Let me start out today by saying, that outside of this blog, there are some very good resources available simply to help you in your quest for music success. Just to point out some of them, I have them listed to the right of this post. Within that list, I highly recommend Music Marketing [dot] Com, Producer’s Notes and Kings of A&R (just to keep up with what is happening in the music business.

So you are releasing a full length record right off the bat. Congratulations on having a large amount of solid material. Again, I would stress that you find the right songs for an album. Try to stay away from putting a collection of your best songs on it, as the record may end up being a run of 7 or 8 songs that are good together, then having 4 or 5 songs that don’t really fit. That will give the fan an excuse to buy only one or two songs from iTunes rather than buying the whole record.

Let me touch on something I had mentioned last week about categorizing the moods of your songs. Let’s just take for example that you want to put 12 songs on your album. There are 15 to choose from and you’ve got five “1’s,” five “2’s” and five “3’s.” If you were to simply say, “Hmm…I’ll just dispose of one from each category leaving an equal amount of songs to represent all the moods of the music.” I disagree. I am a fan of asymmetrical nuances in music, i.e., seven “3’s,” three “2’s” and two “1’s;” but that is my subjective opinion, aren’t they all though? What a business eh? Keep in mind that this is not science, it is based on emotively connecting yourself with your audience. That is what brings them back.

It all boils down to this. You’ve got a big pot of chili in front of you that you are about to enter into a cook-off (one of which I have won by the way…). There are certain amount ingredients/seasoning that you want to put in that pot to win the contest. The Pot of Chili is the record and the songs are the salt and pepper. Here it is though, let’s say you have your 13 songs picked. During pre-production you decide to take one song out and put another one in. Essentially, using the chili metaphor, you’re changing the entire seasoning. The bottom line is this; you want your pot of chili to win. So add the right seasonings.

Are there any records that you enjoy from first cut to the last? If so, tell me about it.