Recording A Cappella with Danny Ozment

This is the last episode of Season 1 of the Recording A Cappella Podcast. Thanks for all of your support!

Please continue to check out our resources at

https://recordingacappella.com

How have I gotten this far and not really talked in detail about the most important piece of gear these days???

Today we talk about your computer and what you will need.

Danny's Recommended Resources - https://recordingacappella.com/resources 

Video Courses -  https://recordingacappella.com/shop

Recording A Cappella Mastermind - https://recordingacappella.com/mm

Ultimate Pre-Production Checklist - https://recordingacappella.com/checklist

Interested in a coaching session? -  https://recordingacappella.com/coaching

Everyone loves buying gear… 

Really though, the gear and room are only as good as you. We’ve talked about room in the past so lets talk about how to get the most out of your gear, software, and plug-ins.

1. Learn one piece of gear at a time
2. Read the manual 
3. Use presets and create templates
4. Experiment
5. Practice even when you think you know everything 

Links:

https://sweetwater.com

Video Courses -  https://recordingacappella.com/shop

Recording A Cappella Mastermind - https://recordingacappella.com/mm

Ultimate Pre-Production Checklist - https://recordingacappella.com/checklist

Interested in a coaching session? -  https://recordingacappella.com/coaching

Today I'm going to answer some questions from listeners and let you know about the future of the podcast.

It occurred to me just recently that we often talk about how to improve our rehearsals as a cappella groups yet when it comes to recording, we most often call on singers to record individually.

And without fail, we always discover during the recording process that a few of our fellow singers have been relying heavily on their fellow section members to be able to perform their parts.

Singers in general do not develop individual practice habits at an early age. I'm thankful that a good number of high school choir directors are changing this by teaching theory, sight singing, and giving voice lessons to their students. For the amateur singer joining an a cappella group in college or as an adult, they are flying blind when it comes to individual practice.

Here are some suggestions for improving your individual practice habits especially if you are the casual amateur singer singing in a group for fun.

1. Rhythm and Time

Singers struggle with rhythm. Rhythm and time are crucial for being a great musician. Download a good metronome app to your phone immediately and start practicing your music with an appropriate subdivision playing. 8ths, 16ths, etc so you can feel where your notes occur. Before you even start to learn your notes, start by speaking your parts so that you get the rhythms internalized.

1. Basic technique

If you can't afford voice lessons, invest in a basic vocal pedagogy book. Learn about your anatomy and physiology. Start working on basic exercises and use them at the beginning of each practice session. Start to build your instrument before you try to throw difficult parts at it.

1. Part tracks

If you can't play piano, get part tracks for the songs or get music notation software that can play the parts back for you.

1. Make a plan

Pick 30 minutes at least twice a week that you can practice. Then plan that session. 5 minutes for warm up. 10 minutes to learn rhythms. 15 minutes to learn notes. Etc…

1. Get an accountability buddy

Find someone else in your section who you can meet up with every few weeks to rehearse together outside the group rehearsal.

Your individual voice is important to the makeup of the group. If you are just coasting along relying on others to get your part right, you are not adding anything to your group. You're just noise. Own your ability and improve your instrument. Be a leader.

So thanks for joining me today. If you liked what you heard today, please drop by iTunes and subscribe and while you’re there, leave me a review. And please if you like the show, please share an episode with your friends and other a cappella fans. I really appreciate you taking time out of your busy week to listen to me talk about recording a cappella and I hope that I’m helping you on your journey.

Recording A Cappella Mastermind - https://recordingacappella.com/mm

Ultimate Pre-Production Checklist - https://recordingacappella.com/checklist

Interested in a coaching session? -  https://recordingacappella.com/coaching

Video Courses -  https://recordingacappella.com/shop

My number one recommendation isn’t going to have anything to do with plug-ins or software. No techniques, not tricks… There’s no secret sauce in this podcast.

The best thing you can do right now to improve your mixes is to fix your monitoring. You have to be able to hear your mix as it actually exists in order to mix well.

So what can you do to make sure that you are monitoring correctly?

1. Take your room out of the equation. If that means treating your room with acoustic panels, bass traps, diffusers, etc, then go do it. I recommend GIK acoustics for packages that are designed for your room. If you can’t afford to do that, get a reasonably decent pair of headphones or earbuds.

1. Learn how your chosen monitors or headphones or earbuds sound. Spend a lot of time listening to a lot of different music of different styles on them and learn what frequencies get boosted or lowered by them. Compare the same music on another set of headphones.

1. Always listen at the same low volume level when you mix. When I first met James Gammon way back in 2008, he recommended that I pick up an SPL meter to make sure I wasn’t listening to my mixes too loud. You need to find a level you can listen at for long periods of time. You can find apps that will do this.

1. Pick a handful of songs that you think sound great or grab a song that is similar to what you are mixing. Drop that song into your mix session and regularly switch back and forth as you try to make you mix sound similar to that song. Do your drums hit as hard? Does your lead vocal sit on top of everything else. Do you have holes in your mix?

1. Take your mix and listen to it in the car or on some standard ear buds to hear if your mix works on different speakers.

So thanks for joining me today. If you liked what you heard today, please drop by iTunes and subscribe and while you’re there, leave me a review. And please if you like the show, please share an episode with your friends and other a cappella fans. I really appreciate you taking time out of your busy week to listen to me talk about recording a cappella and I hope that I’m helping you on your journey.

Recording A Cappella Mastermind - https://recordingacappella.com/mm

Ultimate Pre-Production Checklist - https://recordingacappella.com/checklist

Interested in a coaching session? -  https://recordingacappella.com/coaching

Video Courses -  https://recordingacappella.com/shop

This week on Recording A Cappella I speak with one of my most trusted editors and member of the Recording A Cappella mastermind group, David Fowler.  Let me introduce you to David. I first met David 2 years ago when I tracked a group he was singing in at the time. He discovered a cappella in high school and started messing around creating YouTube videos. He sang in a group in college and grew his YouTube channel into something pretty special. Fast forward a few years and he’s now in a pro group performing internationally and working closely with Peter Hollens on Peter’s videos in Eugene, OR. It’s been a whirlwind for him and I hope you can take some great lessons from his experience.

In this episode, David gives us the “cliff notes” version of how he got involved in a cappella, including how Season 1 of the television show Sing Off, pushed him to start an a cappella group, and posting his first YouTube video. We then talked about his progression as an a cappella artist, his group EVOC, his success as a YouTube Content Creator and his exhilarating experience working with Peter Hollens as his audio and video producer.

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Want more support? Join myself and members like David in the Recording A Cappella Mastermind Group. Our current mastermind is a group of six people that had to meet certain criteria they had to apply and then have a brief call with me to make sure it was the right fit. I personally mentor each member of the group and facilitate our calls.

But more than that our group is about providing the members with the support confidence inspiration camaraderie and unimpeded access not just to me but to a wealth of other forward focused individuals and a true mastermind setting.  They're a safe space where you can nurture and grow your best a cappella self within the safe confines of your wise peers and no amount of genius marketing I could ever do would give true voice to their power. Apply today: https://recordingacappella.com/mm

David Fowler - https://www.davidfowlermusic.com/   

David Fowler on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVs-o_xSBFPou0dOQ5f_8Cg

Mastermind - https://recordingacappella.com/mm

Ultimate Pre-Production Checklist - https://recordingacappella.com/checklist

Interested in a coaching session or joining one of our groups? -  https://recordingacappella.com/coaching

Video Courses -  https://recordingacappella.com/shop

Thanks for joining me today. If you liked what you heard on this episode, please drop by iTunes, subscribe and while you’re there, leave me a review. If you like the show, please share an episode with your friends and other a cappella fans. I really appreciate you taking time out of your busy week to listen to me talk about recording a cappella and I hope that I’m helping you on your journey.

If you are listening to this podcast, you are interested in growth . . . of your knowledge, your talent, your ability, your skills, your business, etc.

All too often these days, everything you read or watch in the online education space is trying to get you to learn something faster, better, CHEAPER, etc.

You’ve heard the expression: “there’s an app for that.” Well, it is true that technology can help you do things cheaper and faster, BUT it’s not always going to lead to you doing it better or understanding it better.

If you are trying to learn something that involves creativity like recording music

or

you want to have a career in recording, rarely is there a quick or cheap path. You have to invest the time. And more importantly, you will have to invest the money.

Invest in quality tools and education that will support you on your journey.

All too often we are tempted to find the free or cheap way to accomplish something . . .

OR find an illegal copy of something in order for us to try out this hobby that we might want to turn into a career.

I’m not going to say I haven’t tried cracked versions of software before, but I always had to buy the full version to make things work consistently and to get the full benefit from them.

I believe that going for the cheap or free option is the wrong path to take.

You need to spend money on quality proven tools and on quality education from professionals.

While this will likely save you some headaches, I believe there is a more important psychological reason for spending good money on quality.

You have to have skin in the game.

If you don’t invest good money, you are communicating to yourself that you aren’t serious.

You’re dipping your toe in the pool and saying that if it’s too cold, you aren’t jumping in. You can’t succeed that way. You have to jump in the deep end and take some risks in order to be successful.

This entire episode may sound like an advertisement for my courses on recording, editing, and mixing, or my mastermind group, or my coaching services… well, in a way they are. As I see it, you have 3 options to grow in your knowledge of recording.

First, you could learn like I did, cutting my teeth in a studio while recording 3 lackluster albums with my college group, spending years going to festivals and workshops, spending countless hours hunting down every free resource I could and asking every question I could of people more experienced than me.

Second, you could just keep doing what you are doing now, going to the local studio maybe where they don’t really know what to do with an a cappella group or finding students on campus who happen to own some gear and have even less experience recording than the engineers at the local recording studio.

OR Third,

You could invest in some focused training. Skip the trial and error learning a system that has been proven to work by the best in a cappella over the last 20 years. work it alongside what you’re doing right now, and see how far you go.

Of those three options, what’s going to be easier for you?

If not now, when?

Make your decision, and if it’s option 3 then take action and go to https://recordingacappella.com/shop

So thanks for joining me today. If you liked what you heard today, please drop by iTunes and subscribe and while you’re there, leave me a review. And please if you like the show, please share an episode with your friends and other a cappella fans. I really appreciate you taking time out of your busy week to listen to me talk about recording a cappella and I hope that I’m helping you on your journey.

Recording A Cappella Mastermind - https://recordingacappella.com/mm

Ultimate Pre-Production Checklist - https://recordingacappella.com/checklist

Interested in a coaching session? -  https://recordingacappella.com/coaching

Video Courses -  https://recordingacappella.com/shop

Let me introduce you to Zach Toom. First off, Zach works for NASA and I think that’s freaking cool!!! I first met Zach 6 months ago when he applied for my mastermind groups. Zach is a lot like many of you listening. He was in groups in college and got tapped to figure out how to record his own group. He’s recorded some tracks. He’s dealt with disappointing results when a local recording studio tried to mix their a cappella tracks. He decided he wanted to figure out how to do it on his own and that’s why he joined our group. And in 6 months, Zach has gone from just starting out to being so good that I’ve actually hired him to help me on a few projects.

“A mastermind group is designed to help you navigate through challenges using the collective intelligence of others. How does a mastermind work? A group of smart people meet regularly to tackle challenges and problems together. They lean on each other, give advice, share connections and do business with each other when appropriate. It's very much peer-to-peer mentoring and if you are lucky enough to get invited to one, you will most likely see a marked change in yourself and your career.”

Our current mastermind is a group of 6 people that had to meet certain criteria, apply and and then have a brief call with me to make sure it was the right fit. I personally mentor each member of the group and facilitate our calls.

But more than that, our group is about providing the members with support, confidence, inspiration, camaraderie, and unimpeded access not just to me, but to a wealth of other forward-focused individuals in a true mastermind setting.

Each month the group is provided stems for a song recorded by me or by members of the group. Members edit and mix the song. In most cases, I also edit and mix the song as a control or benchmark for the group and provide over the shoulder videos explaining what I did.

We then meet twice a month for 60 - 90 minutes. Once to share edits and a second time to share mixes. During our calls, each person gets 15 minutes to receive feedback from me and from the group as a whole. We also spend time on calls to discuss the business of the home studio and any other topics that come up. we also have a private Facebook group to discuss, ask questions, and share in the time between calls.

Masterminds may seem a bit like a "Secret Society" sometimes.  Because, well...they are!

In the best sort of way, of course. They're a safe space where YOU can nurture and grow your best a cappella self within the safe confines of your wise peers.

And no amount of genius marketing I could ever do would give true voice to their power. So that’s why I’m sharing this recording with you. So you can hear for yourself and pick up just of the few nuggets we share in each and every call.

And if you already know you're ready to super-charge your growth, rapidly build a quality network, and cut your editing and mixing learning curve in half, then apply to the 2018 Recording A Cappella Masterminds today at https://recordingacappella.com/mm.

Zach Toom - https://www.facebook.com/zachary.toom

Mastermind - https://recordingacappella.com/mm

Ultimate Pre-Production Checklist - https://recordingacappella.com/checklist

Interested in a coaching session or joining one of our groups? -  https://recordingacappella.com/coaching

Video Courses -  https://recordingacappella.com/shop

I love this quote. It sums up why it is so important to have a coach or mentor. Or why it’s important to bring in a qualified professional to do something that you might not have experience doing.

You may have also heard the cliche don’t reinvent the wheel. Similar idea. When we start to learn something new we often don’t want to listen to someone with more experience. Maybe we think we’re going to do it differently or figure out some new way of doing things. You might, but most likely not.

Someone who is a professional or expert at something has already made hundreds of mistakes while learning to do what they now do so well. And for some reason, those same mistakes occur when anyone else starts to learn how to do the same thing. It saves a lot of time to listen to those people when they warn you about mistakes to avoid. Trust me, they know.

That’s the main reason I started this site. At first it’s a place for you to learn how to avoid all the mistakes I made as I learned my craft. And as it grows, I want it to be a place for you to learn from each other and share your own mistakes.

And remember, sometimes mistakes lead to some new idea or technique. So, listen to me, but don’t be afraid to make your own big mistakes and find out something new.                       

Recording A Cappella Mastermind - https://recordingacappella.com/mm

Ultimate Pre-Production Checklist - https://recordingacappella.com/checklist

Interested in a coaching session or joining one of our groups? -  https://recordingacappella.com/coaching

Video Courses -  https://recordingacappella.com/shop