What I learned from touring with Michael Jackson… and more than four decades in the music industry

Congrats to all of the Grammy Award nominees! How exciting to be recognized for your creative and musical talents. Our love of music binds us, and I love how our community of creators continues to grow and inspire others. Throughout centuries, music has been used to preserve cultural heritage and traditions. I myself have worked in the music industry for nearly forty-five years as an artist, executive producer, and producer, and I am currently a subject matter expert at Iron Mountain Entertainment Services in the art of preserving musical archives.

I’ve been fortunate to grow up with incredible musician friends - most of whom have become major artists themselves - and have completed several world tours both as a technician and musician. I’ve worked with Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Donny Osmond, Herbie Hancock, George Duke, Christopher Cross, and many others. I’ve performed on 18 world tours, played on and/or done programming for over 100 albums, and executive produced over 180 surround sound projects.

The most commonly asked question I get is,

“What’s one thing you would tell an artist starting out in the industry?”

And every time I say,

“Save your work.”

I don’t mean save it to your phone or the cloud. I mean, take a few minutes to really save and capture the metadata of your creation: your name, song title, date, what instruments were used on which track, what level the tape machine was set to, and other details.

I’ve worked in the music industry since high school. Back then, we would make demos or record our shows on cassettes. Occasionally, we would write the date or gig we performed, but we never thought the recording would be used for more than that night’s fun. Where are those songs now? Where are those tapes?

Over the years, as I began to work with major artists in the studios, sometimes I would see either the engineer or second engineer write copious notes on the track sheets and tape box. I started to notice notes about the artist, the song, and the instruments. I should have done that, and more of it. So should you.

Let’s all acknowledge that it’s difficult to take notes when the asset keeps changing on what the mixes are stored! Quad mixes were done in the 1970s; however, consumer delivery was not available to the masses and was expensive back then. In the 1980s-1990s there were new formats for recordings, digital tape machines, 8-channel ADAT, and D-88 with several other D-88s synced for multiple tracks, but labeling wasn’t always very clear. There was a big change in the 1990s when surround sound was the focus.