Gary Powell, Composer/Producer

4/23/2008

Creating Your Own Opportunities

by Gary Powell

New opportunities are emerging for all of us in the creative arts, science, education and even politics. These opportunities are optimized and become more sustainable when they are born from our own ingenuity and talent and then coupled with the knowledge and implementation of new technologies. This is not new! Look no further than Walt Disney, the Man, to understand combining an individual’s ingenuity with new technologies. Also, for me, these new opportunities are not simply happening from having spent thirty years of becoming a successful composer and record producer. Yes, my effort and contribution can’t be dismissed, but it’s not the whole story.

In November, 2007, I intentionally made a shift toward creating relationships with individuals rather than companies. Some individuals connect. Some don’t. However, in the past five months since my outreach toward the personal began, I’ve identified and attracted, as we say in Texas, “a whole ‘nother level” of creative human beings who are contributing to the good of the whole. These are individuals who have also learned how to take care of themselves in the process. No longer does each of us see large institutions as stumbling blocks or the gatekeepers of our aspirations. We simply see these biggest and most immovable organizations as becoming irrelevant. In looking back on my relationships with large corporations, universities, churches, and arts organizations, I now understand that I never really had relationships with those institutions. I had relationships with people - with individuals.

This is how both we and the things we care about can win.

As people of substance, talent, training, education, and entrepreneurship in the arts begin to embrace and support each other’s visions, we each create deeper and more nuanced relationships. This has always been true. Now, unfortunately for some, the naive and narcissistic often mistake computer code as relating. Meaningless code traffic, to coin a new phrase, will never yield more than flipping through channels did on the TV two decades ago. However, code traffic, when accurately reflecting our work and our relationships, then shared publicly, can be powerful. This is how both we and the things we care about can win.

I did a study about networking, while I was teaching at the University of Texas Butler School of Music, in order to learn how all of us choose the people with whom we work and associate. The results - the smartest and the brightest find each other. Period! It’s like the law of magnetism. In youth, we utilize this law unconsciously, but in adulthood, we can CHOOSE who we associate with, especially in a public way - online. Our connections then gain significance when attraction to the successful also turns to the soulful and to the brilliant and to the quiet and to the lovely and to the healing and to the pliant and to the conscious and to the absolutely wonderful individuals who enlighten not only their world, but our own lives and purposes as well. And, as we purposefully link to one another beyond simply adding code, the occasional unseen moment of beauty, as in the photo above, just might yield to our will while others watch in amazement.

(I shot this photo from a car window on Balboa Island thinking I was just getting two people with a beautiful sunset behind them. I did not see the subtlety of the connecting cloud between them until later.)

Filed by Gary Powell at 4:28 pm under Music Business Insight
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1/9/2008

The Struggle of Becoming & Creating

samuel barber hermit songs
by Gary Powell

At 22 years of age in 1973, I was simply too young to connect with this lyric below viscerally, but nonetheless, somehow found it intriguing. I performed Samuel Barber’s “Hermit Songs” in my senior recital as a vocal major in that year. Loneliness at that time was neither in my experience or aspirations. Now, understanding, accepting and living the solitude of composing music has recently brought this lyric closer to my heart and to a more complete knowledge of myself. Despite the sacrifices and compromises in almost every lattitude of my life from having chosen a career in music; it has been a good decision, and if for nothing else, the fullness of the experience. It is almost impossible to imagine myself being outside of the struggle of becoming and creating; both the quintessential archetypes held within the psychology of the composer. Within each composition, if looking, we can find the expression of a single life and how artistically that life has been lived. And now, how cool to actually be fully living what once was only a young man’s intrigue found within the prose of fourteenth century monks and our “desire for hermitage”.

Loneliness is the absence of the other, but solitude is the company of the self. - May Sarton

(Aniyia Williams, who is not a student of mine, here nicely sings “The Desire for Hermitage” from Samuel Barber’s Hermit Songs)

The Desire for Hermitage

Samuel Barber, Composer (1910-1981)
The Poetry of 14th Century Irish Monks

Ah! To be all alone in a little cell with nobody near me;
Beloved that pilgrimage before the last pilgrimage to death.
Singing the passing hours to cloudy Heaven;
Feeding upon dry bread and water from the cold spring.
That will be an end to evil when I am alone
In a lovely little corner among tombs
Far from the houses of the great.
Ah! To be all alone in a little cell, to be alone, all alone:
Alone I came into the world
Alone I shall go from it.

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Filed by Gary Powell at 11:39 am under Music Business Insight
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12/20/2007

Investigating the Recording Studio
Session Singer Career Path

by Gary Powell

singer faith greve I have previously written about the job description of the recording session singer, but it was brought to my attention by a subscriber that I had not written a how-to-succeed to-do list for becoming a recording studio session singer on my site. Having already given you the job description, below is a list of just one possible scenario for becoming a professional recording studio session singer.

So, if becoming a recording session singer is a career path you are interested in pursuing, then tomorrow morning start working on this list and answering its questions. Feel free to skip items as scheduling permits and opportunities present themselves.

Nobody REALLY learns to sing until they start recording. - Gary Powell

Have a professional vocal coach or producer assess your talent. This assessment can be a broad overview of your vocal and musical capabilities within the context and understanding of where you want to be professionally. They may be wrong, but do it anyway. You must find out if your aptitude and talent match the job description of the recording session singer.

Determine what existing singer, if any, you most sound like in terms of tone, texture, phrasing and vocal range. Why do this? This is where your own assessment begins.

Determine what style of music your vocal instrument will most likely find work. What’s hip today won’t be tomorrow, but knowing where you most naturally fit or don’t fit stylistically is still important information for you to know about yourself.

After determining what musical genre your vocal instrument is particularly well-suited for, heighten and enhance your vocal performance skills within this vocal style! It is here, within the genre which you find most natural and in which you already excel, that you will most likely attract your first customers. Let them discover your true talent later. In the meantime, broaden your vocal stylistic repertoire to include as many genres as possible.

Have your tonal memory assessed by a music educator. If required, have that teacher develop adaptive listening skills designed for your own, very unique, instrument. This training will facilitate the most important part of your instrument, being the integration of your voice and ear. This is everyday stuff at any decent music school.

At this point, you should have made the realization that your ear is as important as your voice if not more so. If you have not of yet realized this, then repeat from step #1.

Start creating a “book” of songs that you can perform when opportunity calls. Your “book” will have all your best-suited repertoire organized with each song written in the right key for your voice. The songs can be simple lead sheets or piano/vocal sheet music, but don’t make the pianist have to interpret or transpose anything. Your “book” will prepare you for any opportunity whether it’s a gig or an audition. If the audition calls for a performance of only sixteen bars, then create the chart that accommodates that restriction as musically as possible. It also means you will never be dependent again on only one pianist for your gigs and you will also be prepared to work with an unknown auditioning or workshop accompanist with no rehearsal at all.

Sing. Sing all the time. Learn licks off the radio when you are driving. Anytime you are listening to music, begin singing harmony parts that are not even on the recording. Sing the lead guitar parts. Sing the bass line in whatever octave you can. Listen. Sing. Listen more closely. Sing again. Don’t stop this for the rest of your career. These exercises help to mature the relationship between your ear and your voice.

Never sing out of tune again. “Faulty intonation” or “singing out of tune” are the terms used to describe problems with pitch accuracy. In the old days, people used to call this “singing out of key”. Whatever you call it, singing out of tune is the fastest way for dismissal from a recording session unless your family owns the studio.

Learn the word timbre and how to pronounce it. (tam’-ber not tim’-ber)

Start recording your voice as soon as possible. Record your voice lessons. Record yourself singing karaoke. Sing into a $29 Radio Shack cassette deck or sing directly into your laptop, but start recording and listening to how others hear you. I’ve often said that nobody really learns to sing until they start recording. Start the recording process at whatever level you can afford, then repeat.

Now that you have the chops, be brave. Present yourself with confidence wherever you find opportunity, then prove yourself in person. It’s intoxicating to us professionals when your competence and confidence are confirmed in a live audition. We producers are well aware of an important piece of software called Antares Auto-Tune and its ability to correct any singer’s pitch problems. Therefore, we tend to not trust recorded auditions anymore as an accurate measure of a singer’s abilities regarding pitch accuracy.

If the singing career does not work out for you, sing anyway. It’s what humans do and it will always enrich your life regardless of where you do it or how much you are paid or not paid. Be human. Sing!

Thank you to the newest session singer in my studio, Faith Greve, for her talent, her wonderful attitude and for the use of her photo.

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Filed by Gary Powell at 6:23 pm under Music Business Insight
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12/1/2007

Sharing Your Creative Process
and Why it Helps Your Clients

by Gary Powell

Either as a film composer or commercial composer, it will help your clients learn to depend on you more if you share your creative process with them. If you don’t, they will most certainly think of your job as just magic or even worse, nothing but talent or luck. Shenandoah DVD Cover If you are composing or writing for sophisticated buyers of creative arts, it is likely they already have experience with talent and especially fame, something that is wearing very thin. I like to think that every note I write is defendable in front of a panel of my peers.

The most common question I hear is, “how do you get your inspiration?” The opening scene in the great 1965 Civil War movie Shenandoah has actor Jimmy Stewart as the father saying grace over his very large family’s dinner table. Each bow their heads in concert as the father speaks in a plain tone, “We thank you Lord for these here vittles. We wouldn’t ah had ‘em if we hadn’t ah worked for ‘em, but we’d like to thank you anyway. Amen.” Like the good farmer
we also have a similar relationship to our art even though our study and labor yield a different fruit.

Share your process with your clients. It will reassure them and teach them that you can duplicate your high standards on call every time.

It does not serve us professionally to pretend our creativity is bestowed upon us from nowhere. My inspiration comes from my continuing education, risk, trial and error, rule-breaking adventures, listening, making mistakes and gestation. After all the components of any creative project are known, time will certainly deliver the answer if we’ve done our part and our labor. Share your process with your clients. It will reassure them and teach them that you can duplicate your high standards on call every time. Each of us garage cognitive and creative processes that are unique and even though we each employ different tools, the music’s effectiveness will always depend on both our discipline and our patience. We wouldn’t have it if we hadn’t worked for it, but I’d like to say “thank you anyway” to Jimmy Stewart and beyond. Amen.

(TheShenandoah Poster is used here under the Copyright Law of Fair Use for Educational Purposes.)
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Filed by Gary Powell at 2:13 pm under Music Business Insight
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10/5/2007

Make the Life You Want

by Gary Powell

We commonly understand that illegal drug use, alcohol abuse and driving on the wrong side of the road are bad for humans. However, there is no more efficient way to forestall a perfectly talented artistic career than to be unequally yoked in either a professional or personal relationship. oxen photo Being unequally yoked is a Biblical reference, but nonetheless, I like the descriptive metaphor of two oxen of different strengths joined by a big block of wood ostensibly joining forces to pull a creative load of art. Just make sure that the oxen coupled to you is an equal in all regards: four legs, two eyes, nice haunches, health insurance and an IRA account. If that ox on your immediate right is half your weight in these areas, then it’s not only your monetary success that will soon be forestalled. You may find that the passion for what was previously your “inspired work” will quickly minify to “busy work”. The up side is that you may soon enjoy a new and flourishing resentment of nearly everything in life, always entertaining chatter at parties.

Make the life you want to live rather than living a life which only solves the problems of others unless it is your conscious choice to do so.

Having partners that either restrain us or push us where we don’t want to go will put a check in the box of your life’s spreadsheet in the column labeled “Failure Due to Bad Decisions”! This spreadsheet field’s formula is a simple “yes” or “no”. Too many metaphors? Probably not.

Our culture, family, jobs and government are all willing to burden us with the yoke of hidden responsibilities until we finally rebel and simply say ‘No more’! - Gary Powell

Here are a few signs that your life may soon have a check in the box labeled “Failure Due to Bad Decisions”:

Look for your inability to make a decision without consulting at least one powerful person or your posse.
Look to see if you have a posse. Unless yours is consciously and legally locked to your mission, then the members of your posse will each absolutely serve their own purposes. Sadly, at first your posse won’t feel like self-serving sycophants. They will feel like friends. There is nothing better than trusted friends, however, the real ones will have their own lives and goals and won’t have the time or the interest to suck off yours. This is why so many arts programs are best organized under the Internal Revenue 501(c)(3) Tax Code.
Look for writer’s block, depression or rage in yourself even if you are able to hide it from others.
Look for friends who are always tempting you to quit working for the night and go out on the town.
Look at your unsecured credit card debt.
Look for a pattern of buyer’s remorse.
Look at the size of your “regrets” file versus the size of your “aspirations” file.
Look at your health.
Look to see how many times a day you say, “If I had only…”
Look to see how many times a day you say, “I feel great for no reason” or “I have hope in my heart”. If this never happens, you may have found the first destination pin in the map you should be using to retrace your previous bad decisions that are affecting you now. Our repetitive bad decisions can indeed be the map for learning about ourselves. Figure this out as early as possible, so you can quit making the wrong stops with the wrong people at the wrong time.

If all this is too confusing, then do this: Make the life you most want to live rather than either living the life or solving the problems of others, unless it is your conscious choice to do so. Your creative life is not any person’s or institution’s responsibility but your own.

Photo Used Under the Fair Use Policy of the United States Department of Agriculture.
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Filed by Gary Powell at 5:15 pm under Music Business Insight
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7/2/2007

The Many Disguises of Incompetence

Emperor's New Clothes Poster Incompetence hides under the many rocks of false assumptions. This is certainly not information specific to the entertainment industry. It is the pandemic reality of our very human nature and is very possibly written in our DNA.

We are all familiar with authors employing ghostwriters. We are less aware of when self-proclaimed film composers dungeon-up real ghost-composers to realize their ideas. True composers rightfully call these pretend composers “hummers”. Can you hum a tune? Congratulations, you are now a composer. According to Presidential ghostwriter James C. Humes, we’ve had only five Presidents of the United States who penned their own speeches. The problem with all this is that anybody can grow up thinking they can be President and anybody is exactly who we get. This system begs the question: to whose voice are we actually listening and whose music are we actually hearing?

What we should most want is to become disillusioned! - Jonathan Hartzell

Jonathan Hartzell is a brilliant wordsmith and personal friend. He asks pointedly, “why should anyone have the goal of becoming illusional?” Therefore, disillusionment should be our goal. The truth is a good thing, but largely not taught either because of purposeful deception or tenured ignorance.

ILLUSION #1
People in authority have earned their position through education, hard work, research, investment, risk, intelligence and talent.
They possess some special quality which you don’t.

ILLUSION #2
Bullies never win.
America promotes a level playing field.
People and organizations are not maliciously deceptive.
No one cuts in line.

Have you ever wondered why we commit incredible time, money and effort in earning a college education, only to find that after our very first job interview your college transcript is never requested again? Yes, at some point our experience does far outweigh our education. However, there is a less obvious and seldom taught component to success.

We mistake anger for genius. We mistake celebrity for talent and talent for intellegence. We mistake position and title for power. We mistakenly confuse conscription with honor and self-sacrifice.

First, the emperor may possibly be as naked as you are in that recurring school nightmare on test day! Second, he has obtained his high post by no known means. So, who is your emperor? The answer: the person who holds the keys to your kingdom however you may define it. Let’s assume you find him and he will actually entertain your company fully clothed. Depending on where you are in life, you may or may not be able to perceive this person’s competence. If not, then I say hope for the best. However, there are certain signs, if read correctly, that you may be in the dangerous presence of real Peter-Principle incompetence or the very personable and charming sycophant; the common “suck-up”.

Seek out relationships which honor and support your contribution.

Why dangerous? The biggest goal of incompetence is to NOT be found out! Revealing the impostor’s disguise, even with a knowing glance, may cause you to loose your opportunity or maybe even your job especially if you continue telegraphing this observation. Ask Galileo how it turned out for him to simply reveal the truth. Flip side; you keep quiet and consequently loose your own voice. Obviously, there is no good choice here. Move on quickly yet prudently!

How can you learn to detect incompetent superiors? Judgment, maturity and experience will serve you best here. Be quick to know and slow to judge! Your experience will not be my experience and your judgement not my judgement. We are all wrongly judged from time to time and I will not load you up with ammunition for some emotionally unconscious ambush. I will say that you should seek out relationships which honor and support your contribution. If they don’t, then you may be in the presence of a person or organization which will neither honor or support you as an individual. This of course is dependent on your bringing something to the table besides just yourself and your good looks.

Please vow to never use your power to disguise your own incompetence by hijacking credit you don’t deserve.

Remember, we all showed up on this Earth completely and totally incompetent, so again, be quick to know and slow to judge. Next, learn and improve while building your alliances with individuals and organizations which honor your contribution. Live long and prosper.

Gary Powell, Composer