The making of.....

.....my full-length English album, and my Chinese 'show-reel' seems to be taking forever.

Perhaps family and friends are wondering why making an album seems to be such an ardous process for me. I thought I'd use a blog post  (or a few) to explain what I've been up to. 

Making an album consists of the following steps:

1. Writing/editing the melody
2. Writing/editing the lyrics
3. Arranging the song
4. Recording the basic instrumental music
5. Recording the main and back up vocals
6. Overdubbing anything extra fills
7. Mixing
8. Mastering
9. Album concept creation, photo-shoots and image styling
10. Designing the covers/CD
11. Manufacturing the CDs

Yes, it's a lot of work if you are overseeing and involved in the whole process. 

For a lot of pop artists, what happens is the record company will ask for songs from different songwriters, so they can speedily get 1 from 10 different songwriters that they like. And then, they contact 3-4 arrangers and get them to arrange 2-3 songs each. This can be done in a month. Sometimes, this includes the instrumental music already(arrangers that play all instruments or program on their keyboards can do this).  Sometimes, they just arrange demos. If the songs are in demo form, then they hire studio musicians to track the real instrumental music. 

After this is done, the pop artist is involved for the first time and he/she will learn the songs, and record vocals. Then, a bunch of background singers are called in to sing background vocals. 

Once these things are done, the producer will see if anything needs to be added to the music. If not, then the whole album is sent off to be mixed by mixing engineers. And then it is mastered. Then all the photo-shoots and designing start happening. And the promotional business begins. It is a lot of work. This is why a professional produced commercial album easily costs at least RM 100,000 - RM 150,000 or in Australia it might cost $70,000 -$100,000 or so. Everyone needs to be paid. Producers, songwriters, lyricists, arrangers, session musicians, mixing engineers, mastering processes...

For singer-songwriters who are signed to record labels, they might be more involved in step 1-5, depending on how skilled the artist is at arranging and production.  However, they usually have help from the label to hire people who can speedily do the rest of the steps without too much of their involvement. 

For Charis, I am pretty much my own label for now, overseeing everything from 1-11. I definitely don't have RM 100,000. So a lot of people are doing stuff for me at a low cost, or no cost because they are my friends. But it also means my stuff is not usually first priority. They do have to eat. 

For my English songs, step 1 and 2 usually go without too much of a hitch. For my Chinese songs, many of them get stuck at step 2. My mentor has been picky about the quality of the Chinese lyrics written to my songs. I've been working with a few different lyricists and many times, drafts are sent back and forth. And many times, what is written is rejected. It's been a source of mild frustration. But then, Jeff is quite the perfectionist. If something must be done, it should be done well, according to him. 

Step 3 is usually the smoothest process for me. Right now, I'm at stage 4, 5 and 6 for my English album. Stage 5 for the Chinese show reel. 

I really hope all this effort, and waiting, and emailing and recording is going to produce something worthwhile. 

Please pray with me that I won't lose heart. That God will continually provide resources and people these projects needs. I really do want to finish this by August and not drag it out any longer. This will require the vocal producers I need to work with to free up their schedules, my lyricists to finish editing lyrics, and the engineers to edit accurately and creatively. I need to sing in Chinese in a way that is accesible yet fresh and appealing to the ears. 

Sigh.