Recording studio, audio training, bands and DJs - Aurora, Illinois

School of Rock

I spent the morning with 10 students from this year's OHS rock songwriting class, talking tracking and mixing - and, more importantly, doing it ourselves. We started with a simple acoustic-guitar pattern and built ourselves a song. In fact, we built two! I'll let the music speak for itself - check out the results on Myspace or see the photo album on Facebook.

Agent secrets, man!

Ok, bad news first. Our booking panel at last night's meeting of The Guild wound up a little thin - unexpected emergencies meant three of our four scheduled booking agents had to excuse themselves at the last minute. Welcome to the music world! I've issued temporary pardons only, though - expect a rescheduled panel sometime over the summer. If you're not on the studio e-mail list, stick your address in the box to the top-right of this page and be the first one to know when that happens.

Meanwhile, we soldiered on and had a great meeting nonetheless. Close to 50 of us packed into the studio lounge to hear Gina Moga, who books Downtown Alive! for the city of Aurora, fill us in on the world of festival booking. Gina gave us the straight talk on what festival promoters are looking for - do people know your music? Can you sell beer? And - above all - do you have a name that will bring people downtown?

For most of us local axe-grinders, of course, the answer's no. But there's more to a fest than a headliner. Here are a couple moves we touched on that might make you more attractive if you're a local band looking to work your way into opening local festivals:

• Play local. If you've got a following here, you're proven already. And fest organizers probably subscribe to the mailing lists of the local clubs - if you're playing there, they know your name already.
• Play covers. In case your momma forgot to tell you, everything's not about you. Fest audiences want to hear stuff they can sing along to. Give them some points of access.
• Consider Sonicbids. Some festivals insist on EPKs, while others - like Downtown Alive! - are willing to consider a variety of submissions. 
• Hit a conference. The Illinois Special Events Network does a convention every year - last year's was in February, but they're moving the next one up to November 2009. If you want to get yourself in front of 150 festival planners from all over Illinois, you can get a table on the expo floor for surprisingly cheap. Even better, 8 lucky acts get to perform at a conference showcase. Submissions for the showcase are taken only through - you guessed it - Sonicbids.

The Guild: Gig Me!

Maybe some musicians never need the public. They stay in the back bedroom, playing guitar in the dark, going blind as a cavefish from the lack of sunlight. They write brilliant songs and only ever play them for their mothers. That's enough for them.

Maybe there are musicians like that - but I've never met one. Everybody I know wants to share their music. We want gigs.

And how do you get a gig? Ask this month's panel! For next Monday's meeting of the Guild, I've invited four of my favorite local agents and promoters out to tell us how the music-booking game is really played. If you play music in the western suburbs and you've never been turned down for a gig by at least one of these folks - well, you're simply not trying hard enough!

Here's who'll be joining us Monday:

• Tommy Hartman's Screaming Beaver Records has done booking, promotion and sound for rock shows and open mics all over the 'burbs. He currently production manager at Doug's Rockhouse.
• Mary Rothe has been an entertainment agent for more than 25 years. Her Chicago company, Artists, Events & Entertainment, has been putting musicians and entertainers in banquet halls, hotels and casinos since 1988. And look out - she's also a lawyer.
• Joey Demarco and United Talent book music for literally dozens of bars and clubs in the Chicago area, including North Beach, the Cubby Bear and Walter Payton's Roundhouse.
• Gina Moga, event's coordinator with the Mayor's Office of Special Events in Aurora, books and promotes all of the city's major events - including the Downtown Alive! series of summer festivals.

Now that's a guest list! Of course, these folks aren't here so you can beg them for a gig - they get enough of that from 9 to 5. But if you listen hard and learn to make their lives a little easier, you may find yourself playing more than ever.

As always, the Guild kicks off with drinks and snacks at 7:30pm. We never run out of coffee, but any other food or drink are welcome. See you Monday!

Chase away your blues...

Call them the Plastic Band. Last weekend we had the pleasure of tracking with a crew of vocalists, guitarists and one mean blues-harp player to record an original ditty for Chase Card Services. That's songwriter Gary Schmidt's atrocious pun in the heading of this post, not mine. And I'm pretty sure he's proud of it.

The Chase gang is taking their hard work back to the office this week, to shoot a video for their blues song that's all about working for Chase. It'll premiere at at a company convention in the near future.

Songwriters' Showcase

We're thrilled to announce our upcoming Songwriters' Showcases, kicking off at 7pm Friday, May 8, and continuing throughout the summer on the first Tuesday of every month. Our season of showcases will culminate in a songwriting conference the second week of September, at which one lucky showcase writer will be treated to a one-on-one meeting with a leading song publisher from EMI.

Each showcase is a live concert, a demo recording sessiona dn a songwriting workshop -- combined. You perform your music in our recording studio, in front of an audience fo other songwriters and music lovers. We record your performance and compile feedback from the other participants. You leave with your songs on CD and a written evaluation to help you improve your writing.

Excited yet? We're currently registering for the first Showcase only - at 7pm Friday, May 8. You can register online here, or view the Showcase Q&A to get the full details. The summer showcase schedule is online right here.

What Easter has to do with music

If Jesus did rise from the dead, then we must write and record music that is beautiful and challenging.

I’m discovering that’s what I believe. I’ve been a Christian all my life, but lately I’ve been growing in my understanding of what Easter – the event at the center of the faith I claim – has to do with art. Like a lot of people, I yearn to be better integrated – to discover what one part of my life or my actions has to do with another, and to line up the pieces that don’t fit together, until my life isn’t in pieces at all – until it all fits. Since art and faith are so significant to me, this means I’m always thinking about ways they fit together.

I find food for thought in obvious places, but also in surprising ones – like the book I finished this weekend by the Bishop of Durham about resurrection. Easter, it turns out, isn’t so much about going to heaven as it is about heaven coming here.

Which has to do with art and music. People create as a natural response to the created world around us. We reflect and enhance the beauty we find, ordering and enjoying the sights and sounds we find pleasurable – like Adam in Eden, who cultivated the garden and named the animals he found there. But unlike Adam, we live in a world that’s marred by ugliness and evil. Honest art reflects this, too.

Many first-century Jews – including Jesus – believed that evil was a temporary blight. Because God was just, they thought, an age would come when he would re-create the world. The beauty here would be transformed, made even better. The ugliness would be thrown on the trash heap. And dead people – particularly those who’d died unjustly – would be brought to life again.

Folks who concluded Jesus was the savior, then, saw Easter as the start of this new age of justice and beauty. His resurrection was a foretaste, like a single flower poking through still-frozen ground. Sure, injustice was still everywhere – but the era of peace had begun.

If I believe that, too, then it explains why I like music full of contradictions – tense, but yearning; dark, but full of promise. The kind of stuff I most aspire to make is a mixture of darkness and light. I don’t love sad songs or happy songs so much as hopeful ones. Because I think the world is cold – but also that Spring has already begun.

What about you? How do the things you believe intersect with the music you love?

Sing 'n' Shoot!

Spent the morning with songwriter Eric Stade and a couple camera-wielding friend from Servantworks, recording a song Eric wrote in response to the organization's inspiring work to liberate those trapped in Thailand's sex trade. After a quick track and quicker mix, we took a few extra minutes to shoot some video of Eric lip-synching to his spanking-new track. Think your track could use some video? All you have to do is ask...

(ear-related pun here)

Last night we had the pleasure of hosting EARS, the Engineering and Recording Society of Chicago, for their monthly get-together. Mixes were test-driven. Acoustic treatments were debated. Sandwiches were consumed. And - as was to be expected - I learned a little something more about my own recording rig. As we've learned at The Guild, there are few things as consoling as getting together with people who share your particular obsession - you almost feel ordinary. Thanks, gents, for the illusion, the companionship and the pointers - hope to see you next month!