Choosing The Songs To Put On Your Upcoming Record

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Choosing The Songs To Put On Your Upcoming Record - By Brandon Drury

Without a doubt, the second most important step of being in a band (besides writing the songs) is being able to pick the songs to go on the record. I'd guess it's happened 100 hundred million times. A band or artist records a record and some stupid A&R guy says, “I don't know about this one song” and that song ends up being a number one hit. In fact, it may be the bands only successful song.

A Few Methods For Picking The Songs On For Your Upcoming Recording

Pick The Songs You Like Best

If there was no bias, I'd say that this would be the best method. The problem is there is bias. There are songs that are fun to play and there are songs that are fun to listen to. However, the two don't always go hand in hand. This is why locally, there is an extremely high percentage of metal bands. Quite simply, metal is extremely fun music to play (although crowds are almost always very small on the local level).

If you can objectively listen (and I mean listen and not play) to your songs it will become clear to you which songs achieve the results you are looking for. Again, you have to decide what results you are looking for. For example, with the band I've been writing songs with for the past year, we are writing rock music that can will be played on the rock stations, but will easily crossover to the pop stations. That was the goal from day one.

If you find that your music sounds a lot more like Slayer than you actually thought, keep that in mind. It may or may not fit what you are going for. DO NOT think for a second that you know what your music sounds like until you have recorded. I'd say about 10% of the recordings I do the band will say, “That song is way more X than I thought it was”. You probably have no clue what your songs sound like, especially if you have played them more than you listen to them.

Let Your Friends Pick The Songs

I've worked with bands who would come in and record 20 songs in one day all live or close to live and ask for their friends which songs they liked best. The problem with this is the average Joe transforms into a clueless A&R man instantly and begins finding the faults in your songs instead of finding the good in the songs.

Another problem with letting friends listen is they are not used to crappy quality recordings. They will have a hard time getting past the fact that your rock band doesn't have the production quality of Lincoln Park. It will bug them to death and will have a huge effect on their opinions of the songs.

I've found the best way to do this is to record all the songs with just acoustic guitar and vocals and simply pass out a cd to friends. Don't ask them to do anything but listen to it. If they get back to you and say “This one song is awesome!!” then you've done well. If they don't, who knows? You may still have a great bunch of songs, but you won't know. Acoustic guitar and vocals will even out the production so that they all sound equally terrible or good depending on how full your glass is. Unfortunately, most hard rockers don't come across as well. Some music does not work acoustically. Keep those in mind as well.

I Asked Michael Wagener About Songs and Producing

I actually asked Michael Wagener if he could hear a hit. He basically said, “hell no!” Even though he has more the 60,000,000 record sales to his name, he has no idea if a song is going to be a hit or not. However, he did say that he did know a good song when he heard it. Later on, I asked him about what makes a successful producer. The first thing he said was, “You must have a common ear”. He meant that you need to like music that regular people who buy records like. If your tastes are too artsy fartsy, you won't appeal to the masses most of the time. I think the same thing applies to songwriting.

Conclusion

After thinking long and hard about this and trying a number of tactics for choosing the songs, I basically decided that I, as a fan, have to choose the songs that I want to hear. It's easy for me to be a fan because I don't know what chords the guitar player is playing. I'm just listening until I hear stuff that I like. As a band member, it may be a lot more difficult to hear your songs in the way that a fan would. I've trained myself to think this way over time by totally giving up on so many concepts that musicians tend to be obsessed with.

Lastly, without a doubt, if any songs makes you feel something, it's a winner. That's the whole point to this music thing. If you feel sad, you've won. If you feel happy, you've won. If you get goosebumps, you've definitely won. That's my opinion. So think in terms of how you feel after hearing a song. Don't worry about the guitars tuning or how you did on that scale or harmony. Just listen to see if you are feel moved. If you don't feel moved, scrap all your songs and start again....seriously.

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Brandon Drury has written countless home recording tutorials at his website, recordingreview.com. You can hear a portion
of the over 600 songs he's recorded and mixed at his recording studio website. http://recordingreview.com/

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