Making the Prep Work: Reflections of a Forthcoming Album, Part 1

The way in which we consume media has drastically changed in the past 100 years, along with the dissociation that many of us have in regards to the creation of art and media itself. Although many of us can imagine the steps one may take in refining an artistic ability, to describe its role in todays society is challenging. For a musician, one of the ways to do this is by creating a collection of music that can be presented as an album, concerto, opera, etc. When you think about all of the ways music is created in these setting you are talking about months, or even years of preparation to write to music, rehearse it, and present it to the world. With the commercialization of music and with streaming platforms like Spotify, we have never been isolated from the realities of artful creation.

Since I am creating a columniation of work, under the guise of an album, I thought I would share my very real musical journey. One of the most vital tools I have found in making an album is preparation. It’s this preparation that separates the music created for a Pepsi ad, versus the music that’s made with a specific intent in mind. You have to make the prepwork, to make the preparation work.

The Motive, and the Money.

Having a concept for a project is the most important, and can be one of the easiest, or one of the most difficult parts of this process. When you are coming up with a brand new idea, it can feel impossible to pursue a creative avenue as there are endless ideas of what you can go for. On the other hand, if you have a pre-existing network of people you play music with, it can be easier. For this album I decided that I would stick to an instrumentation of a pre-existing school ensemble I was already apart of.

Past this, it is simply not enough to just have a band that sounds good. In the Canadian process of creating an album, you also need to come up with a concept that supports your album. For me, I wanted to dedicate a project for my mother. She is dealing with a form of cancer, and thats a large source of inspiration for me, as it is something that is so emotionally difficult for me. Her name is Demetra Langis, so I called the project demiLAN.

Once you have found the concept for the project you want to pursue, you need to find the money in order to make it happen. If you apart of a school, chances are that the school has options of applying for grants, or that the school has in hour recording. In my case I applied to the Faculty of Music Undergraduate Special Project Grant. Through this, I was able to make a convincing enough argument to record this project, and got just enough money to make it work.

When thinking about money for the album, make a spreadsheet of the essentials. For my project, I projected my costs based on the specific recording studio I wanted to go to, the rate that I wanted to pay my band members, photography/videography, and mixing/mastering. To figure out where to record, look at where other people in your city record. To find who to mix and master the recording, see who in your city gets to do that. This is a general rule of thumb I use, as it can be hard to start this search if you don’t know where to look.

The Music

After you know what direction you are heading in, and have a solid framework built you can work towards compiling the music for the album. Depending on where your head is at this can mean a number of things. To simplify the process, I have seen people hire their colleagues to write arrangements of their music, and in a personal case of mine, split the composition 50/50 with another bandleader. In the case of my album however, I found the task of composing all of the songs on this album to be a process that could be fun, and consume allot of my idle time.

In my case, the prepwork included writing a total of eight songs that would encompass how I sounded in this period. I ended up writing eight compositions, two are rhythm section with three horns (trumpet, tenor, trombone), two are trombone quintet, with guitar and rythm section, and the remaining four songs contain spoken word elements, with fully arranged songs to accompany them..

This process is a thrill for me, because on top of just plainly writing the music, it gives me a time when I get to play with my friends. This also means that I need to go to staples, pick up some folders and pencils, print all of the music, tape the charts, and go to the rehearsal. This all sounds pretty easy, but even though its fun, its highly time consuming.

The Other Stuff

Once you have all the music ready to go, you essentially are now focused on the rehearsals, the studio date, and everything else that doesn’t directly involve a connection to creating music. For the structures of rehearsals, I had three 2 hour sessions planned, so in the first two rehearsals we could work on the first and last half of the album, so the last rehearsal can be a run-through. I am working with a team of videographers that will be documenting two songs in the form of a “music video”. I am getting a photographer to help create an album cover. I am getting a social media manager to help create posts. I am working on developing a mailing list, that will be used in sending emails to press and radio. I am going to have to go through the process of listening to the separate takes of the album several times to piece together the album, work with the person mixing the album, and mastering it.

There is allot of “the other stuff” that goes into the album process, and this work doesn’t just come out of thin air.

Conclusion

When we listen to an album, see a painting, or watch a movie, we focus on enjoying the piece of media we consume. While we are in this trance, rarely do we ask ourselves the questions that pertain to the production of said material, and how the making prep-work, makes the preparation work. When you listened to a song written by Drake, there is definitely way more prep-work that goes into that, as he has a team of people to grow his success. Although the next time you hear the music of someone who doesn’t have such a team, try to think about the prep-work that goes into a specific project, as you don’t hear page taping in the piece its self. Since we don’t have CD covers to reference, and Spotify to blindly listen to, take a minute and look deeper into what you’re listening to, it might be the key in producing a more meaningful listening environment.