Category: Music Business Insight

by Gary Powell

If you were born into the world, as I was, with Walt Disney Records as the dominant deliverer of family entertainment, then you will cerainly enjoy reading Mouse Tracks written by Tim Hollis and Greg Enrbar.

Joining the enormous legacy of Walt Disney Records in 1989, I thought I had a solid knowledge of the record company. I did read stories, recognized names and saw faces in Mouse Tracks that were familiar, like Annette Funicello. However, there were also surprises to me, like, reading about the record mogul Mike Curb’s varied career. The book also recounted stories of old recordings, still fresh in my musical memory from childhood, like, “Davy Crockett – King of the Wild Frontier.” Obviously, the researchers and authors, Tim Hollis and Greg Enrbar, spent many hours in the archives and on the phone with the principle contibutors to the record company since its inception in 1955.

I am not an employee of Walt Disney Records, but as a prolific contract producer for the company since 1989, the authors contacted me and asked for a memorable story from my studio, Powell Studio Productions here in Austin, Texas. I won’t give it away, but you can read about the unusually simple technique used to create the singing aliens for “Toy Story Sing Along Songs” on page 185.

Thank you, Tim Hollis and Greg Enrbar, for including my work and studio in your wonderful book.

FROM THE BACK COVER:

“Tim Hollis is the author of three books – histories of tourism and children’s television – all published by University Press of Mississippi.”

Greg Ehrbar, a twenty-year Disney company veteran and a two-time Grammy Award nominee, is a writer of advertising, books, television specials, radio shows, compact discs, and Walt Disney Records Read-Alongs.”

by Gary Powell

New opportunities are emerging for all of us in the creative arts, science, education and even politics. These opportunities are optimized and become more sustainable when they are born from our own ingenuity and talent and then coupled with the knowledge and implementation of new technologies. This is not new! Look no further than Walt Disney, the Man, to understand combining an individual’s ingenuity with new technologies. Also, for me, these new opportunities are not simply happening from having spent thirty years of becoming a successful composer and record producer. Yes, my effort and contribution can’t be dismissed, but it’s not the whole story.

In November, 2007, I intentionally made a shift toward creating relationships with individuals rather than companies. Some individuals connect. Some don’t. However, in the past five months since my outreach toward the personal began, I’ve identified and attracted, as we say in Texas, “a whole ‘nother level” of creative human beings who are contributing to the good of the whole. These are individuals who have also learned how to take care of themselves in the process. No longer does each of us see large institutions as stumbling blocks or the gatekeepers of our aspirations. We simply see these biggest and most immovable organizations as becoming irrelevant. In looking back on my relationships with large corporations, universities, churches, and arts organizations, I now understand that I never really had relationships with those institutions. I had relationships with people – with individuals.

This is how both we and the things we care about can win.

As people of substance, talent, training, education, and entrepreneurship in the arts begin to embrace and support each other’s visions, we each create deeper and more nuanced relationships. This has always been true. Now, unfortunately for some, the naive and narcissistic often mistake computer code as relating. Meaningless code traffic, to coin a new phrase, will never yield more than flipping through channels did on the TV two decades ago. However, code traffic, when accurately reflecting our work and our relationships, then shared publicly, can be powerful. This is how both we and the things we care about can win.

I did a study about networking, while I was teaching at the University of Texas Butler School of Music, in order to learn how all of us choose the people with whom we work and associate. The results – the smartest and the brightest find each other. Period! It’s like the law of magnetism. In youth, we utilize this law unconsciously, but in adulthood, we can CHOOSE who we associate with, especially in a public way – online. Our connections then gain significance when attraction to the successful also turns to the soulful and to the brilliant and to the quiet and to the lovely and to the healing and to the pliant and to the conscious and to the absolutely wonderful individuals who enlighten not only their world, but our own lives and purposes as well. And, as we purposefully link to one another beyond simply adding code, the occasional unseen moment of beauty, as in the photo above, just might yield to our will while others watch in amazement.

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by Gary Powell

At 22 years of age in 1973, I was simply too young to connect with this lyric below viscerally, but nonetheless, somehow found it intriguing. I performed Samuel Barber’s “Hermit Songs” in my senior recital as a vocal major in that year. Loneliness at that time was neither in my experience or aspirations. Now, understanding, accepting and living the solitude of composing music has recently brought this lyric closer to my heart and to a more complete knowledge of myself. Despite the sacrifices and compromises in almost every lattitude of my life from having chosen a career in music; it has been a good decision, and if for nothing else, the fullness of the experience. It is almost impossible to imagine myself being outside of the struggle of becoming and creating; both the quintessential archetypes held within the psychology of the composer. Within each composition, if looking, we can find the expression of a single life and how artistically that life has been lived. And now, how cool to actually be fully living what once was only a young man’s intrigue found within the prose of fourteenth century monks and our “desire for hermitage”.

Loneliness is the absence of the other, but solitude is the company of the self. – May Sarton

(Aniyia Williams, who is not a student of mine, here nicely sings “The Desire for Hermitage” from Samuel Barber’s Hermit Songs)

The Desire for Hermitage

Samuel Barber, Composer (1910-1981)
The Poetry of 14th Century Irish Monks

Ah! To be all alone in a little cell with nobody near me;
Beloved that pilgrimage before the last pilgrimage to death.
Singing the passing hours to cloudy Heaven;
Feeding upon dry bread and water from the cold spring.
That will be an end to evil when I am alone
In a lovely little corner among tombs
Far from the houses of the great.
Ah! To be all alone in a little cell, to be alone, all alone:
Alone I came into the world
Alone I shall go from it.

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by Gary Powell

I have previously written about the job description of the recording session singer, but it was brought to my attention by a subscriber that I had not written a how-to-succeed to-do list for becoming a recording studio session singer on my site. Having already given you the job description, below is a list of just one possible scenario for becoming a professional recording studio session singer.

So, if becoming a recording session singer is a career path you are interested in pursuing, then tomorrow morning start working on this list and answering its questions. Feel free to skip items as scheduling permits and opportunities present themselves.

Nobody REALLY learns to sing until they start recording. – Gary Powell

At this point, you should have made the realization that your ear is as important as your voice if not more so. If you have not of yet realized this, then repeat from step #1.

Thank you to the newest session singer in my studio, Faith Greve, for her talent, her wonderful attitude and for the use of her photo.

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by Gary Powell

Either as a film composer or commercial composer, it will help your clients learn to depend on you more if you share your creative process with them. If you don’t, they will most certainly think of your job as just magic or even worse, nothing but talent or luck. If you are composing or writing for sophisticated buyers of creative arts, it is likely they already have experience with talent and especially fame, something that is wearing very thin. I like to think that every note I write is defendable in front of a panel of my peers.

The most common question I hear is, “where does your inspiration come from?” The opening scene in the great 1965 Civil War movie Shenandoah has actor Jimmy Stewart as the father saying grace over his very large family’s dinner table. Each bow their head in concert as the father speaks in a plain tone, “We thank you Lord for these here vittles. We wouldn’t ah had ’em if we hadn’t ah worked for ’em, but we’d like to thank you anyway. Amen.” Like the good farmer we also have a similar relationship to our art even though our study and labor yield a different fruit.

Share your process with your clients. It will reassure them and teach them that you can duplicate your high standards on call every time.

It does not serve us professionally to pretend our creativity is bestowed upon us from nowhere. My inspiration comes from my continuing education, risk, trial and error, rule-breaking adventures, listening, making mistakes and gestation. After all the components of any upcoming creative project are known, time will certainly deliver the answer if we’ve done our part and our labor. Share your process with your clients. It will reassure them and teach them that you can duplicate your high standards on call every time. Each of us garage cognitive and creative processes that are unique and even though we each employ different tools, the music’s effectiveness will always depend on both our discipline and our patience. We wouldn’t have it if we hadn’t worked for it, but I’d like to say “thank you anyway” to Jimmy Stewart and beyond. Amen.

(TheShenandoah Poster is used here under the Copyright Law of Fair Use for Educational Purposes.)
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by Gary Powell

We commonly understand that illegal drug use, alcohol abuse and driving on the wrong side of the road are bad for humans. However, there is no more efficient way to forestall a perfectly talented artistic career than to be unequally yoked in either a professional or personal relationship. Being unequally yoked is a Biblical reference, but nonetheless, I like the descriptive metaphor of two oxen of different strengths joined by a big block of wood ostensibly joining forces to pull a creative load of art. Just make sure that the oxen coupled to you is an equal in all regards: four legs, two eyes, nice haunches, health insurance and an IRA account. If that ox on your immediate right is half your weight in these areas, then it’s not only your monetary success that will soon be forestalled. You may find that the passion for what was previously your “inspired work” will quickly minify to “busy work”. The up side is that you may soon enjoy a new and flourishing resentment of nearly everything in life, always entertaining chatter at parties.

Make the life you want to live rather than living a life which only solves the problems of others unless it is your conscious choice to do so.

Having partners that either restrain us or push us where we don’t want to go will put a check in the box of your life’s spreadsheet in the column labeled “Failure Due to Bad Decisions”! This spreadsheet field’s formula is a simple “yes” or “no”. Too many metaphors? Probably not. Our culture, family, jobs and government are all willing to burden us with the yoke of hidden responsibilities until we finally rebel and simply say ‘No more’! – Gary Powell

1. Look for your inability to make a decision without consulting at least one powerful person or your posse.
2. Look to see if you have a posse. Unless yours is consciously and legally locked to your mission, then the members of your posse will each absolutely serve their own purposes. Sadly, at first your posse won’t feel like self-serving sycophants. They will feel like friends. There is nothing better than trusted friends, however, the real ones will have their own lives and goals and won’t have the time or the interest to suck off yours. This is why so many arts programs are best organized under the Internal Revenue 501(c)(3) Tax Code.
3. Look for writer’s block, depression or rage in yourself even if you are able to hide it from others.
4. Look for friends who are always tempting you to quit working for the night and go out on the town.
5. Look at your unsecured credit card debt.
6. Look for a pattern of buyer’s remorse.
7. Look at the size of your “regrets” file versus the size of your “aspirations” file.
8. Look at your health.
9. Look to see how many times a day you say, “If I had only…”
10. Look to see how many times a day you say, “I feel great for no reason” or “I have hope in my heart”. If this never happens, you may have found the first destination pin in the map you should be using to retrace your previous bad decisions that are affecting you now. Our repetitive bad decisions can indeed be the map for learning about ourselves. Figure this out as early as possible, so you can quit making the wrong stops with the wrong people at the wrong time.

If all this is too confusing, then do this: Make the life you most want to live rather than either living the life or solving the problems of others, unless it is your conscious choice to do so. Your creative life is not any person’s or institution’s responsibility but your own.

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