By Chris Tanaka-Mann
“Show Some Love” is Yonge Guns’ 2018 album, but it wasn’t our first attempt at making one. 2 years ago we tried a live-off-the-floor recording in Montreal that wasn’t quite what we imagined it. We are glad we never ended up releasing those recordings not only because they weren’t a reflection of our best performance effort, but because they also weren’t a good representation of our artistic choices and journey. Here are a few tips on making your own album through the lens of Yonge Guns’ journey in making “Show Some Love”.
1.
Choosing material is difficult, even for groups that create original art. Songs that everyone in the group likes and that everyone feels they sings well are essential. It is also important that the song hasn’t already been “defined” by another group in a similar style. For instance, while Yonge Guns performs “Danny Boy” on occasion, doing this Gene Cokecroft arrangement in our album would mean setting it against the backdrop of great performances of the song in perpetuity (see: The Suntones). We took years to gather a set of songs that we feel are each defined by us; they have been arranged by or for us, and given the time needed to make each song sparkle. Decide on your songs with care, and take pride in doing things that your quartet mates love even if you don’t. Ultimately, it isn’t about any one person, it’s about the music.
2.
Once you have decided on what songs you’re producing, you have some other artistic choices to make: what will your album be titled? How will it look? Will you sell it only digitally, or also create hard copies? These artistic choices may not be at the front of your mind when you decide you want to make an album, but they are a big part of defining it.
- The title communicates something unifying about the album, and many groups go with a “self-titled” album. We talked about calling our CD “Yonge Guns 1”, “Yonge Guns”, or even just “1”, but ultimately decided against these. Unlike many barbershop quartets, we want to create our own original music. So, we titled the album after “Show Some Love”, which was composed by our bass, Reuven Grajner.
- For art on the cover, we hired a graphic artist (Kim Sison) with whom we played a long game of e-mail tennis before settling on an image we liked for our album cover. Pay your artists! Unless someone from within the group volunteers their abilities, you are likely asking an artist who will pour their creativity into visual art for you just as you do into your music. Show some love and value their art with due diligence.
- What will go on the inside? There are legal requirements, but there is plenty of room for further expression. Will you tell people about the songs? About the group? Write something funny? Fill it with pictures? Yonge Guns talked at length about all these things and decided ultimately on writing a brief piece on each song, coupled with one unifying paragraph on the album as a whole, and a picture of the four of us.
- BRANDING! Get your logo on there. If you don’t have one, make one!
3.
Recording an album takes time. If you’re lucky, like us, you found an audio engineer fairly quickly who could record you in their own space, eliminating the cost of renting a recording studio and the pressure of needing to record within a certain time frame to keep it from becoming too expensive. The last thing you want when you just need to finish that last line of a song is to find out that your time is up and you have to get out. Dylan Bell saved us that hassle.
As an artist himself, Dylan has done a cappella albums for years and not only had the setup but also the perfect set of skills for recording Yonge Guns. One of the biggest challenges Yonge Guns faces in general is finding time to schedule meeting up; adding Dylan to the mix didn’t increase our chances, but over a 4 month period, we managed to set up enough sessions to record “bed tracks”; these are recordings of all four of us singing each song together in the same room. These tracks gave us something to sing along with so that we could record individually with more synchronization. While an audio engineer can “fix” unsynchronized recordings by moving notes, that can not only affect the recording by making it sound over-produced and unnatural, but it also adds a LOT of work hours to the mixing and mastering of an album. Furthermore, a freeform ballad doesn’t keep in time with a metronome, and even our uptunes sometimes have tempo changes, meaning it wouldn’t be as simple as making a click track for us to listen to and sing along with.
After laying down the bed tracks, it was a much easier process to schedule individual recording sessions with Dylan, and each of us recorded with him in our own time; Greg finished first, then Jonah, then Reuven, and finally me. Recording individual tracks with Dylan was as simple as singing along with the “bed track” recordings coming through headphones, and then making minor adjustments as necessary. We would sing one phrase at a time, anywhere from 3 to maybe 15 or 16 takes for each phrase. This way, each one of us has the best version of every song, even though they may not have all been done in one take. It is plausible that we could perform this live even if it doesn’t happen very often, and that is part of the beauty of this whole process. So start practicing your posts, folks!
4.
I’m writing last about the legal and technical aspects of the recording process because some of them need to be addressed first. You must obtain the rights to arrange songs before you record them (actually, technically before you even arrange them you should obtain these rights, but no one is going to bust down your door and look through your arrangements unless you’re making a load of cash on them). You must obtain certain kinds of licensing (mechanical licensing is the main one) in order to be allowed to sell CDs. Licensing is the largest cost for these CDs as each individual song costs a great deal in royalties to sell. There are different ways to license your songs and we encourage you to check out www.cmrra.ca to learn more about licensing songs for recording. You also bear a legal responsibility to include any copyright information in text on the CD case or otherwise visible in some way when distributed.
Ensure that you have covered your legal bases with the artist who did your album art, the company printing your CDs, and your audio engineer. Create contracts (you can find templates online but it wouldn’t hurt to consult an expert if you know one) and make sure they are signed. You might even create a contract for the group members to sign together, even if you have complete trust in one another. Such a contract would simply be an agreement about the division of ownership rights to songs, profits, and so on. Think of it as a pre-nup for your album.
It’s just good form to also list the original composers, lyricists, and arrangers for songs, even if the copyright owner does not require it (and they typically do). Then there are folks who helped you with creating this piece of art: the audio engineer, the artist who did your album cover art, in some cases the record label, and of course the members of your group. You may also wish to thank coaches, friends, family, or other people who helped you through the process.
Funding your CD can be difficult. If you are self-funding, the group needs to have a lot of money raised; a basic, ballpark estimate for a 10-song CD could run you $8000 to $12000. This is largely based on the cost of labour (your audio engineer is your biggest ally and also working hard for you) and the licensing fees (licenses are granted on a per-copy basis and don’t come cheap). If you use a crowd-funding website like Yonge Guns did (Indiegogo) you can raise some money and make sales at the same time. Otherwise you’re looking at fronting a lot of money, regardless of how many copies you make. But if you sell 500 CDs at $20 each, you can make $10,000 handily, so depending on your costs, you may be able to make some money. And once you have “paid off” the initial costs, the only costs you continue paying for more copies are royalties and printing costs. So plan shows, perform plenty, and be present at events so you can sell your CDs when they’re finally done! Even shows where you aren’t making much in ticket sales can become valuable as places to sell your album and make extra money. And extra money means more options for continuing to create more art in the future!
“Show Some Love” has been the culmination of 5 years of artistic endeavour, a constant striving towards performance excellence. Not only do we want to be better at singing competitive barbershop, but we want to be more entertaining, more interesting, and unforgettable. For Yonge Guns, showing some love isn’t just about making beautiful music, but making music beautiful. It is making music, not just barbershop music, that unites us in passion, and to that end “Show Some Love” marks not an ending, but the beginning of what we hope will be a remarkable growth in what it means to make music together. So show some love and sing all kinds of music, and listen to all kinds too!
“Show Some Love” is available for pre-order on Bandcamp: https://yongegunsquartet.bandcamp.com/releases