For My Writer-Producer Homies, Worldwide

These days this situation is pretty common…

Artist A writes with writer/prodcuer B. A few days later producer B, instead of sending the artist just an acoustic guitar and vocal demo, sends artist A a fully produced demo.  Sending artist A a fully produced demo makes the artist happy and more likely to actually release the song on a record.

Artist A then gets signed to a label and the label wants the artist to work with big huge successful writer/producer C.

The artist is excited and they bring all their demos to show producer C.

Producer C loves the song that artist A wrote with producer B.

Not only does producer C love the song, he also loves the “demo” rhythm guitar track, the main synth line, the kick drum and most of the bgvs.

So producer C calls up producer B and asks if he’ll send over the individual demo tracks to use as a reference as artist A and producer C are re-recording the song.

Now here’s the thing…It turns out producer C doesn’t just use those demo tracks for reference…Producer C actually uses some of those tracks (melodies, hooks and sounds that producer B created) on the NEW recording of the song.

The RIGHT thing would be this: Give producer B assistant production credit AND pay him for what are now master tracks and/or give him back-end percentage points.

But what usually happens is this: Producer B gets no credit whatsoever. Producer B gets little to no compensation up front for the master/recording side, and no back-end percentage points.

When I lay it out like that it’s easy to see that what usually happens isn’t what SHOULD happen.

You know in your gut what the right thing to do is.  And it’s probably easy to say to yourself, yeah I would do the right thing if I were involved in a situation like that.

And you probably would…until it got difficult to do the right thing.

At some point doing the right thing in a situation like this is going to be painful.

Painful to your finances, painful to your ego, painful to your convenience.

It’s such a long slog up the mountain that once you’re there it’s common to want to finally “get mine” rather than “keep giving”.


Producer B gets screwed a lot right now, and has a legit reason to be upset.

But one day producer B is going to be big huge successful writer/producer C.

So start doing it the right way now. Get some practice with it.  Set a precedent for you and the world in which you participate that you, when given the opportunity, will generously give credit, you will fairly compensate and be honest and heads up about who wrote the song and whose tracks are being used on the song.

The writer/producer world desperately needs this.  Be considerate, be fair, be generous…and don’t forget to be, even what it’s hard.

…and I have a strange feeling that that will play a key role in  anyone looking to move from producer B to wildly sought-after producer C status.

 p.s. If you’re at producer B level right now and you’ve got the short end of the stick too many times to count…keep going.  Keep collaborating. Keep showing up and doing great work no matter who you’re working with.


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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabethebassplayer@gmail.com

Time Well Spent

Your audience is looking for a reason to call you show worth while…Because they value and take pride in their own time and what they spend it on. 

They want to walk away thinking, believing (even if they have to stretch the truth a liiiiiitle bit) it was their time well spent. 

What’s more, your audience is looking for something they can tell their friends that make their friends wish they had spent their time as wisely as your fan. 

You may or may not think parts of the audience is giving you the benefit of the doubt, and you might be right in thinking not everyone is with you.

But everyone longs for “time well spent”.  It validates peoples’ thoughts, decisions and value system.  Time well spent says “you were right”.

And we all love being right.

You have the power to cause people to be right. 

That’s powerful.

 p.s. I put out a free eBook last year about people who like vs. love your band…it’s along similar lines as this post.  You can read for free here, or right click and save as a PDF.

And feel free to pass it around.



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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabethebassplayer@gmail.com

Ending Without The Hit

Develop an awesome jaw dropping ending to your show that isn’t your hit…that way you’ll have a good option other than ending with the hit. 

True, the hit is your ace, its your rally point, and if you (only) have one maybe it does in fact belong at the end of the set most of the time.

But it would be fun to play around with the hit within the rest of your set.

Knowing that you don’t NEED to close with it opens up the possibility to put it ANYWHERE else and see how the show flows.

Maybe you put it up front so you have the audience in your hand right away.

Maybe you put it after a down section of the set to ensure you will lift out of that section.

Lots of possibilities and reasons.

But first, the possibilities are opened when you have taken the time to build a slammin end to your show that isn’t the hit.

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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabethebassplayer@gmail.com

Pushing Forward

It used to be at shows when everyone got really excited, usually at the very beginning, there was a big push towards the front, to get closer. 

That was the only way to direct the intensified longing. (Well, either that or tears)

It was a pretty cool moment.

Now everyone just directs the intensified longing to their cell phones to grab a quick souvenir of the moment.


But the best thing about the fishing story is that there was NEVER A PICTURE TAKEN.  That’s what makes the story worth telling over and over again. That’s the charm, the fact that no one can say the fish WASN’T that big. You get to remember it as grand as you want to and no one can say boo.

 
p.s. Now don’t get me wrong, I want people to take pictures of your show…or better yet, and pertaining to what you can control, I want you to do some things that are worth taking a picture of.



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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabethebassplayer@gmail.com

Two Years Or Eight Years?

Wanting to sell out arenas in two years vs wanting to sell out arenas in eight years require two different paces, two distinctly different plans, different resources, different strengths of personnel, attitudes, opportunity costs…just to name a few a of the many differences.

So you want to be a huge star and sell out these big venues.

The why? and how? questions are perhaps most important…but the when? certainly influences the how?

But if the answer to when? is “as soon as possible” or “whenever it happens it happens”…those are blurry answers at best and will just confuse the how?…and probably lead to never.

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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabethebassplayer@gmail.com

Your Show In A Month

What do you want your live show to look like a month from now?

It’s an interesting time frame isn’t it…

If I ask you about your coming up this week it feels too immediate, like you can’t make anything better because it’s coming up so soon. 

If I ask about 6 months from now, it’s easy to get pretty dreamy and idealistic since it’s so far away…In 6 months we’ll have a rocket ship on stage! It’ll be so fun!!

But a month from now, how will your show be different? How will it be better? What changes will you make to ensure that you walk off stage knowing you did it? And “it” is something big, meaningful, in line with your (bands’) purpose.

Talk to the people around you.

And feel free to talk with me.

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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabethebassplayer@gmail.com