The visual pillar of performance is probably the most fun. Sometimes, as musicians, we forget about this part of our artistry. That it really comes from a deep feeling.

We want to paint. We want to touch. Sometimes, with music, we don’t get that sense. We don’t get that motion. When we’re creating electronic music.

Get students to feel comfortable getting dirty. You want them to feel like the energy they’ve put into creating a set or creating costumes is going to give back to their audience. Like it is going to make them feel more connected with the work that they’re doing.

What is the story you want to tell? You must make sure that you are wearing the costume of that story, of that main character. What is the character of the set? Is that a sun setting? Or is it people in a protest?

If you never bring up the idea of people in a protest, but you’ve got images behind you of people in a protest, it evokes a feeling from the audience. It’s these subliminal messages that we’re giving to the audience that make them feel connected to what we’re doing.

There are many ways to do this for a performance with a track. For example, to feel more alive, one of those is through movement and choreography. Another one of those is creating or combining a live element with your track. Sometimes, people add live drums, and they’re not even miked.

The idea of moving their body along with the rhythm of the music is something that the audience can really connect to. They feel, oh, they’re moving. I want to move too.

That’s what we must look at. Like there’s really a mirror right there. What you are doing is what the audience feels OK to be doing back to you. If you’re dancing, they’re dancing. If you’re introspective and looking at the ground, they might be too. Decide what you want your audience to do, and they’ll mirror you.

Before you arrive at the venue, it’s great to have your set list already planned out with your band. This is a key part of your music education. You can always make changes later, but it’s good to think about the sequence of songs before you show up to the venue to make sure that you really add dynamic to the show. Perhaps you decide to juxtapose a slow song with a fast song for the most drama.

We ask Mick Jagger, “When choosing a setlist for the Rolling Stones, there really aren’t too many bad ideas, are there?”

The Rolling Stones front man, who has nearly 60 years of music industry experience, replies, “I’m sure there are. Let’s just say that some ideas are better than others. Like for instance, I believe that the opening number is kind of important. We did try ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ in some cases. And a lot of those shows in Europe were in the daylight, so I didn’t like doing that number in the daylight opening. It didn’t work, so I dumped it.

“I think it works as an opener in the dark when you’ve got full lighting,” Jagger continues. He goes on to explain that in the dark, that song really reads and works to create a mood. “So we’ve got all these kinds of factors to take into account when we’re doing set lists,” he concludes.

A set list is a list of songs that you’re going to perform that night. Everyone has a different amount of songs depending on how much time they have allotted to them on stage. This is one of many aspects of your career to consider as you continue your online music education.

Many bands don’t even bring a crew on tour; it’s just them. They do everything themselves. As you start to get bigger, though, you might need someone to sell merch for you. You might need someone to run the sound at the front of the house, or someone to run the monitor mix. As you continue growing bigger, you might need a wardrobe person. You might need a production assistant, a production manager, a tour manager. All of these people are very expensive to hire.

So, these are really some things to think about as you start to gain momentum in the music industry. For the most part, your manager is going to help you with this. As for needing a manager, you don’t need one until you need one. If you find that you can’t handle everything by yourself, that’s when you need a manager. At the beginning though, I recommend that you try to do it on your own.

Obviously, selling tickets for your show can benefit you financially. In some cases, though, you’ll really only be making money from alcohol sales at the bar, or from a guarantee that the venue has already given you. This is typically a certain amount of money that you’re guaranteed to receive after the show, no matter what. For instance, a venue may give you a $500 guarantee to play a show, and if they do, it won’t matter how many people are in attendance—you’ll receive the $500 regardless.

Another way that some venues might do it is to give you a guaranteed amount, plus a percentage of ticket sales after a certain amount of money is made. So, for example, after you’ve already made $1,000, you would receive $500, plus ten percent of ticket sales. You might get offered a deal like this as a way to incentivize you to promote the show and bring along as many people as possible.

Ultimately, creating a successful performance or tour is about the following things: finding your true, authentic self, creating your intention, telling your story, finding your audience, and creating a visual element that will evoke a certain energy from the crowd. So, in that vein, there are a few things you really need to focus on deciding, and they are who you are, who you need to bring with you on your music journey, and what kind of story you want to tell. In many cases, exploring online music education can help you get started on the right path.

I want to talk a little bit about performance anxiety. The truth is, it’s normal. We all have fight or flight so that means that everybody gets nervous, and everybody should get nervous if they’re getting up on a big stage in front of a lot of people or even a little stage in front of some people. Sometimes that is actually scarier.

The truth is, we should have an increased heart rate, some difficulty breathing, and perhaps some sweaty palms, but what we shouldn’t do is let that affect our performance. Practice is a really good way for us to move through this. We have to imagine that setup, that situation we’re going to be in, and be able to get through it. One thing that I really suggest is changing your thinking about the outcome of the situation. Camila Cabello says, “I remember the first show. I was so intimidated, like I was so scared. And there was a switch, I think, in the second or third show where I was like, wait a second, these people aren’t judging me.”

There’s three different ways that you can think. The first, is a positive outcome. This can be great, but it can also be detrimental. An example of that positive-outcome thinking would be, “I’m going to be amazing. I am the best singer ever.” Again, this confidence is awesome, but in reality, sometimes if we mess up, it can work to our disadvantage. The second is negative-outcome thinking, “I’m going to suck. I’m going to ruin everything. Everyone’s going to hate me.” Obviously, this is a terrible way to think. Sure, it’s low expectation so if we do well, we’ll feel really great, but it’s a terrible way to set yourself up for failure. Lastly, the third kind of thinking is just practical thinking. “I’m going to do this. This is my job. I’m going to perform.” This is really the best thinking for performance anxiety because we don’t say it’s going to be good or bad. We just say it’s going to be. This is the best way that we can be our authentic self and get through this difficult moment of nerves.

Coping Mechanisms to Overcome Performance Anxiety

One way to deal with performance anxiety is being able to mentally go through the entire performance in real time. Music education teaches, a lot of people use this technique when they can’t get together with their band. It just exemplifies a way that we can build confidence on our own in our own mind. It’s kind of like meditation. I’ll think about all the parts I need to play, all the vocalizations I need to do, and all of my choreography. After we do it once in real time, I like to do it a second time in double time. That means that I can go through everything quickly and know where I’m going to move to next. Before we finish up, we go one more time in real time. This helps us to end this process with what we are expecting to do on stage exactly. Going through this over and over again is just going to help us feel comfortable when we actually get on stage in front of the crowd.

The best way to recover from a mess-up during a performance is really the same way that you would mess up from a life experience. There’s a couple of ways that you can regain control after you mess up in a performance. According to online music education, one of those is seeing it in the scope of the entire show. Most people won’t recognize that you made an error. The only person that’s going to know that you made an error is yourself and maybe your band. Don’t acknowledge it and push through it. Take a breath and step back. This does not define your entire performance. It will not define your career. It will not define your entire life. It is only a moment to move past and it is gone now.

Everyone makes mistakes during a show. I definitely make more than one in every show. The truth is, we shouldn’t let that take over our anxiety around performing the rest of the show with confidence. One person that has made a mistake that we’re all aware of was Adele. When she performed at the Grammys and she couldn’t find her place, she actually stopped and acknowledged her mistake. I think this was really important for her to do because it created a vulnerability with her and the audience of millions of people all over the world. Showing that she was human actually made her more lovable. I thought it was a really brilliant way for her to deal with making that mistake. Other people on stage will just keep going and not care. Other people will stop the song and acknowledge it until the audience laughs. Really, there’s so many ways of doing this, but I think the most important thing is just to allow yourself to be vulnerable and authentic to your true self when you make a mistake on stage.

The role of a record producer in the music industry is multifaceted and crucial in shaping the sound and success of an artist. While the debate between documenting a performance and shaping its sound continues, it’s the producer’s relationship with the artist that often defines the outcome of a musical project. Let’s explore the different approaches producers take in working with artists and the impact of their choices on the music that reaches our ears.

 

The Facilitator vs. The Imprint

At one end of the spectrum, some record producers act as facilitators, focusing solely on bringing the artist’s vision to life. Their primary aim is to create an environment where the artist feels supported to express their creativity and produce their best work. On the opposite end, there are producers who leave a distinct mark on the music they touch, imprinting their unique sound and style onto the artist’s work. This approach can lead to a collaboration where the producer’s influence is as significant as the artist’s talent

 

Jerry Wechsler and Aretha Franklin

A prime example of a facilitative producer is Jerry Wechsler. When he signed Aretha Franklin, Wechsler recognized her potential and worked to cultivate a sound that resonated with her soulful roots. His approach was not about changing Franklin’s style but enhancing and elevating it to showcase her best qualities. This collaboration led to some of the most iconic songs in the history of soul music, demonstrating the power of a producer who prioritizes the artist’s authentic expression.

 

Phil Spector and the Wall of Sound

Contrastingly, Phil Spector became known for his “Wall of Sound” technique, a method that significantly shaped the music of the artists he worked with. Spector’s approach was to create a dense, layered sound that was unmistakable, regardless of the artist performing. This method led to groundbreaking music but also sparked debates about the balance between a producer’s influence and an artist’s originality.

 

The Role of Electronic Music Producers

In the realm of electronic music, producers like Pharrell Williams have managed to carve out a niche where their sound becomes a signature. When you hear a Pharrell-produced track, there’s an immediate recognition of his influence. This highlights a modern trend where producers are as celebrated as the artists themselves, blurring the lines between production and performance.

 

The Importance of Music Education

Understanding these dynamics is essential for anyone looking to make their mark in the music industry. Whether you’re an aspiring producer, artist, or music executive, recognizing the different roles a producer can play opens up a broader perspective on music production. It emphasizes the need for a solid foundation in music education to navigate the complexities of this relationship.

The relationship between a record producer and an artist is a delicate dance of creativity, vision, and influence. As we’ve seen through examples like Jerry Wechsler and Phil Spector, the producer’s approach can significantly affect the direction and success of an artist’s music. For those intrigued by the intricacies of music production and looking to deepen their understanding, pursuing further education in this field is invaluable.

 

Discover Your Potential With Yellowbrick

Interested in exploring the music industry more deeply? Enroll in the Music Industry Essentials course by Yellowbrick. This comprehensive course offers insights into production, management, and the business of music, providing you with the tools to navigate the music industry successfully. Whether you’re just starting or looking to expand your knowledge, this course is designed to improve your understanding of the music world.

Take the first step towards mastering the art of music production and shaping the sound of the future. Enroll now and discover your potential in the music industry!

The history of the music industry is an important piece of any music education or online music education. What many might not realize is how early folk artists heavily influenced the modern music industry in ways you wouldn’t expect. It began with mobile recorders traveling to find otherwise undiscovered talents.

Reebee Garofalo talks about a division in the music industry and that there was a carriage trade, as he called it. What he meant by that was a very upscale market for music and a cracker barrel trade, which essentially is a downscale market for music. There were sections of the music industry that really catered to this sort of downscale market, and they sought out, essentially, the sound of the common folk or folk music.

What were the songs that eventually made it onto the records? Entrepreneurs like Ralph Peer crossed the country with mobile recorders in an attempt to find hillbilly artists and blues artists to record. These were local singers and songwriters who would not have been known to the outside world otherwise.

As one example, Ralph Peer was the first person to record Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter family.

Hillbilly songs and sounds later became known as country or country and western. Two other towering figures of this time were John and Alan Lomax. They were folklorists who managed to record lots and lots of blues tunes from all over the country.

John and Alan Lomax discovered artists like Lead Belly. Alan Lomax was later very much a patron and supporter of Woody Guthrie. Alan Lomax taught a lot of these songs to a young man named Pete Seeger, who then, in turn, mentored somebody named Bob Dylan. There is a genealogy of popular music that can be traced back to the work of these early field recording music entrepreneurs.

Collaboration is a true art. It can be difficult to make boundaries with other musicians and be willing to let go of control.

DJ and rapper Ali Shaheed Muhammad experienced the difficulty of collaboration first hand as a member of the seminal hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest. After a string of successful albums, he and the group’s lead rappers Q-Tip and Phife Dawg had trouble working together.

“The only change I saw was just to see those guys’ relationship deteriorate,” Muhammad says. “Phife had a problem with me. Dude, I’m in a group with you. You’re not my dad. … That was the end of it for me. All good things must come to an end. 20 years, man, I done everything I could.”

Control and collaboration are challenging aspects of working together. You have a sense of ownership over your own creative endeavor, and you don’t want to relinquish it to someone else. However, the people you work with may be giving expertise to the project, which will benefit everyone. Allowing oneself to let go while simultaneously preserving those limits is a really crucial skill to have. This is something you learn through online music education.

Sometimes it’s important for artists to collaborate with others, and sometimes it’s not. Knowing when it’s important is great, and knowing when it’s not is even better. Approaching collaboration as an idea is something that you have to take a lot of care with. Some people are not the right collaborators because they’re too pushy, or they’re not pushy enough.

Of course you also need to right artistic partner, someone who has been successful in the past with their initiatives. It’s crucial to know how they’ve kept their jobs financially afloat. All of their skills should be in areas that you would like to have on your project but are unable to bring to it yourself. You don’t need them if you can bring people to it yourself.

When the process is incredibly intimate, we don’t require a collaborator. You don’t want to be engaged with someone when you know what you want and know it’s so personal to you that you can’t truly have someone else’s opinion on it. This is a big component of being able to say no. Setting limits with your collaboration is critical in music.

And it’s all part of a bigger picture of self-awareness. Creating limits with your colleague in terms of money contracts, how much space to take up on stage, and social media interactions are all critical considerations. You should consider your collaboration to be a marriage.

In music education, I like to discuss the concept of your band as your gang. If you’re forming a band, they are the folks you’d want to hang out with all the time. Those folks should be people you trust to walk your dog, remain in your apartment while you’re away, drive your car, and care for you when you’re sick. All of these very individual qualities are desirable in a collaborator in the music industry.

Today, we’re going to talk about the philosophy behind production. Of course, we first start with the song. The song is the reason why we’re all here. The song is the reason I have a job, and it’s also the reason why music education and music industry people such as attorneys and record company executives and so forth all have jobs. It all starts with the song.

As a producer, I oversee how that song gets arranged, finished and recorded as well the colors that accompany that song, such as the instrumentation, the emotions, and the performances. I help the artist guide that song to its proper place by finding out what the artist means, who the artist wants to speak to, and the emotional intention behind the song. The process involves having the song and the artist inform me, followed by me guiding that artist through the process of coming up with the best possible version that represents everything they want the song to represent to their public.

Producing music, records, and any sort of multimedia always starts with the song. If you ask 10 different people what a producer does, you’ll get 10 different answers because it’s so ambiguous. Every artist and every song needs a different treatment and help in different areas. Some need no help at all. Some need you to just stay out of the way and pay the bills. Others need intense help with song structure, such as songwriting, arranging, recording, and performance. The song, the artist, the artist’s audience, and the song’s goals define our role as producers.

Billboard has been around for 125 years. It started in 1894. It was focused on outdoor advertisement. That’s where the word “billboard” comes from. It moved to live entertainment, mostly carnivals and circuses. When music and vaudeville started, it began to produce sheet music. You started seeing some charts in the magazine based on the top-selling sheet music in big-city stores.

This went on until our first national chart in 1940 and continued from there. What’s kept us around so long? Any industry needs an independent voice to help spread the word, and Billboard’s been there from the inception of music. We have been tracking it and acting as an independent voice to lend legitimacy. Originally, charts were based on store-based sales. Somebody at the store would tell you what the top sellers were.

Somebody at the radio station would say, “Here are my 40 biggest songs in rank order.” There was a formula behind where they ranked, how big the store was and how big the radio station was. It was a weighted system, so a radio station in New York would be more of a voice than a station in Detroit, for example. It was the same way for retail- the bigger the store, the more weight they had. So it was really a reporting-based model with an honor system.

As with any honor system, it’s not always so honorable. Generally, it was a system that worked, because at the time there were checks and balances. It wasn’t that easy to smell out a fake, and that’s what people did. That’s why they had a position they had. In 1991, we moved to electronic monitoring of radio stations and over-the-counter sales. So when you bought a CD, they would scan it. That UPC number would click, and we would know for the first time ever exactly how many units of an album were sold in a week.

In the past, it was really speculation and the gold and platinum certifications that were accumulated over time. So that was a big change in the early ’90s, and the industry was a bit taken aback at what reality showed. What it did show was that Country was a pretty big genre, and Hip Hop was a pretty big genre. Where those titles might have struggled in the past, now we knew. All of a sudden, we had NWA albums debuting at number one and Garth Brooks albums debuting at number one.

It was a whole new world for everyone, and it made the charts much better. Over time, it’s continued to evolve in the digital landscape to where we are today, with streaming being the main mode of music consumption. Being that independent voice, lending legitimacy as to what is happening, over the past 25 years, we’ve aligned ourselves with great data partners whom we trust. This includes Nielsen music, which has tracked our sales and radio and streaming data since 1991.

We work with the industry to make sure we have the right data sets coming in. If there’s a big streaming service out there, we want them in. Thankfully, as these services started to rise, which also goes back to retail stores and radio stations, they want to be part of what we do. It adds legitimacy to their business. They know that if they’re part of the Billboard charts, then they have some cachet with the labels and the artists and managers as well.

Their business is going to be reflected in what we do. So we have a great system working, and we work hard to cultivate those relationships and to make sure that everyone feels like they’re a part of what we do. Just continuing to evolve the charts. We moved from a pure album sales chart to one that incorporates streaming in 2014, and it was pretty much the right time to do it.

It was right on the cusp of where sales were really starting to decrease and streaming services were really starting to increase their usage and their pay subscribers. Billboard is quite thankful that people still look at our charts as the standard in the industry. Record labels, artists, and managers work very hard in mining the right avenues to create noise, to do well on those charts. We hear about it every week. We’re involved from the production to promotion level, as people try to understand how the charts work, and what they can do to fare better on the lists on a week-to-week basis.

We hear from artists and management all the time, when their artists get to number one, about how happy they are, and how it means the world to them. Billboard has been around for 125 years, and the fact that we’re still standing here today. We mean so much to so many people, which is really something that we take great pride in. We’re not resting on our laurels, we’re continuing to innovate what we do. I can tell you, in the past 10 years, what we’ve done in terms of data and chart measurement has just been incredible.

That’s just due to how music consumption has changed over that time. For decades it was pretty simple. You bought a song, you bought an album, or you listened to it on the radio. Those are your only options. So it’s a pretty simple thing to do. How you bought it might have changed, and we adapted how we did that, but it was a pretty standard set of data.

Now, with streaming and social and how things continue to evolve, we’re constantly trying to evolve with the times and adjust the methodology to how people are getting their music today. We just try to be where the music consumer is, and we’ve done a really good job over the past 80 years in doing that. So we want to continue to evolve and continue to grow with the music industry, and more importantly, with the music consumer. Billboard is a big name in the history books so remember our contributions as you continue your music education.

Coming from a performance art background, I can see a lot of times how my music students aren’t really giving themselves the opportunity to work in a more conceptual or abstract direction in regards to their performances. And what I try to discuss with the students is the possibility of creating an entire world on the stage that is different than how they ever imagined it could be in the music industry.

Elements to Consider

Where does the audience sit? Are you on stage? The lighting, the stage, the costumes — all of these elements can be put together during a music performance to create a piece of art in a way that tells a much deeper story than just the songs. For example, somebody like Sia, who doesn’t want herself to be seen on stage, is really creating a new persona using collaborators, such as choreographers to create dance performances, and wild set design with crazy costumes and video.

All of this is leaning towards a more artistic context of the work. And I think it’s really important that students at least try to experiment in this direction once in their career as they continue their music education.