Getting a LOT of Session Calls again

[klothos]

There has been a serious drought for me as a session bass player for a little over ten years. I have speculated that this was because of the ease of good quality recordings at home via modern DAWs as well as the advent of VSTis, predone MIDI parts (and the cannibilization of such parts), predone loops, samples, and construction kits.

However, 2015 has all of a sudden produced a plethora of studio work jobs availability that I havent seen the like of since the 90s and I am - all of a sudden - getting a ton of calls from actual real business recording studios, all of which didnt even exist a year ago(!)

So, Im curious: Has anybody else noticed this in your area or is this just a fluke in my area? If its like this in your area, what do you think has perpetuated the demand for actual studio players?

[hFx]

Sound nice! Where is your area? What kind of jobs - ads/jingles, sessions, demos, label? Not seen any such tendencies here...

[klothos]

Central Florida.....Most of the work is coming from "older" amateur songwriters, doing one or two songs at a time. A lot of the material is decent although a bit dated sounding (80s) in both country and rock. I did one jingle. I also played bass on a series of demos for song-shopping purposes by industry professionals in the modern-gospel market. I did one album for an Independent Contemporary Gospel artist and another set of songs for an album by an area country artist. I played bass for an excellent singer/songwriter duo's album that was produced by Bruce Swedein (Grammy Winning engineer with Michael Jackson).....all but the last were 2015, the acoustic-duo last mentioned was the tail-end of last year

[hFx]

Congratulations to you, getting the chance working with legendary Bruce Swedein Maybe there is a tendency that people finally got tired of the excessive DIY and "boxed" music production solutions and want the difference real musicians can provide. Also, one job can lead to another and so on... Anyway, I hope the good trend lasts!

[klothos]

Congratulations to you, getting the chance working with legendary Bruce Swedein Maybe there is a tendency that people finally got tired of the excessive DIY and "boxed" music production solutions and want the difference real musicians can provide. Also, one job can lead to another and so on... Anyway, I hope the good trend lasts!

Thanks....Me too....its like the late 80s and 90s for me all over again

The duo project was at Bruce Swedein's studio. Meeting him was awesome enough, but I saw all his memorablia of MJ, I saw a lot of actual two-track Master tapes from that era (Missing Persons and a few others) but the highlight for me was the bass preamp: I used my Fender Jazz for these recording sessions -- the bass pre-amp I used was built by Craig Anderton and was used by a plethora of players over the years including Louis Johnson......Louis Johnson is my biggest bass influence so to actually play through the exact piece of equipment my biggest bass hero played through was a wonderful experience

[hFx]

I had the opportunity to listen to (and shake hands with) Bruce at a record engineering seminar i Stockholm in the early 90s. I really understand the pleasure to see and even use his equipment - he has many odd but successful ideas about recording! I admire him and his production much! Louis Johnson (RIP ) was a great bass player for sure. I was involved in the funk scene (guitar) over here in the early 80s and Brothers Johnson was a great inspiration!

[No Pride]

There has been a serious drought for me as a session bass player for a little over ten years. I have speculated that this was because of the ease of good quality recordings at home via modern DAWs as well as the advent of VSTis, predone MIDI parts (and the cannibilization of such parts), predone loops, samples, and construction kits.

However, 2015 has all of a sudden produced a plethora of studio work jobs availability that I havent seen the like of since the 90s and I am - all of a sudden - getting a ton of calls from actual real business recording studios, all of which didnt even exist a year ago(!)

So, Im curious: Has anybody else noticed this in your area or is this just a fluke in my area?

As far as I can tell, it's a fluke in your area. There was a time when Chicago was doing about 1/3rd of all of the county's jingles, but that time is long gone and most of the former "A list" session cats are playing broadway musicals now. I used to do some jingles, but I was never an A list guy... and it was always a short list; same guys playing on everything. To give you an idea of what a clique it was (and this was a few decades ago)... there was one day when one of the two top session guitar players was on vacation and the other one got sick. I got called for four jingle sessions in one day, and mind you, I hadn't been called for a session for two years prior. So I guess the producers remembered me after all! Once the other guys were both back, my jingle "career" disappeared again.

Central Florida.....Most of the work is coming from "older" amateur songwriters, doing one or two songs at a time.

I did a lot of that kind of stuff from the late '70s through the mid '80s. It was by far the most fun studio work I've done (outside of making my own band's album), because unlike the set-in-stone jingle sessions, I was not only allowed but counted on to provide input, as in "what do you think the guitar should do here?" More often than not, the whole band would arrange the tunes, like in the days of The Wrecking Crew and The Funk Brothers. That kind of thing rarely happens anymore; in fact I'd say I'm in the studio about 3 to 5 times a year these days.

At any rate, I think it's awesome that you're getting all this work! Enjoy the ride... and I hope it's a long one!

[trurl]

Well, we are the studio in our little pond and we don't call out for many sessions... mainly when we need country pickers, that's about it. So yeah, I'd say you're a lucky cat

[klothos]

As far as I can tell, it's a fluke in your area. There was a time when Chicago was doing about 1/3rd of all of the county's jingles, but that time is long gone and most of the former "A list" session cats are playing broadway musicals now. I used to do some jingles, but I was never an A list guy... and it was always a short list; same guys playing on everything. To give you an idea of what a clique it was (and this was a few decades ago)... there was one day when one of the two top session guitar players was on vacation and the other one got sick. I got called for four jingle sessions in one day, and mind you, I hadn't been called for a session for two years prior. So I guess the producers remembered me after all! Once the other guys were both back, my jingle "career" disappeared again.



I did a lot of that kind of stuff from the late '70s through the mid '80s. It was by far the most fun studio work I've done (outside of making my own band's album), because unlike the set-in-stone jingle sessions, I was not only allowed but counted on to provide input, as in "what do you think the guitar should do here?" More often than not, the whole band would arrange the tunes, like in the days of The Wrecking Crew and The Funk Brothers. That kind of thing rarely happens anymore; in fact I'd say I'm in the studio about 3 to 5 times a year these days.

At any rate, I think it's awesome that you're getting all this work! Enjoy the ride... and I hope it's a long one!

Well, we are the studio in our little pond and we don't call out for many sessions... mainly when we need country pickers, that's about it. So yeah, I'd say you're a lucky cat

Thats a funny but sad story, Ernie ...and, yeah, thats basically how it is: We (the core studio group) have a LOT of creative input on the songs. At Trinity Studio, the owner/engineer usually has a chord or number chart made out (or memorized and will call out the changes as I play) but a lot of the arrangements of the songs are self-telegraphing so its no big deal to knock the rhythm tracks out in a take or two --- my parts are done, theres a Keurig at this studio, and Ill hang out for a bit getting all caffinated while the rest gets done. On one occasion, I was called upon for harmonies and, although I do sing on key and can harmonize, I dont have the "prettiest" voice for recordings --- Needless to say, they havent asked for that service again

.......and I was really hoping you guys would've confirmed it wasnt just a fluke in my area. It would have made for some interesting discussions in the other forums.

Yeah, I guess Ill ride it out til it stops, but Im booked pretty solid for awhile with all these guys.

[No Pride]

Thats a funny but sad story, Ernie

I hope it didn't come off as sour grapes. As far as I can tell, every city with any sort of studio scene has a clique of a handful (or two handfuls ) of musicians that do all of the work. I can understand it from the perspective of the producers; they want people who they know and can trust musically... and once they've found some players who fit the bill, they don't want to take their chances on folks they aren't as familiar with. To be honest, I hated doing jingles for the most part (aside from the money) and my heart wasn't in it enough to pursue that line of work with any sort of dogged determination. There's often a certain type of politics required that I didn't want any part of. It's the same with musical theater gigs. It all takes a degree of musical skills, but there's not much creativity or musical personality involved in the job description and I guess I want things to be more on my own terms, given the acceptance that I'm destined to have to play some music I'm not particularly fond of if I want to make any sort of living at it. Now those songwriter demos and band projects I used to play on in studios WERE fun, but as I said, that's not happening much anymore. Still, I can't complain much; I still make a living (even if it's a somewhat meager one) playing music. When I was in my 20s, I figured my music career would be all washed up by the time I reached the age I'm at now (61) and I'm happy to say I was wrong.

[Supersonic Scientist]

I guess only slightly tangental to the topic but, for me, back in the '80's to early '90's, the GTR teaching world ended up revolving around me and a friend of mine, we were the TWO "go-to" teachers on the Jersey shore for a good 10 years. Same thing for Pit-band work, we were just about the only GTR players in the area who could sight-read with any level of proficiency, hence, a lot of calls (and good $$ to boot). Session-work was never something I pursued.