Basics for a successful music album, Part1.

I briefly met Quincy Jones (Multi Grammy Arranger/Producer) in Boston, 1983, days before my graduation from Berklee College of Music. He had a meeting with a group of graduating producers, and in a very relaxed environment, he told us many important facts about the Music Business. The one that stuck the most is this: To have a successful Music Album, you need 3 things: A great song, a great song and a great song. He explained that through history, after a great album, usually the next one is either a better one or a flop, even though the artist is the same, and usually the producers are the same. What is the only thing that changed? THE SONGS.

After this eye opening statement, I started focusing on finding the right songs for the artists that I would eventually produce myself. I also started polishing my songwriting, and collaborating with different songwriters and the artists themselves. When the artists I was working with did not have the right songs, we would either write them, or find them from a pool of songwriters that I was involved with.

If you are either an aspiring recording artist or an experienced one, and you are working on a new album, I would recommend you to review your songs and check if they are connected to the audience that eventually will see you perform live. I find this small detail overlooked the majority of the time, and really makes a big difference in the audience response.

In my opinion, the artist should check the songs to be recorded in front of an audience first, to get a real reaction of the people that eventually will buy the music. Sometimes a slight chance of pace in the music makes a big difference.

Also the instrumentation used in the production of the music should be realistic. Make sure that you can easily reproduce the album experience live. If you use a symphonic orchestra in your album, you won’t be able to play those songs live, unless you either hire the orchestra, or you use a “ Performance Track” along with live musicians. I will explain the types of performance tracks in the next blogs.