around to the premium music sites and these are without exception: iTunes, Rhapsody, Amazon, EMusic, Napster, Spotify and Zune. At this point to push the pending release we will add the song to our, Our Stage profile and enter it into one of the genre based monthly competitions to see it compete with other great songs to try and get into the top 10 and win some great prizes.

We will also blog, bulletin, email blast and press release the track and it’s story and in these we will embed links that take a FAN to a FREE download page where they can get a NEW song, a demo, an unreleased track or even a scratch vocal track. We also compile a number of songs on a specially designed, Sugar Filly / Dream Vampires USB Stick and we run competitions to win these and we also will produce them in mass and give them away at rock festivals and specialist shows and parties. In short we look at every FAN based angle we can to generate exposure and stimulate sales. Finally and now most importantly we have linked with Pledge Music to help raise money for NEW projects as well as support charities that we are truly passionate about and that gives us a good community feeling that we are out there and doing our part.

Pledge here for our new album exclusives http://www.pledgemusic.com/artists/dreamvampires

 

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