Executing Musical Concepts Well

Navigating the complex space of an abstract creative concept can be a bit tricky at times... especially if you are doing it with a group of people.

Over the last couple of days, I have been out of town producing a demo for a very talented artist I am currently working with. We went into the studio with a couple of session players and laid down bed tracks for three songs. I always find it a challenge (although an enjoyable one) to translate the abstract creative concept of a song into concrete arrangements that a session player can 'latch on to', so to speak. In the past, I have usually put together rough "sketches" of where the artist and myself feel the songs should go. I play most of the parts, edit the song and come up with a general arrangement that feels good. When we went into the studio this time, we tried diverging from these "sketches" so we could let the songs speak for themselves and allow the players to approach them with no preconceived notions. Obviously the idea here is to allow an abstract creative concept (a song) develop into a concrete musical arrangement by letting each player interpret the concept in his own unique way. I think this works well with "bands" and groups that regularly rehearse and perform together, but in a studio session with hired players... I'm starting to think, "not so much."

The problem is that all musicians approach all music with some degree of preconception about what they think it should sound like. With some genres, this works in your favor. Country music for example, has a very defined style of arrangement that good session players will automatically turn to when put on the spot to come up with something. So does blues, jazz, funk, polka, Broadway showtunes, and pretty much any other genre that sounds like something that has already been done. But, when you are going for something new, different, and unique, you really have to have a somewhat developed idea going in that supports the creative concept so that other musicians can then adopt that preconception in support of the artist's concept.

We all stand on the shoulders of giants, but sometimes the producers role is to get people onto a different set of shoulders.