Road Rally Notes

[kg]

Thanks, Nomi!!! & you too Raggs

[ragani]

I wish I had more *real* notes to post-- most of my notes are inspirations/ideas that come to me when sitting in a workshop... probably not so relevant to everyone here. Raags

[ragani]

Yeah, I'm also thankful to read Nomi's notes, as it seems she attended just the ones that I missed and wished I could attend! Who could have asked for more? And now we all have the notes to enjoy-- thanks for starting this post Nomi!! Raags

[matthewhaw]

Alright well, my notes are pretty sporadic as i was paying more attention then writing. But hopefully some of you who couldn't attend might get something out of them.Pete & Pat Luboff's Class on Songwriting-It is important to address the same thing in your lyrics as you would if you were writing a news article. Who? Where? What? When? Why? How? and the Feel of the situation.-within the first 20-30 seconds you should have a simplistic image laid out in order to gain your audience's attention and have them connect to it.-Always pay attention to the tense of the lyric. don't be switching back and forth between the present and past unless its easy for the listener to follow.-First person point of view holds the most impact.don't try and say too much...DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN CONFUSION AND MYSTERY... (unless you are writing old school Psychedelic tunes )Pat Pattison - Phrasing (awesome class!)basically wanted to add to Nomi's notes here..-Mr. Pattison used Heartbeat city by The Cars as his example. If you listen the whole message that the writer was trying to get through to you were the only lyrics that were front heavy while the rest was all weak bar phrasing. The message was "Oh Jakie"...."I missed you". great stuff.he also suggested John Meyer's song Belief as another good example of this technique.Thats about all i have worth sharing the rest is a garbled mess!... or Nomi already has a better version of mine up here! haha enjoy hopefully somebody gets something out of these.-M.R.H.-

[hummingbird]

Nomi did a great job of taking notes this year - thanks for taking the time to post them!!! This was my 3rd Rally, and altho I had my notebook, I didn't write much down this time. I just kinda soaked it up.But here are some of my scribbles:RALPH MURPHY - re county music writing - especially lyrics:-- humour, irony, detail; the woman is always right; -- 4 to 7 repetitions of title, first use of title within 60 secs;-- the singer is never a loser or over 30FETT - re audio mastering-- mastering means adding finesse, power, clarity, polish, cleaniness to a mix -- it is NOT a fixing processSteps of mastering:1) - completion of the mix process - you get the stems (stereo sub mixes) as well as the final mix, the final mix is two tracks2) a - tone shaping - looking for warmth, crispness - balance the tone & ensure frequencies are shared between low, med & high band -- this should be subtle 2) b - leveling - smoothing out the dynamics of the mix3) - audio repairIf you are mastering an album you want to make the tone of each cut have the same tonal quality -- look for a tonal centre for the album. Also want to have a loudness centre for the albumTED LOWE - re film/tv-- pitch music with updated sounds & great mixes-- tempo matters - groove is more important than melody a lot of the time-- be quirky or distinctiveFILM & TV PITCH PANEL-- uptempo gets used more; start with meat & potatoes-- know what you are pitching for - what would the music be used for, where do you hear it-- if pitching with vocals -- they must be great-- whatever you're doing, strive to do it betterA&R LISTENING PANEL #1-- the listener should feel / have a visual interpretation of the music-- there is a move back to music with heart & soul -- emotion in lyric & voice -- more natural, less midi -- makes a difference to have even one or two organic tracks-- songs must have a really big payoff in the chorusWell, that's the extent of my notes for this year -- at least the ones I can read

[ragani]

Glad you enjoyed them, Ted. I think I'm all out of decent notes now. Except for the publishers workshop by Jason Blume, but that one was way to complex for me to even THINK about typing the notes here. What a lot of great stuff we got from that Rally, eh?! Raags