This blog is part 3 in an ongoing series. If you missed it, jump back to part 2 here.

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I already had one song in mind that I thought would be best to proceed with this producer, but I wrote another 6 or 7 that week that were strong contenders, too. 

At this point, I’ll divulge that some of the other artists that this person has credited to their name are Michael Jackson and Britney Spears. Now those are some loaded names – when it comes to Pop, that is about as high up the ladder as you can get for me. They’re about as high up there as Elvis Presely – you could even argue they share a certain royal standing.

What those names and credits say to me is that this person theoretically carries those professional qualities I’d seen in so many other producers and engineers. They must understand that fine balance between technicality (to produce a great record) and respecting an artist (to ensure the best performance is captured), especially if you’ve worked with people like MJ and Britney who really put their all into their work.

My standard is probably not MJ high yet, but it is closer to that than anywhere else on the spectrum. Nonetheless, my expectation of my collaborator was that my song and I be treated with the same type of care and respect.

With all that in mind, I settled on a song that I thought would appeal to this producer’s pop sensibility. It was mostly complete, but I was open to finessing a few things and still hadn’t wholly decided how I’d like to end it; I am never really married to a track until it’s done-done and I’m happy with it, and even then I tend to play around with different variants of it when I perform it live because my recordings are not replicable for live settings when it’s just me performing them. Plus, I wanted to keep a few things open ended so that we could talk about them and truly collaborate instead of me coming in and saying, “so this is it, and this is how I want it to sound and you can record it,” because if that were the case to be quite frank I would just do it myself.

And I practiced Title and Registration enough to perform it comfortably acoustic, but I also went ahead and threw together a quick recording of it in case we didn’t have time to listen to it on the day we’d be meeting. 

I pulled together my albums that I had on CD to bring him as well and made note of a couple songs I’d show him for a sense of my style when we listened to one or two. 

Because remember, that’s what he said we’d be doing that day. Listening to a couple of my existing recordings and then going over the contract details for the single. 

When I arrived, after a brief wait in the reception area, I was ushered into the big office in my agency – and it is fairly large office considering the size of the entire suite. The producer sat in a chair on the wall across from the entrance with my agent and there were chairs set up to my left upon entry. This left an unusually large gap between the two of us and felt a little impersonal, but I was willing to roll with it. 

After exchanging general pleasantries, he made a point to ask me again about my recording background – what studios I’d worked for and so on to get a sense of where I was coming from, and then they went ahead with some of the terms of the contract. They focused mainly on the cost of producing the single, the royalty split (percentages between me, the producer and our agency), the fact that they’d market and promote the single after its complete and a general sense of how he likes to work. He said it all rather casually with the understanding that I was not entirely new to this process and not wanting to bore me with the details. Once they were complete I was afforded the opportunity for a couple of questions. 

I asked things like, “So, do you have your own studio space for this or do you use other studios?” to get an idea of what type of workspace we’d be using. He responded that they had their own studio in [location] and the work would be done there. 

Sure, fine. I didn’t get into details about what they use because in this case I didn’t feel I should have to. He knew I came from professional recording studios and he had worked with tried and true professionals – we should be on the same page here for what that means about quality of work and what’s required to obtain it. 

“How long do you expect this single to take from start to finish so that I know how available I need to be for this?” which also could have been phrased as “What does my schedule look like for this?” because at the time I was working full time and wanted to ensure I could fit it in my existing schedule or switch my shifts around to accommodate. 

He said that the way he likes to work is in pockets, 2 hours at a time. Typically this process takes him 4 months. 

“4 months?!” my eyes must have been the size of Saturn. I smiled, “Wow, really?”

He went on to explain we would meet once a week for those 2 hour pockets over the course of those 4 months. 

To my ears, that is a shit load of sessions for a single, but it’s alright because I wouldn’t be paying by the hour here. 

“Wow, okay. 4 months is a long time,” I said. I usually produce full albums in less than that time frame as a solo artist playing every instrument and mixing it, too. But I’m not here to assume I know better or to badger someone else for their preferred process. 

“Good to know though, so I’ll make sure I’m free for those.” I am almost always accommodating unless it is entirely unreasonable for me to be so. 

But in all my life I have never worked on a track in that way. If nothing else, I was open to seeing how it played out – hell, maybe I’d learn something. 

“How soon would we be getting started?” 

Pretty much right away, but he could give me some time to do some writing, understanding that some writers have different processes for that stage of things. 

I sort of am always writing and can pull inspiration from nearly anything if I need to, so I usually have a few things hanging out on the backburner and in this case as I told you, I got ahead of this conversation before we ever had it and had more than enough ready to go.

“No need, I already have a few different songs at various stages of completion that I can show you. If you don’t care for any of them, we can start something from scratch.”

It is really, really important to me that the producer has some sort of interest in the song we work on, which is why I remained open to starting music from scratch at all stages of this. True professionals in this industry will have a set standard for the quality of work and ensure they’re maintaining a good attitude of the project regardless of whether or not they enjoy the track that’s been brought in that day, but you will without a doubt get a better performance out of your producer/engineer if they’re also genuinely interested or inspired by the work on the table that day. 

That’s no different than any job, really and I can’t stress enough how important it is to me if you’re going to work with creatives to treat that relationship with utmost care. 

He was happy with that response and I carried on with my last question. 

“So you said you’d also handle the promotion of the song, what does that look like and what do you use to distribute with?”

The general scope of what they do to promote was sort of glossed over here. In short, they’d handle the promotion campaign (vague) and we’d get to that later (sure, I guess), and they distribute with DistroKid. 

I internally cringed. Seriously? You use Distrokid? 

It was the first red flag that this was an unprofessional operation to me. 

No disrespect if you use Distrokid and are happy with the service they provide, but I tried it briefly and I would never go back to it. I think it’s an awful business model for creatives and I don’t see it continuing to thrive long-term. But that’s a whole other conversation we can have some other time. 

I definitely wasn’t trying to hide my feelings here, but I responded something equally vague as I was getting from them with a “Oh, you use Distrokid? Interesting.”

I wasn’t about to pick an argument about it. 

I was going into the experience as a newbie-artist who has never worked with a professional producer before. CF the engineer and music blogger certainly has worked with professionals, but CF the artist has not.

If I didn’t know any better, I wouldn’t have even thought anything of any of the answers to these questions. I’d be going into this experience with a willingness to learn and excited by the opportunity before me – and that’s what I did because all of this was still very preliminary and I certainly can’t cast judgment before we’ve ever stepped foot in the studio. 

It felt strange to be in the position I was in, but I remained open to what was to come. 

We wrapped up our brief question period and then they provided me with the contract that laid out the terms of the agreement. 

I took my time and read it through completely; it was not very long and in relatively simple language, so that made it easy and I appreciated that. Sometimes you get a contract that is just chock full of legal jargon and I think those are designed to confuse you and cloud the real intent of the contract.

In retrospect, and I considered this briefly while I was there, I should have asked for more time with it to be extra thorough. But this one was straightforward and I saw no real reason not to sign it that day. 

It would cost $4318.75 CAD and the percentage split was effectively 50/50. Not unreasonable to me, everyone’s input and work in this exchange is valuable and if we’re successful with the single, we all win. That’s the goal and that’s how I look at music projects. 

For some sort of reference, a typical day rate at any professional studio can easily cost you $1000+ with an on-site engineer. Producer fees, mixing and mastering rates, are separate from that, so the cost of the project didn’t catch me too off guard, even though it was high for what my personal piggy bank was capable of affording at that moment. Plus, they said they’d be promoting it as well – if anything, the cost was oddly low for someone of this alleged caliber.

The agency, bless them, offers payment plans. If they didn’t, I probably wouldn’t have done this project at this time beause I have been working really hard to pay off any existing debts (and keep them off!) and I haven’t had great luck with jobs in the last couple years.

I also just really wanted to push myself to what I felt was the next level of my own musical journey, so it seemed a silly thing to pass up, so I agreed to the terms and was ready to lock it in.

Before sending me off to sign the deal, I approached the producer. “Do you shake hands?” At this point, he still hadn’t offered his and maybe he was a germaphobe or something, who knows – it felt kinder to ask than to assume. He does, and so we shook on it.

“You might endup hating working with me,” I joked, which is funny in retrospect. “Looking forward to getting started!”

I signed the contact with my agency’s fastest speaking staffer who always reminds me of those sketchy L.A-type agents who speak fast on purpose so that they appear more confident and to get you to agree to whatever nefarious agreement they want you to opt-in on quickly and without hesitation. She makes me laugh. There is no need to speak that quickly (are you in a hurry?) especially when contracts are involved. 

After making my first of what would be 5 payments, I was advised they’d reach out with the producers schedule and contact from that point on would be just between he and I. 

I said thanks and went on my way. 

The producer never asked to hear any of my pre-existing recordings.

He did not care about Title and Registration.

I left wondering how many days would go by before I received a schedule and why on Earth they’d use Distrokid for distribution, but ultimately chose to remain optimistic. 

I received the producers email that same day, but it turned out I’d be waiting a little longer than I thought to start the project.

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Next up in the series, read Part 4: The First Official Project Meeting.