StudioPros

Looking to take his recordings to the next level of professional quality, Tommy Owen teamed up with Studio Pros to make his music radio-ready.

“I felt like I was working with a group of super-talented friends that I had known forever.”

Tommy Owen didn’t have a plan for his music; it was simply a hobby for the San Marcos, Texas native.  But working with Studio Pros has a way of opening doors for artists; after putting his songs on MySpace and Facebook, Owen couldn’t help but pay attention to the response he got.  “I must have gotten about 50 emails the day I put it up on MySpace,” he says.  “Half of the feedback is about the quality of the recording!”

Owen, who runs his own graphic design company, has been playing music since he was a teenager.  He soon decided that producing his own music was a lot more fun than playing someone else’s songs in a band, so he bought a 4-track and started recording.  For years, Owen never felt the quality was up to par, but after teaming up with Studio Pros he found himself suddenly being contacted by radio stations asking him for a physical CD (a friend passed on Owen’s music to a radio connection).  He attributes his newfound success to the professional product he was able to make with the help of Studio Pros.

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Many songwriters have their own home recording studios and double as the producer, engineer, songwriter, and recording artist.  Most songwriters don’t also fall into the category of “studio drummer”, and that’s where Studio Pros comes in to save the day (or the album you could say).

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Don’t waste time struggling to knock out a midi drum track on your song when you can have our studio drummer come help you!  As many of you may have realized, getting drum tracks recorded may be the most difficult step in getting your album finished.

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Let Studio Pros help you fill in all of the missing elements to your home recordings.

Adrian Sakashita is a composer who spends his time between Los Angeles and London as well as an online business owner.  This is the perfect case for Studio Pros, as Adrian can manage his projects from all around the world and still be kept in the loop on his production, while not wasting too much time at a studio.

 Studio Pros just recently worked with him on his latest work “Seduction” and filled in the missing pieces of his recordings using our studio musicians, “Studio Pros helps make better music!  I simply couldn’t resist the temptation and dove in head first a few years ago.  Since then, I’ve turned my attention back to composition.”

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At Studio Pros we like to take from what’s worked in the past and apply it to what we’re doing today. We have worked with many artists that request this sort of “British Rock” sound, and we know just what they have in mind.

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“British Rock n’ Roll”, as they called it, was a significant change in rock n’ roll that took place in the late 50’s/early 60’s in the UK and later spread around the world. Artists were taking from US rock n’ roll influences and giving it a British edge. This style became the characteristic sound of the Beatles , The Rolling Stones , the Who , Herman’s Hermits, the Dave Clark Five, the Animals, The Kinks , the Small Faces, the Yardbirds, and Donovan among many others. It worked. People obviously liked what was coming out of this new era and it changed the wave of music forever.

When we have an artist’s reference to the overall final sound they are going for, we are happy to help in any way we can to produce their song the way they had in mind. Of course, this is not the only sound that we can achieve with our studio musicians at the Studio Pros recording studio, but an option for those post “British Rock” enthusiasts.

To get that “British sound” we tend to use a lot of compression on our piano tracks, space out the drums (big drum sounds are big in this style) and give the overall mix a dark overall sound with compression.

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“This song sounds cheesy.” You’ve all said it at one point in time.

How do songwriters avoid this problem? Sure, Michael Bolton rocked the “cheese” in the early nineties and Christopher Cross made hits in the eighties with this “out-dated” production style, but let’s keep moving forward. How do you avoid sounding like “you just can’t let the good ole days go”?

Several steps in the song writing and production process of your song can help you avoid taking a step in the wrong direction on the cheese-o-meter. First of all, try to avoid overplaying in a song. A really good song should sound perfect alone with just an acoustic guitar and a vocal. It’s always good to get an outside ear to hear a song when you first write it. Even if your audience doesn’t give you too much feedback, you’ll have that initial instinct while you’re playing to help you determine if it’s a “good song”.

Secondly, avoid overproducing your songs with excess of instruments. Midi sounds are something you really need to be careful layering.

Drum sounds are also a make or break when you are recording a song. The best thing to do in this case is to listen to some current artists that you like and copy the drum sounds they are using in their recordings. Listen to the drum track and picture the room it was recorded in, the effects that were applied to the mix, and also the placement of the drums in the mix.

Keep your ears open when you are getting to the music production stage of your song. Take from the current sounds around you, and interesting recording techniques from the past. New ideas are good. Recreate old sounds instead of replicate. You’ll have an interesting and “cheese-free” song in no time.

Learn about Studio Pros Music Production Service.