Santollas Verden #3
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Ralph er igen i Stockholm og her kan du læse om, hvordan han blandt andet er ved at indsamle penge til sin vens hospitalsindlæggelse.
Greetings from Stockholm!
I'm back in Sweden to work on RedScream, Round 2. We are selling our first ever T shirt, with half of the proceeds going to help offset James Murphy's (Death, Testament) medical costs. You can pre-order at
Something else I'm doing in Stockholm is producing an EP from the band Frantic Amber. They are a female ( with an awesome male drummer) melodic death metal band. They played Sweden Rock this year, and have been gaining a lot of attention. My girlfriend plays guitar in FA, and I offered to show her/them some things about arrangements and songwriting, and that led to producing their new EP.
When I get involved in producing a project, I start with the songs and the arrangements. A lot of bands tend to put a lot of riffs together, scream over the top, and call that a song. Well, I'm pretty sure that's not what Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Rainbow, Deep Purple, Metallica or any of the other greats did , or do now. A song, like any piece of music, should flow perfectly from the first note to the last. So we are going over each song bit by bit. We take out the parts that don't fit, shorten parts that are too long, make sure what each musician is playing fits with what everyone else is playing, and so on.
Many young bands and musicians have a very difficult time with this process. They are so emotionally attached to each little part ( especially if they wrote it), that they take it as a personal attack if someone wants to change it or delete it altogether. So in addition to being a musician, you also have to sometimes be a psychologist, a referee, a babysitter, and a diplomat. When a baby band's friends and internet fans constantly tell them " you're so awesome", and the band believes it, things become more complicated.
Getting 4-5 people to all want the same thing and go in the same direction can also be tricky. That's where the psychology comes in. Once the music is all ready to go, and the band can actually play all the parts perfectly, it's time to decide when/where/how are we gonna record. That's starts the whole team building process all over again sometimes. I can work my around a studio, but I'm not a professional recording engineer by any stretch of the imagination. I prefer to have someone who is great at the whole technical aspect handle that part. From that point on I oversee the musical part, and the performances of the musicians.
By the time my next column comes out, we should be almost finished. I'll keep the progress updated on my Facebook page facebook.com/ralphsantolla and on the RedScream page - facebook.com/redscreamofficial. See you next time!
Ralph