In my previous blog, I talked about how I got my first work; in this one, I talk about what that work was like.
At the time, my studio was basically my loft. It was a poky little room with a height restriction (anyone over 6’1” had to stoop). I was kind of embarrassed about recording in there so I actually recorded my first few clients in my living room. There was a dining room chair to them to sit on, a microphone and a laptop. It was a hopelessly amateur, but my skills as a producer were there and it always sounded good.
I would then take the recordings and edit them and add extra instruments in my studio after they’d gone.
Word spread pretty quickly about my production work. Word of mouth is a brilliant thing and at one point there was a trail of eight artists that I worked with after one had recommended me to the next.
Within a year, I was working with about a dozen artists on various different projects.
As I worked with singer-songwriters I honed my working methods. I started to realise that music production is not just the musical or technical side of things, but there is also a huge personal and psychological aspect to my job as well. I had to be a problem solver, a motivator, an advisor, a counsellor, and many other things.
As well as this, there was the business side. It took me forever to work out a way of charging that worked for me and the artist. My current tier system is working pretty well.
Meanwhile, my first few composition jobs were corporate/explainer videos, where people wanted the music to precisely match the video content. One company called me, as their regular composer let them down and asked if I could have something for them by the next day. I delivered, and they used me from then on.
Another client asked me if I could do sound effects. I took a look at the video, decided I could do that and now sound effects is another string to my bow.
The thing I probably least expected, but has worked well for me, was voiceovers. Again, a client asked me if I knew of any voiceover artists, I put an advert out on social media and got a few replies, built a database of voiceover artists and now I am the go-to person for voiceover artists for a lot of clients, in the East Midlands and beyond. It was something that I never expected to end up doing, but you go where the work is, and I’m very happy to help people with their voiceovers!
Recently, I’ve got heavily into library music; but that’s a blog for another time.
Like any job, it’s been difficult at times. I’ve had tricky clients who don’t know what they want, I’ve had people trying to rip me off and most alarmingly, I’ve had days when my muse simply isn’t there.
I have one more blog to go – and that is a large list of pointers and advice to anyone thinking about going into this for a living.
Here’s Part 5
I was massively saddened to hear about the passing of Greg Gilbert of Delays yesterday.
A year or two ago, there was a thing going round on Facebook where people nominated each other to post their ten favourite albums.
I couldn’t narrow it down to ten so I broke the rules and posted 34. And one of them was Faded Seaside Glamour by Delays which, to be fair, would probably have made my top ten on any given day.
It’s an album of immense beauty. It sounds like a hazy, halcyon summer. The songs are incredible. Greg Gilbert’s ethereal falsetto is not of this Earth.
It’s an album that should have been absolutely huge but, for some weird reason, remains a kind of cult classic. A band that didn’t fit into any of the pigeon-holes of the mid-naughties, as there didn’t seem to be a category called Life-Affirming Transcendent Pop Beauty at the time.
I could go though all of its 12 tracks and say something wonderful about each one.
The graceful pop of their best known song Long Time Coming, the divine chorus to Nearer Than Heaven, the heart-breaking feel of Satellites Lost, sublime three-part vocals on the bridge of Stay Where You Are…
And finally, You Wear The Sun is in the running for my favourite song, EVER. Only 100,000 streams on Spotify and I swear half of those are from me.
Summer may be over, but blast this album out and it will feel like it’s still here.
In the third part of this series about how to become a music producer (here’s part 1 and part 2), I talk about how I found work in the first few months.
I was now in a position where I had finished my job – it felt very weird when the 27th of the month came and went and no one paid me. Things got real; it was all down to me from here!
I spent those first six months working ludicrous hours to get my name out there and ensure that people heard of me. Here’s what I did in those months:
Firstly, I wanted to look professional and stand out so the first thing I did was to get a website and logo. I sweated for ages over a name for my business until my website developers just suggested I just call it Haynes Music Productions. I didn’t like the name (still don’t) but I loved the logo, and I think it’s added a touch of extra professionalism to what I do.
I also went on an equally invaluable SEO course that gave me a few tips on how to do well on Google. I implemented the tips, zoomed to the top of Google within weeks and have stayed on the first page for people looking for music producers ever since.
Secondly, my local university offered a course for new creative businesses called Making Creativity Pay. I can’t express how valuable this was to me. It delved into all the aspects of business that creative people are a bit crap at – pricing your work, copyright, invoicing, planning etc. As well as this, it was a great source of networking and I got my first few composition jobs from it.
Speaking of networking, I had decided to spread the word and went to networking events all around the East Midlands. Some of the more creative-based events were great, but I do remember finding myself in a room with accountants and executives, smirking as I introduced myself as a music producer. But I gave out the business cards anyway and sod it, I got a free breakfast.
I’d turn up at open mic nights, film festivals, animation groups, anything where there was people that might need to hire a jobbing musician. And let me tell you, I HATE networking. I don’t have a natural ability to chat and sell myself, but it did the trick in those early days, and got me known.
At one point, I found myself doing a display at an exhibition for creative businesses. The guy exhibiting next to me turned out to be a man called Paul Cummings who had made dozens of ceramic poppies. Cynically, I asked myself how ceramic poppies could ever take off. A few years later I got the answer to that question when nearly a million of them were commissioned as a war memorial around the tower of London, and then sold for £25 each!
I also got some posters made up advertising my services and put them into every music shop in the East Midlands.
And finally, I was working on a gigantic list of about 1,000 video production companies, animation companies and creative agencies in the East Midlands. I emailed each one of them individually to advertise my services as a composer. I remember thinking that even if just five of them got back to me it would be a good start. Indeed, five of them did get back to me, and I was cooking on gas!
At the same time, I’d built my website to appeal to singer/songwriters and I was starting to get a lot of work through in that area. It built up organically:
The first job I got was from an acquaintance.
The second was from someone I didn’t know in Derby.
The third was from someone further out in the East Midlands.
The fourth was from someone in a complete different part of the UK.
The fifth was from someone in the USA.
The sixth was from someone on Saturn.
Okay, that last one wasn’t strictly true. But I was surprised that I was starting to get work from around the UK and beyond; I had assumed that I’d just be working with local artists. The promotion that I’d put in place opened up a whole new market, and one that I’m still delighted to be working today.
Now people knew who I was and what I did, the hard work was about to start…
This is the second part of a blog about how I became a music producer (part one here is basically my back-story). This blog is about how I started production in earnest, spotted an opportunity and got set up as a professional.
After years of recording on cassettes, I got a loan to buy some proper recording equipment. Deciding on quality over quantity, I bought an iMac, Logic Pro 6, an AKG414 mic and a Mackie Onyx 400f pre-amp.
It was a simple set-up, but it did exactly what I wanted it to do – suddenly, a whole new world of sound opened up to me and all the ideas I’d ever had were made possible.
A mate of mine called Nick Elliot came over and recorded a simple acoustic song, which I then took and added instrumentation. This was the first song of someone else’s that I ever produced.
I put word around to musical friends that I’d record and produce their songs and ended up working on three albums, two EPs and some random tracks.
That year was incredible. I loved hearing my friends’ songs for the first time. I loved seeing their faces when I brought their songs to life and added extra instruments. I remember sitting in my makeshift studio room with two of the artists whose albums I’d produced, listening to both albums back to back, lights off, and sharing a bottle of single malt that one of them had bought me as a thank you.
It was the best moment I’d had in music for a long, long time. I thought, “right, THIS is what I’m going to do for a living”, and I spent the next few years gearing up to do just that.
I had been producing songs and composing for films, part time, for a few years. I always charged, right from the start – even with friends – and people seemed happy to pay. But it was just a sideline as my real job was working in Communications at the NHS.
All the time, I was looking for a way out to start music production full time, and although I always had my eye out, I just didn’t know how that opportunity was going to come.
But then it did come, via the recession. Suddenly, the NHS was even more strapped for cash than it normally was and I heard the first mentions of the words “voluntary redundancy”. My heart leapt a bit.
The biggest pitch of my life came next. I had to go back to my wife Sarah and say that I’d like to quit my stable job to try and make a go of music production full-time. She pointed out, quite reasonably, that we’d just had a baby, got a mortgage on a house, and it was the middle of a recession.
So I put a business plan together for the purpose of convincing Sarah that this was a good idea. I would work as hard as I could to get the business up-and-running, the redundancy money would tide us over on a very basic budget for a year and, if at the end of that year I was no closer to doing it for a living, then at least I’d given it my all and I’d go and get another office job.
The next day, she texted me at work. “You only live once, and I know this is what you’ve always wanted to do so let’s go for it.” Best text I ever received.
In the weeks before finishing at the NHS, I’d started spending my evenings working out what I was going to do. I thought of every single way I could make an income from recording – from things like recording old people’s life stories to session drumming.
In the end, I decided on the two things that excited me most – production for singer/songwriters and composition for explainer videos.
Why singer/songwriters? Well, firstly, I loved the fact that with a solo artist, they have one undiluted vision, and it’s my job to help them realise it. But secondly, my city of Derby already had Dubrek and Snug that catered for bands; I wouldn’t be doing anything that they didn’t already do. Plus, recording singer/songwriters meant that I could play all the instruments that they didn’t play – more fun for me!
At this point, I was getting quite excited but needed some encouragement, so I went onto a popular music producer’s forum to tell them my plan and see if I could get any advice. The day after posting, I checked and there were four pages of people telling me not to do it. They said I must be mad, you can’t make a living through music, some people even thought I was a troll, so absurd a career in music seemed to them!
That just made me more convinced that this was the right decision. If all these people didn’t have the gumption to do it themselves then I’d do it for them!
Friday 5th August was my last day at the NHS. I remember the feeling of walking out of the building for the last time. Very excited, but a bit nervous too. This was my big opportunity and I was determined not to waste it – problem was, I didn’t know how to go about getting business.
Pretty much weekly, I get students and other musicians messaging me or sending questionnaires about how to become a music producer. I’m generally happy to answer, as I’m not precious about what I do. In fact, I thought I might actually write this all down in the hope that it’s useful to someone else.
I’ll do it in a number of parts as there’s a quite a lot to say. In this first part, I’ll give a bit of my background story.
I was obsessed with music pretty much since I was born. As the youngest of four children, I was surrounded by different musical tastes from the word go and absorbed them all; One sister listened to rock, the other listened to pop, my brother introduced me to hip hop, indie and weird 70s psychedelic stuff. My Dad listened to classical and my Mum listened to music from the 50s and 60s, as well as taking me to church where I heard lots of folk and organ music in the church, and traditional Irish music from the church club.
My Mum also taught me to harmonise at an early age by singing hymns and showing me and my brother how to do the harmonies.
I made up my first song at the age of 4 – it was called Dark Tunnel as I was a bit scared of going through train tunnels. I have a vague recollection of performing it in front of my family with a home-made drum kit made of a bucket, a biscuit tin, a saucepan lid and an ironing board leg. This was my go-to drum kit for the next decade!
My first band (Jenimb, an anagram of Ben and my mate Jim) was formed at the age of about 7. Jim and I simply pressed record on our tape recorder, hit my “drums” with wooden spoons, strummed chordlessly on a cheap, out-of-tune Argos guitar, and sang whatever came into our heads. We recorded three albums this way, and I still have a couple of the cassettes.
Here’s a short, political track that we made called War. Hear our anger.
However, one of Jenimb’s great innovations was “studio” recording, where we’d record our buckets and guitars onto a cassette and then play that cassette back right next to another tape recorder which would pick up the buckets and guitars but also record our randomly-plonked pianos and vocals.
This was genius. We were convinced of our greatness, and that early conviction fuelled my music for the next few years. I taught myself guitar and the very basics of keyboards. But what I really wanted was to play drums.
At the age of 13, I was in Derby centre with my Mum and I dragged her into the local drum shop, as I always did, as a strong hint. The guy in the shop let me have a go on an ancient budget Premier kit and did a bit of hinting himself – seeing as I’m so enthusiastic, he’ll let this kit go for £95.
My Mum took the hint. Christmas was coming up, followed by my birthday. If I was willing to have this as a joint Christmas and birthday present, and up my household chores, then she’d buy it.
I was ecstatic, and poured myself into drums, forming a series of bands – Dedd Cloze, The Relics, Broken Toys, Fatal Comfort, and other awful teenage two-word band names.
For me, the goal for every band was always the same – to get signed and be as successful as possible. I wanted to be playing multiple nights at Wembley Stadium by the age of 20.
However, I couldn’t admit this to my head teacher when he quizzed each of us before our GCSEs on what we wanted for our future career. “International rock star”, even from a 14-year-old, seemed rather quixotic, so I told him I wanted to be a producer.
He suggested I might want to do more than just play drums. And with that, I branched out in other areas. I wrote all the songs and music for school musical with my best mate Matt at the age of 16; I started putting together MIDI on Cubase; I rented a four-track cassette recorder to try things out; I borrowed an effects pedal; I wrote more songs and played more guitar. It was all looking pretty good and I was happy to spend all my free time making music.
Musically, my twenties consisted largely of rehearsing and gigging with a succession of bands. One band called Pala did reasonably well, getting national radio play, playing hundreds of gigs over the UK and releasing a handful of singles but that petered out towards the end. (We still occasionally play and record just for fun).
In my mid/late twenties, I decided to take control of things in any bands I was in, writing all the songs and doing all the organising, but ultimately, it was doomed to fail. I was not having one bit of fun, I was jaded and had completely lost sight of the actual enjoyment of playing music.
Then a weird thing happened. On my 30th birthday, I woke and simply realised that I didn’t have to do band stuff any more. I quit the band I was in – it was such a massive relief and a weight lifted off my shoulder.
The question then was what I was going to do musically. Bands were pretty much all I’d ever known.
I’d been getting more and more into there recording side of things – it was always the thing I enjoyed the most about being in a band – and I focussed in on my recording equipment. That’s for part 2.
UPDATE: Here’s Part 2!
I’m writing this blog in a beautifully chilled studio room, whilst it’s 29 degrees outside. Two weeks ago, I wouldn’t even have attempted to go into the studio on a hot afternoon. Now, it’s my favourite place to be.
Air conditioning was installed two weeks ago, and it’s a game-changer.
Anyone that’s recorded here knows that it often got a little too hot for comfort in here. It is, after all, a soundproofed and pretty much air-tight room. Heat came in, and couldn’t escape. Between the months of June and August, most sessions had to end at 2pm as the sun come round to the front of the studio and beat through the glass doors, making everything unbearable.
I thought about getting air-conditioning for years but was worried about three things:
Thankfully, none of the worried have come to pass. It’s very low noise (and I can turn it off if I wanted to record something ultra-quiet), it doesn’t leak sound, and it refrigerates the room brilliantly.
The money that I spent getting it installed can be made back by the fact I can now work on hot afternoons and evenings.
Come and join me!
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