October 2020 posted by on October 11, 2020

Dear Friends Fans and Music Lovers

Just sharing stories with you all as the world is turning slowly back to live performance.

In today’s world of recording music, the internet is your partner. Files (recorded music) are transfered everyday to different musicians working on a song or project and then someone will possibly edit your track and slide it in to make musical sense. The first time this happened with me was on my West Coast Groove CD.I had written a tune called “Brand New Love” We worked on an arrangement and sent the file to the drummer, who from his home sudio, recorded a great track and sent it back to us and we finished the tune.

I was thinking about this the other day and a memory from the 1980’s came flying by…..

There was a “Music Producer” in Hollywood who had an ad in a national songwriting magazine. Songwriters around the country would see this ad and send him their home made tape of their songs. The producer would listen to the tapes, then write an arrangement and call in a rhytm section to work on the tunes. He would say…” I want this to sound like a Eagles tune, or Fleetwood Mac tune, or Barry Manilow, or Lionel Richie or whoever” So we would talk over the tune and ad guitar effects or licks or musical ideas to fit the style the Producer was going for. We would knock our 4 or 5 tunes in a session and did this 3 or 4 times a month..no computers, no internet, no files. Just live musicians working together in a studio making music…what a concept !!..and what a great training ground for me.

Those skills and memories are priceless as any musician will tell you.The good news is today you can record and work with musicians from around the globe from your home studio. But every now and then, you remember where it all started.

Stay Well, Stay Blessed….Mark (626) 485-9266