Hot or Cold

I recently had a conversation with my song plugger about my performance over the previous weeks. He said something to the effect of this:

"You've been really consistent, which is good (moving his hand left to right, as if a line on an X-Y graph). But we'd rather you actually do this (moving his hand left to right but including ups and downs). When you're consistent, we don't get the peaks (great songs)."

Deep down I knew he was right. It was easy to see that I'd been writing too much each week. When pursuing quantity over quality, it's easy to convince ourselves that "good" is good enough.

Along the "good" path I believe we will find that, while the road is clear and level, most of the fruit has been picked. Only on the road less taken will we experience the new and unknown. We will look out from unseen views, taste rare fruit (both sweet and sour), and most likely get cut by thorns along the way. But discovering greatness will always be worth that less-traveled journey.

Keep writing,

Ben

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Fast - Cheap - Good: Pick Two

Here's a marketing tool that I've found helpful: in any given project, a product can be fast, cheap, and/or good. But it can only be two of the three. Let's look at this through the lens of a songwriter.

If you're interested in getting a song recorded, there are three scenarios:

1. Fast/Cheap

There's an audio engineer friend who is looking for some recording experience. He said he'd record your song at his place if you buy him lunch. Fast and cheap, but what level of quality should be expected?

2. Cheap/Good

There's a family friend who has had success over the years recording well-known artists. As a favor, he offered you the opportunity to come into his studio when it's available to record some songs. He even said he'd be willing to mix them. It's no cost, and the quality is top-notch. But how long will it be before he has a free day to mix your song?

3. Fast/Good

There's a professional audio engineer in town who has gained a reputation for not only getting great-quality recordings, but mixing them the very next day. Nothing's better to a songwriter or publisher than getting a final mix so soon, but how much is that going to cost?

The best audio engineer of all is the one who makes you feel like you got a recording that was all three of the above: cheap, good and fast. It's your job to figure out which one of the three it's not!

Keep writing,

Ben