Collaboration in the Music Industry - Why Bother?

This time around we discuss all things collaboration in the music indsutry, including why we even collaborate in the first place.

We talk about other collaborations we’ve had (or still have), the advantages of widening your network and how much stuff we have to do in a day!

We look at different types of collaborations and how to mesh different skillsets together.

Hear the story of how we recorded a full symphonic work for sync in 3 mins flat (no exaggeration)...

As always, if you want to check more of our stuff, find us at www.meegan-tobin.com

#musicpodcast #composer #composerpodcast #librarymusic #productionmusic #filmmusic #filmcomposer #tvcomposer #musicindustry

Transcript

David (00:00.269)

You want intro it?

Jeff

Sure.

Jeff (00:10.424)

Hello, welcome, I'm Jeff Meegan. 

David

David Tobin.

Jeff

And thank you for joining us. We are going to talk about collaboration in the grander scheme of things and also our specific collaboration.

David (00:26.318)

Yeah, and I think we're going to touch today, I think, on why do it anyway? 

Jeff

Why? 

David

Yeah, why. And then talk about how we do it and what works and - no, let's just stick with what works. Yeah, but delve into that a little bit more. And then we're to talk about other collaborations because we're constantly collaborating with other people. 

Jeff

Everything's a collaboration.

David

So let's talk about why. Jeffrey, why do you collaborate?

Jeff (00:52.894)

Why do I collaborate? I grew up listening to all kinds of music and always had the desire of wanting to make all kinds of music. I remember sitting listening to headphones and listening to classical music or listening to Dave Brubeck or Genesis or whatever the things that inspired me when I was younger. And I wanted to make it all! And the only way that I can do that is to collaborate with other people.

So that opens up many different genres that I couldn't obviously work in. Now I can have great ideas about all these things, but I need other people to make it happen.

David

So who's your first collaborator?

Jeff

The first time I collaborated was this guy named Wally Swatley in the city. Wally is fantastic. He's a great writer, an amazing singer. This was in our early 20s. And we wrote a lot of songs together. And we got signed to an independent label and made an album. It was rough going. We just ended up going our separate ways. And then I started writing music for another company in Chicago, collaborating with the people there, the producers there. I don't know if you know about this, but they would send me their tracks or I would go to their studios and they'd give me their tracks. They had a bunch of hits. This is late 90s, mid 90s. And then I would write songs over their tracks. And then after that, I was doing, then I got involved with Heavy Hitters Music in LA and I started collaborating with the people around me, my friend John Geiss, who we've done some stuff with, Mark Presley, these were guys that I was kind of playing in a band with at the time. And we started to write music for, you know, I needed their help to play, because I'm not a guitarist. I don't do anything really well. I need, there you go. So I always need people to collaborate with to make me sound better. But I needed guitar-based stuff so I asked them to join in. So yeah, so that was writing with them and that got me to Brad Hatfield and Brad and I and then Gaye Tolan Hatfield. Brad's wife, the three of us have written a lot of stuff together through the years. I met them through Heavy Hitters. We actually won the Emmy together in 2022. We talked about that in the previous episode. And then that led me to this, you know? And so, I still collaborate with other people, but obviously this is our main collaboration. This is our full-time job. The why is all those reasons, just because I needed to be able to do different stuff and write different kinds of music. I do believe also that every time you collaborate with a new person, you double your network, so -

David

That’s interesting.

Jeff

Yeah, because everyone wants to sell their music, right? So you write a song with Brad Hatfield, now you're part of Brad's network, and he's going to try and sell that music to all his people. And that goes for anyone you work with, right? And then just in general, I think the sum of the parts are better. You get a better product.

David (04:03.506)

I agree. I think that's really important. I mean before we collaborated, I think I'd had two collaborations. Much, much less experience of it than you. What did I do? I collaborated, as I mentioned in a previous episode, I collaborated with my great friend Gil Linton. We wrote a musical together. We wrote the musical of Houdini and we wrote that first.

Jeff

So how was it, that Gil was doing lyrics and you were doing...

David

Yeah, I mean, Gil, well, it wasn't just lyrics. mean, Gil wrote the –

Jeff

Was he doing melody too?

David

No, no. But I this was a musical so there was a whole book written the book. And then we argued endlessly about the book and then, but we'd been friends for I mean, since forever. And then we rewrote that for an older age group. We had sort of 15 to 18 year olds who performed this and it was on in theatre. And so, I'd had that area of collaboration, but it wasn't with another musician. But then I did collaborate with somebody who I know that you know from Heavy Hitters. I collaborated with Crit Harmon.

Jeff

Crit!

David

Crit out of Boston. And we wrote a couple of albums we did for Heavy Hitters.

Jeff (05:21.762)

Right. Yeah, I forgot about that.

David

And this was all stuff where Crit then wrote some amazing lyrics that I wrote music for and we put a couple of albums out and that was a whole different experience because Crit's also a great musician but on that gig he was a lyricist.

Jeff

He's a great writer, absolutely.

David

So we'd done that, but then when we came together to write, it was the first time that I really thought, I put any thought into, so who does what? And how does this, how does it even work? You know, practically, and this moves us on smoothly to our collaboration. Let's talk about who does what. I mean, we can talk over the years about how that's morphed, but how does it work? If you were gonna explain it, who does what?

Jeff (06:10.03)

It depends on what kind of music we're doing certainly. If we're writing songs generally, I will write something and then ship it off to you. I will I'll top line it with lyrics and maybe just drums or a bass line and then I send it to you and then you actually make it into something. Chords, maybe you change the melody around and then-

David

Yeah, and sometimes it can be really fully formed and sometimes you've just sent me a little voice note. 

Jeff

Just a voice memo, yeah.

David

What do we do with this? And so it starts.

Jeff (06:39.478)

And then that starts. So, but everything, mean, because we produce everything so fully, that is, you know, that's the first part. The writing is actually the easiest and shortest part, I think, of the process because then we go on to, in many cases, the arranging and then orchestrating where we might work with someone else. And then there's putting the dots on the page, which I know very little about. 

David

I think you're underselling yourself I think but when you met, when we met, did you, had you ever used Sibelius? 

Jeff

Sibelius? No, no, no.

David

We should say we're talking here about a notation package for anybody that is, I imagine many, yeah, a notation program. But you'd not used any of that, but you did read music?

Jeff (07:25.006)

I read music, I understand music, but I cannot, I'm not going to sight read anything. And there's something with my vision that just the lines of the staff just doesn't work very well. So, yeah. So, but yes, if I have time to slowly go through things and I understand the music and, I can, as you know, I can tweak something very easily. But I can't create it on page. 

David

So that tends to be my area of stuff. So, once we get to the orchestration element of something, I'm an orchestrator, so that will be my end. But also, we'll tweak, I mean, you're a much more experienced lyricist than I am, but we'll still discuss lyrics and tweak lyrics. But we came from a love of song together. 

Jeff

Yeah, absolutely.

David

I think if I were talking about, I'm gonna go back a stage here because I missed something. When we talked about why collaborate, we're talking about it now but we haven't made it overt. There's a lot to do. In any production, there's just so much to do. It could be solitary if you try and do it by yourself. You're sitting for long hours, there's nobody to bounce ideas off. Some people like that. I know writers who just don't wanna do that, but that talking to somebody, having a physical conversation, I mean, we're not in the same room. 99 % of our collaboration is over the internet because of geography. But also, yeah, there's a lot to do. And if you want it to be a quality product, it's almost impossible.

Jeff

Yeah. Well, you know, I find I'm consistently amazed with your skills as far as music. mean, you have perfect pitch, right? 

David

Yeah.

Jeff

And, know, just just the way watching you arrange things and orchestrate chords. I mean, you look at, know, look at a whole orchestra and be like, OK, well, you're fiddling around with the notes and all the strings and then adding the brass and, you know, where they should sit and, you know, the voicings and that just blows my mind. And just how easily that comes to you. It's just, it's a language I don't speak. I wish I spoke and that is one of my favourite things about our collaboration.

David

It is interesting. I think you're underselling yourself because I think you do speak that language, but you don't speak it visually. Because I know that you'll listen to an orchestral chord because we work on a lot of orchestral music and you'll hear it and say, that brass isn't sitting quite right. 

Jeff

Or can we try to make the violas not right or yeah.

David (10:11.246)

You do, but you hear it. So for you, that's an aural thing. And for me, because of the way that I learn, it's aural, but it's a visual. It's a visual thing. But I think that also touches on why our collaboration is successful, is what do you want out of a collaborator? And for me, I'll start with that. I want somebody that does what I don’t. 

Jeff (10:37.229)

Don't do, absolutely.

David

Because what's the point? Absolutely. find another person who does what I do, we might have a great time, but ultimately I can't fill in the circle.

Jeff

Yeah, it's so funny because you see people when they talk about people they've collaborated with and I would sometimes think to myself, well, that's an interesting pairing because you guys do the exact same thing. So how does that work? You know.

David

And it might work because one of them might –

Jeff

It might work.

David

Well one of the things is you've got to find somebody that doesn't piss you off, and I'm still looking. But you know what I mean? It's that you're going to spend a lot of hours talking to somebody. 

Jeff

The hardest thing is to give in to someone else's ideas when you might have ideas as well. You know, relinquishing ownership in something to a collaborator is a learned skill, but the most important skill when it comes to collaborating, right?

David (11:40.534)

You should talk about that story. I'll start this off, but you should take this up. We made, I guess this would be a dozen years ago, we made a little video at each end of our, we're on, I don't know, it wasn't Zoom then, whatever it would have been. We were doing a video and we said, wouldn't it be fun if you videoed you sending something off and me opening it up and then you're doing the other thing about seeing. 

Jeff

Seeing what you do to it.

David

So tell the story.

Jeff

So yeah, so I wrote this piece of music, top lined it, wrote the lyrics and everything and then sent it off to you.

David

With some instructions on what you wanted.

Jeff

With some instructions. The crux of it is we use the wrong temp. We always have a temp like, all right, well, this is supposed to be kind of like, you know-

David

What’s a temp by the way?

Jeff

A temp is a piece of music that you're using as for inspiration, if you will.

So maybe it was like, I don't know, some Sinatra-y kind of thing, right? It was supposed to be swinging, I think. And you were thinking it was a totally different song. Like, I mean, it was a ballad. I mean, it was like apples and oranges, right? And so I sent it to you and we videotaped our expressions and it was so funny because, and I'm all proud, I'm like, wow, this is a pretty badass thing I'm gonna send him! And then-

David (13:01.326)

I was like, what the **** is this?

Jeff

And he's like literally his face is like I don't get it. It's like so... 

David

I think I slowed it down by double.

Jeff

Yeah. He sent it back to me and it was like this is this is really jacked up. This is not right. And I’m saying, what is he thinking? Yeah. So that was the one time we tried to video our process. Yeah. And it was a huge ball of flame.

David (13:29.518)

Because actually you are right. I mean taking the humour out of it for a second, actually you are dealing still with a human being and their emotional, you know, you don't want to look at something from something go –

Jeff

This is a shad, can we try something else?

David

So we're constantly, I'm constantly aware talking for myself that if you send me something and it's not working for me I need to find a way to either express that without firstly being rude or just not just putting your idea down because it's not my idea.

Jeff

Sure, sure, sure. I mean, I hope you don't struggle about that anymore and I don't think you do because I was thinking even on the we're working on a big band project right now and I know that I sent you some ideas and you were like this isn't working for me.

David

No, but I can tell you it took me more than 10 years to be comfortable to say to you I don't think this is the right idea for this project sure. Because you don't want to hurt somebody's feelings. But you I think I know in my heart when I hear something fairly instantaneously that I hear it immediately I either like it or I don't

Jeff (14:41.026)

Yes, you go, okay, yeah, this could be something.

David

And there have been times when I've taken things that I didn't particularly, they weren't hitting for me, but I thought, well, but Jeff likes it, so I'll work on it. But I still think I've never put in my best work on that because it just wasn't, and that must be the other way around. You'll hear an arrangement and think.

Jeff

Yeah, it's not doing it for me so much. Yeah, exactly. And I think, I mean, now we've been doing it for so long, I think it's a lot easier. But yes, it used to be, you know, kid gloves and, you know.

David

We should move that on then to other collaborations because we can then talk about how you deal with other collaborators and their moods but let's talk about the types of collaborations we do with other people because there are a lot. 

Just to remind you we should include both musical collaborations and collaborators with directors and producers because there are all manners. Well let's start with that. What about the language of talking to other people that...

Jeff

You mean like a producer or a director? We talked about those are collaborations where we are hired, right? As opposed to being an equal. Yeah. I think there's a difference there. Obviously, I still believe it's a collaboration, but you just don't maybe have all the power or weight that you would in just an equal thing. If someone's not paying you, you know what I mean.

David 

I think that depends on whether you've worked with them before and how honest you can be and how well you know them.

Jeff

Perhaps. Absolutely. That's true. So, I mean, with all of those relationships, think presuming that everyone gets along and we're all in it for the right reasons and want the best product, I think the hardest part is just learning each other's languages. We all hear things, we all see things, we all experience life with a different vocabulary attached to it, right? Yeah. So when someone wants to comment on a piece of music, they might use comparisons or analogies that you just don't get, right? You know, how many times have you, you know, well, it needs to be brighter or it needs to be happier or, you know, start using words that aren't musical terms to describe.

David

I don't know about you, but I definitely, try and, unless a director is also a musician, I actively want them to avoid using musical language. I don't want them to use musical, because they're, I don't want to say they're not going to use it appropriately, because it may be appropriate in their head.

Jeff

That's a very good point.

David (17:21.29)

But I've had times where we were working on a feature film and somebody said, could you make it bluesy? Now what they meant by that was sadder. It wasn't a musical analogy, but they'd used what they thought they were trying to be helpful and use musical terminology. And it definitely isn't helpful. And I'm constantly bringing that back to pacing or talk to me in film language, talk to me in, we're trying to find commonality of genre feel, of how do you how do you want it to make the audience feel? What do you want from this? How fast you want it to be? 

Jeff

It really comes down to emotions.

David

Emotion yeah. Use emotional language

Jeff (17:57.838)

Even more specifically, I think when you hit the mark on something and you're close, that's when it gets even more difficult to fine tune because that's when the language has to be even more specific. And I find that can be a lengthier process, just trying to really hone in. What are you looking for?

David

We're going to delve deeper and I think we're probably going to do a whole thing all about communication and language and those things. So let's talk about collaborations with other musicians. What about with other writers, collaborations?

Jeff

Yeah. I mean, it doesn't always work. And I think that you have to be willing to accept that, you know, that you might dip your toe in and it doesn’t, it's not feeling right. And I think in most of those, in my life, most of those times I've gotten to the end of the project or, you know, the song or whatever it is, we're working out together. And I didn't worry so much about whether it was a great product at the end. I just kind of wanted to get to the end.

Jeff

Are we finished? I've real work to do. So yeah, so you know, and I think that's okay to give yourself the space that this doesn't have to work all the time, you know.

David

What about when we're together but with another third?

Jeff

For us when we working with a third person. Okay, yes, because we've worked with so many writers. I mean, Tim Garland, Paul Clarvis. I mean, we've done, those names probably won't mean much to anyone, but they mean a lot to us, so look them up.

David

Absolutely and I think and sometimes we're writing as three writers and sometimes we're collaborating with people who are just a specialist in a certain area.

Jeff (19:50.374)

Well, even, David and I, when we do, you know, when we need a specialist, say like a big band arranger, we cut them in as a writer. We're not just, you know, it's not just as an orchestrator that we're...

David

Yeah, so there's a differential there just to be clear here that we're cutting them in in terms of how people are making their money. We're cutting them in as a writer, but their role on that, because it means that they then earn what we earn, so it's a genuine three-way thing.

But in terms of what we're asking them to do, we're not asking them to comment necessarily on the lyric or on how we've done it. And the arrangement that I'll have given them can be fairly robust. It's a robust arrangement already, but it's still asking them to do something that I couldn't. But in terms of how you collaborate with them and how that feels emotionally and processed.

Jeff

You know, I don't know that I have a lot to say about it. It's always felt very natural when we work with these other people. And I feel like the most important part in a collaboration is to let people be free to be themselves. And I almost just try and fit in where I can, you know? Yeah. Because I don't have to be the star. I just want to be a part of it, you know?

David

I think certainly dealing with other arrangers and orchestrators, I probably have more time spent with them because we'll be discussing with the arrangers and giving them a brief of specifically what we're looking for. But then also finding their language and just as human beings, how do they communicate?

Jeff (21:32.852)

Well, that's one of your skills and one of the best parts about our collaboration is that in those situations, you and I will write something and then you will take it upon yourself, which is really because it's beyond me to do it, right? Once we start talking about dots on a page, that's your area. So you work with them to pull this whole thing together, but are always so generous. I mean you play everything and ask my opinion about everything and listen to my opinion about everything.

David

That's the key.

Jeff

Absolutely. Because I know that if I said, well, this isn't working for me, you'd be like, OK, well, let's fix it. Let's do it. Yes. So that's really important.

David

But I think we should also talk about collaborations with players because I mean, it's interesting. I can't imagine how many musicians, if we began to list how many musicians we've worked with.

Jeff (22:26.944)

Hundreds and hundreds, yeah.

David

You'd be into the thousands easily of musicians once you talk start talking symphony orchestras and maybe and there's a lot of people. The interesting thing is nobody does it the same way everybody does it differently everybody talks thinks differently everybody emotionally does it differently. Do you find it easy if we work with a new musician? I mean not in a large ensemble setting, but yeah if you interact with that person particularly.

Jeff

I don't speak the music of language, the language of music. I don't speak that other one either, very well. So I'm always a little intimidated to have someone in and they start asking me questions, really specific like theory questions about how something should be done and I'm like, I don't know. So, I end up just singing it to them or. So I try and give people a lot of leeway in their performance and honestly that's why you're having a live musician playing your stuff in the first place, is to bring whatever they can bring to the music because of who they are. I mean, I think you tend to use, and I'm sure we're not the only people who do this, you tend to fall into a pattern of who you use, the guitarist you're going to call, the sax player you're going to call, or the people you're comfortable with working because you know their point of view.

David

And it could be because they're great, but it also could be because of the fact that it's easy to work with them and they’re great. So the human interaction of it. I think you are well selling yourself short personally. 

Jeff

I knew you were gonna say that!

David

Only because it doesn't matter whether you sing it to them. I don't need to tell them how to bow something. They need to know what do you want? And it doesn't matter how you tell them what you want. You get across. I've been in a room where you have indicated to a yodel or how you want them to yodel I genuinely have and he knows you don't have to be a world yodeling champion to do that. You've got across what you wanted but because you're always generous with the language and the way that you would express that to them and they don't do it you go well that was a pile of –

Jeff

Yeah, thanks for coming in.

David

But because of that, you are a producer. And because you're a producer, you can get that performance from them. But equally, a couple of weeks ago we were on a session remotely with a really world famous drummer and...but you were still, ding, you were still saying, hold on, could we just change the way that that would sound? You were singing him lines and asking him to play. He knew exactly what you wanted, but you are obviously a drummer as well, if you've not mentioned that and a percussionist. But you were able to, in a way that I wouldn't know how to say to him, could you change the sound of that snare? Could you use a different thing here? You were able to ask that in such a way that you get what you want, but also the way that you ask is personable and. 

Jeff

Well thank you very much. I know that about myself as well, and I do, thank you for saying that. I feel like the very least you should be to everyone you work with is kind and generous, and so it's just nice to use those kind of words, because I think that if there's anything, I don't even care about talent. If we walk away from any situation, I'd want people to go, yeah, know, and for both of us, you know, those guys are nice guys. I like to work with them.

David

It's incredibly important. And I'm not gonna tell a story, but we've been in situations and you'll know what I mean where we've been on sessions and people have not been that way, and I'll never work with them again. I think an impolite way of putting it is it's having a no-assholes policy. There are so many talented musicians and people that you can work with and there's no need just no need for it. And we've all been in those situations and I get it. It's stressful and and you know, there's a lot going on. But still, but still no need. And actually, I think that the other thing for me is when I'm collaborating with players, it's finding a way to get across to them directly what we want in a way that you're not then just saying, look, I'll tell you how to play your instrument. I'm not molly-coddling.

Jeff (26:59.798)

No, absolutely.

David

But equally I know you're saying you want the latitude of what they do. But they still need...

Jeff

Structure, we have to walk out with what we want.

David

Yeah, so if I were, this is gonna sound preachy now, but if I were giving guidance to somebody about, you know, when you're working with musicians, the first thing I would say is, it doesn't matter how much you prep, it won't be enough. You need to know what you want. You need to give them something. Nobody will say, that guy was an ass. He came in over prepared. It doesn't, that's not a thing. So you can give somebody, and we do, I mean we're working on a project now where we've been working with people and we're asking them to be able to play freely and solo and do things. We're still writing things out. We're still giving them something that looks professional. They get that sense that, they know what they're doing. And then we're saying, okay, here's a specific and can you give us a less specific of your own? But we always get those comments where people say, just thank you for giving us enough information to be able to give you what you need. I understand what you want. I think that's important.

Jeff

Absolutely, yeah, yeah. Especially when it comes to musicians, I think that everyone is self-conscious about, even professionals that walk in, they may be nervous, you know, it's a new situation, you may be working with new people, and I think that is the very important and challenging thing sometimes to maintain that you don't want the tension and things can very quickly get really tense when things don't start going the right way.

David

I mean especially in ensemble situations we've been in positions where the clock is ticking and there's a clock on the back of the wall and if you said to people come on this you could definitely do this better that's just not - the room would just dive.

Jeff (28:58.528)

Absolutely. Energy just gets sucked out and it just immediately gets so tense. Yeah, those are really memorable sessions when that kind of stuff happens. But they are very pleasing. And I take no credit. I'm going to name drop Andrew Sunnocks, who is probably one of the best producers we've ever worked with, if not the best, because he is just so kind and understands people and is generous. 

David

And musicians want to work for him because they know that he knows what he's talking about. We'll get him on here one day. 

Jeff

We will. 

David

It might take a little arm tweak. But I can remember one session we did with Andrew where we had written seven pieces to record with the Symphony Orchestra in three hours, which is…By the way, Audio Network, that is insane. But anyway, and we had had some time issues all the way through and we got six done and there were three minutes left. And this will go also to the preparation of working, and I'm also gonna name drop somebody else, I'm gonna name drop Jill Streater. And Jill is the person who runs a music preparation organization.

Jeff (30:11.032)

Most movies have her name on the end of it.

David

And it is an unsung job, but without Jill's help of making sure that everything on paper is pristine, it meant that we got to three minutes to go and we gave music to, I mean, there must have been 75 people.

Jeff

Yeah, it was a full orchestra. Abbey Road 2, no, Abbey Road 1.

David

It was one. And you've got three minutes and you are talking about having beautifully prepared music that where we've worked with other orchestrators as well, actually no we did that ourselves.

Jeff

But the crux of the story is-

David

You say go. They sight read it once.. Played it once because we only had three minutes and it’s three minutes long they sight read. It was perfect.

Jeff

It was beautiful. We hear it all the time.

David

We laughed. It’s used.

Jeff (31:04.078)

That's also the caliber of musicians as well.

David

Well, that's the other thing about collaborating is where possible. Yeah, work with people who know what the hell they're doing.

Jeff

So okay, so where do we go from here? 

David

Home. 

Jeff

No, is there more to talk about? Go out and collaborate with someone, you guys.

David (31:25.368)

Till next time.

David (31:34.104)

Thanks to Audio Network and Heavy Hitters for letting us use the music you can hear in this episode. All of the music was either written, produced or performed by Jeff Meegan and David Tobin.