I Made 3 Records in 15 months: Here are 9 things I learned so you don't have to.
Melody Nicolette
452 days.
That’s the span from February 1st, 2019 to April 28th, 2020. That’s almost 15 months.
It’s weird to think about in those terms, because, when you’re a recording artist, your life is chronicled in record-release cycles. Different eras of your life are defined by the different albums you released--the visual aesthetics, inspirations, and how those frame life events, etc. Our concept of time is a little skewed, not as something linear, but as a spiral or a ripple that continuously grows out from the source.
I made 3 (three) full length albums (which I also refer to as “records” and “LP’s” interchangeably) in the span of nearly 15 (fifteen) months and that’s absolute and utter insanity to think about. It also feels like it’s absolutely nothing. It’s all a blur.
It’s sort of the relationship I have with college; I always think, “holy sh*t, I did that!” I definitely would never be able to see 2020-Melody doing anything like that. It seems less of a behemoth when you’re in the thick of it, and when you have no idea just how complex of an undertaking you’ve just embarked on. You get there, though. By the 11th hour you’re like, WHY HAVE I DONE THIS TO MYSELF, WILL IT EVER END?!
As of the time I am writing this, it's midweek. It’s been a wild week. I had a nice press release and a rejection letter in the same day. We got the news of Broadway’s closure until Labor Day and HAMILTON on Disney+ in the same day. I saw a ‘ghost’ in the window of a castle on a stormy night. I got a royalty check for three cents. I released a single. My brain is trying to avoid sad anniversary dates, because I don’t have the time carved out in the next few days allotted for crying. I am drinking my bad Maxwell House International instant coffee I pretend is working. I impatiently wait for the confirmation email that’s going to allow me to send my 5th LP, ‘The Course of Empire,’ off to the Gods of Distribution Land. I am also waist deep in the next project. Or two. Or three. Or four. Or seven. I am taking a pause from writing and rewriting and editing lyric sheets to write this instead.
I wanted to write this piece for a while, I just didn’t know how. I know OnStage has a lot of younger readers, kids who are starting out who would benefit from a piece like this: these are my mistakes, so you don’t have to make them. Not so much an excuse to talk about my work; I am actually no good at that, but I will be the first to tell you when I have WRECKED something.
I still can’t believe I released 5 full-length records in 6 years, let alone 3 in 15 months. Each of these 3 records were so vastly different from each other, not just in terms of musical style, but in the way I approached them. ‘Make Believe’ and ‘I KNOW WHAT YOU DO ON THE INTERNET’ were done over the course of 2 years; The former of which was built on metaphors and allusions, the latter of which was built on being direct and leaving little clues for people to find. ‘The Course of Empire’ was written in the span of 2 months. ‘Make Believe’ was a musical theatre covers record; ‘I KNOW WHAT YOU DO ON THE INTERNET’ was a largely analog 80’s synth pop record; ‘The Course of Empire’ is a super plugged-in, dialed-in dance record that doesn't know if it wants to be Dead Can Dance or Haddaway.
There are a lot of valuable takeaways from this experience. I think those takeaways can be applicable to everything: making records, being an actor, or just doing anything in your everyday life.
Here are some of the things I learned so you don’t have to:
1. Always continue to develop your skills in tandem with other skills. This is important.
I released my first operatic song cycle, ‘B o u d i c c a,’ in February of 2018. I then released a dance single later that month, something that I had sat on for a long time and wasn’t sure really what do with it; I had never done anything like it, and didn’t know if it was strong enough to release. It was a weird follow up to the song cycle, but it was nice to finally get it out into the wild. I couldn’t think of two bodies of work more polar opposite to come out at the same time. This juxtapose has been the theme of the last two years since.
Shortly after that, I took a break from writing music. Aside from a little help from my friend Ben Roseberry, I had written ‘B o u d i c c a’ without any formal training. While I was excited by that, I knew if I wanted to write more in that vein and really unlock the power of what I had discovered, I needed help. My longtime friend Charlotte Martin opened a voice studio soon thereafter, and I began training for the first time (yes, the first time) in preparation for my 3rd album, ‘Make Believe,’ which was a legit soprano musical theatre covers record. I wanted someone who knew more than I did to work with me, to tap into their experience. I am not arrogant about my own abilities, and I wanted to have a real foundation to be able to do things in a healthy, sustainable way; I wanted to do it the real way. Aside from just being really fun to hang out with, Charlotte is an excellent master voice teacher. I pulled her in to help me with ‘Inside Out,” and she ended up working on the whole record with me. (see #4)
During this training period (which is since on-going), I made sure to keep my other skills, my producer skills, sharp. I released and worked on several remixes (this is an EXCELLENT exercise, BTW), and worked as a producer and mixing and mastering engineer for other artists until I felt like I was ready to write again. That’s how I released two records last year. During the period of training for ‘Make Believe,’ I wrote ‘I KNOW WHAT YOU DO ON THE INTERNET.’ It was an equally intense demand of discipline. Classical training requires the however many bazillion hours, but your parameters are set on preexisting bodies of work you have to rise to the challenge to meet. Pop music also exists within certain parameters that you are required to both stay within and break out of; you have to create something familiar, yet new, comforting, yet interesting. ‘I KNOW WHAT YOU DO ON THE INTERNET’ had other micro-challenges, like getting ancient drum machines with one foot in the grave to work for one last take or getting all the tapes to line up.
4 records and 6 years into making music, I feel like ‘I KNOW WHAT YOU DO ON THE INTERNET’ was the first time I had ever really made a whole and complete consummate record.
2. Really do your homework.
During the recording process of ‘Make Believe,’ I studied every last recording of the songs I could find (including bootlegs), took notes on each and every one and graded them based on what I liked and didn’t. I sat down with the sheet music and listened to each of the recordings note for note. During the period of writing ‘Liar, Liar,’ I took a deep dive into the Vox series ‘Earworm.’ I found the synth loop in Logic and really wanted to save it for something special, and sat on it for over a year before I felt I had what I needed to have it reach its full potential. I became obsessed with the Earworm episode about the fade out in pop music. I spent weeks trying to create the perfect fade out for ‘Liar, Liar’ to give it that iconic and timeless sound. This was achieved by fading down each of the tracks individually instead of just fading out the master at the end. This created a trick for the brain where you detach yourself from track one by one, the tracks fade out from the left to right ear to really give you the sensation it's fading away from you. The fade out makes it seem like the track goes on and on forever, so you want to listen to it again and again!
3. Keep a rolodex/ cache/ post-it graveyard of ideas for later. Always.
I have ideas that I have sat on for years. I write down everything. It makes me feel like Harriet the Spy! Every interesting phrase, or idea, or descriptions of things you saw. Everything can be drawn from. Everything and everyone is your teacher. A random question from a friend can be a catalyst for an entire sound aesthetic for an entire album. My friend Will Curry asked on the off hand if I had ever considered using “the opera stuff” for electronic music, and while I had done something like that with the ‘B o u d i c c a’ song cycle, it wasn’t something I had developed enough. After a few months after being introduced to Allie X and taking serious envious notes on her catalog, the sonic palette for ‘The Course of Empire’ was formed.
4. Be as hands on as possible.
Not to sound like a completely spoiled diva princess brat, but I try to work with other people as little as possible. That is my own personal preference. Early on I learned to mix and master and record and engineer everything myself because it was not only expensive to outsource, but women get a lot of push back and crap from male studio engineers. I definitely have my core people I work with and adore, make no mistake, but teaching myself to be as in control as possible has wholly and completely shaped my sound. I know what I want, and I am not good at communicating it, so I learned how to do it myself. Not a single hand other than mine touched ‘‘B o u d i c c a,’ ‘I KNOW WHAT YOU DO ON THE INTERNET,’ or ‘The Course of Empire’ and I am incredibly proud of that.
And, you know what? It’s totally and completely okay to recognize your personal limitations and calling in reinforcements for help. Or if you know you have no hand at something, it’s perfectly okay to ask and hire someone who excels at it. Knowing that you don’t know everything and need to enlist people who are smarter than you or better at you than something is a valuable skill. Walt Disney was famous for this; if he knew he lacked in areas, he made sure to track down the best in the business to fill that void.
5. Sometimes things are just lost to the ages and you have to accept it. *Hunger Games Salute*
Right as I was finishing up ‘Make Believe,’ the last track I worked on, “Inside Out,” decided to, for whatever reason, take a dive. As in, R I P to the Logic file, would not open, refused to export anything to be used in a different session. Nothing. I had two choices: rebuild and re-record the entire thing, or just give up the ghost. I chose the latter. The cut that you hear on the record wasn’t the best take, the final take, or the take I wanted. It was the one where I just decided to dick around and have fun with it (because nothing about this album had been very fun AT ALL). It was the take that survived. And, you know what? No one knows this cut wasn’t the one I wanted but me (and, well, I guess now you do, too).
6. Sometimes, you have to have to hit Ctrl+S for the last time, and that’s it.
Sometimes, you have to accept that you have done everything that you can, and there’s nothing left for you to do. You have to know what’s right for each project. You have to know what’s right for each part of the project. You have to have faith in your own abilities, and to know when to not overcook things. Discretion is one of the most important skills to have in the creative process. You have to know when you’ve captured something special, and how to preserve that magic by walking away from it before you spoil it.
7. Be nice to yourself.
I was not nice to myself in any capacity through the recording process of ‘Make Believe’ and I regret it. I had a mission. I had a lot to prove. It had to be the best. I had to be the best. This had to be the most grandiose f*ck you to people who had treated me like I was worthless. I was absolutely brutal to myself, and spent a lot of that recording period crying. I mean crying, we’re talking about all the time. “Waitin’ for my Dearie” ended up being the track that finally broke me because of its personal relevance. Every single line of that recording is a different take, up until the 3rd verse after the bridge and to the end, which is the only single, continuous take. Record one line, cry on the floor for 20 minutes at a time. Record another line, crying for 20-35 more minutes. Every bad take you tell yourself you’re an absolute failure, etc. For many reasons, it’s no way to work. I actively regret being so hard on myself. I regret not taking time to appreciate the accomplishments because I was being so hard on myself for the minor things I deemed as absolute failures.
8. You’re not going to be happy with everything you do, and that’s okay. Someone else out there will always like it.
Sometimes demos of songs perform better than the polished cuts. You never have any idea who is going to latch onto something you do. My best performing body of work to date is ‘sweet talk, convenience & lies,’ an EP of leftover ideas. That doesn’t mean you still don’t use discretion when releasing or output. It also doesn’t mean you should ever second guess your gut on these things.
9. Believe in yourself, advocate for yourself, and stand up for your work. No matter what, you have to believe in the quality of your work.
The arts: a truly ugly, nasty and awful business. For something that generates such beautiful things, it itself is so putrid. Keyword: business. It’s less about making art and more about making money. There’s nothing precious about it. True to its smoke and mirrors form, you’ve come to believe it’s about the art itself, not the money everyone is out to make off of it. You can’t get signed to a label or cast in a show not because your music or your ability isn’t good enough, but because you don’t enough followers on Instagram. People’s mommy and daddy buy shares in their music or buy their way into a fancy university with a fancy alumni association that shoehorns their graduates into everything. Time and again we’ve seen the Powers That Be protect an abuser over someone they’ve targeted because the abuser is a “name” that will make them more money and therefore considered more “valuable.” It’s all about money. It’s frankly disgusting. Despite this, you have to continue to believe in yourself.
You have to know you can stand behind what you do. You not only have to believe in the quality of your work, but give yourself a reason to; you have to make it that caliber, as much as you possibly can. Even if you don’t land any sync licensing, or your streams aren’t in the thousands, if you know your work is good enough, that’s not going to matter. Because it’s not a matter of being “good enough” or not, it’s about what money got pumped into it or didn’t.
You have to advocate for yourself. As a woman, when the male recording engineer snidely asks you if you “even know what kind of mic that is,” you answer “Neumann U87Ai, motherf*cker.” If you’ve hired someone to do something, act like it, and make them act like it by reminding them that you are the boss. You can walk away from co-writes, keep your best lyrics for yourself. You can tell someone you don’t want to work with them anymore. You can end personal and professional relationships forever.
Most importantly, you have to maintain as much ownership and control over your work as possible, because so many people out there are going to act like the fox with the sour grapes--tell you it’s not that great, but will do anything in their power to try and take it from you, or frame taking it from you like they’re doing you a service or that you should be flattered.
I wish you all success in whatever your endeavours are, and I hope everyone is staying as happy, healthy and safe as possible. I have an EP coming out in July, so it’s back to work for me now.
“Find out who you are and do it on purpose.”~ Dolly Parton
I made a short playlist with some of the highlights of those 3 records. Happy listening! *
(*there are a couple of bad words, oops, sorrryyy)
Melody Nicolette is a coloratura operatic soprano, film composer, recording artist, freelance writer and illustrator, Internet yeller and moralist killjoy, who can be found wherever ‘@’ is a thing @lebasfondmusic. 5th full length album, ‘The Course of Empire,’ out June 8th on Cutest Kids in Town Records.