TO PARTY OR NOT TO PARTY

May 1, 2007 12:00 PM, Kylee Swenson Remix Editor

I met a lot of really nice artists/producers/DJs/musicians at this year's Remix Hotel Miami event and collected a fair share of demo CDs/records/bios/business cards. All the people hustling to keep up in the music business reminds me of how hungry we all are to leave a musical mark on the map before our time is done. I like to see that urgency and desire from other musicians; it's admirable. Some music-industry types at labels, magazines, etc., may get tired of being constantly approached by determined artists, but just imagine if everyone had that drive and urgency. A&R guys would jump off of bridges. Fortunately for those label execs, not every artist out there has the fearlessness or ambition. But even for the driven, it sometimes seems hopeless trying to succeed like some of the special guests (Felix da Housecat, Lil Jon, Paul van Dyk) we saw talking and demonstrating music production at the Remix Hotel Miami March 22-25.

But the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and the early bird gets the worm, right? At the event, I met a handful of the people particularly moved to get to the next level. And I saw hundreds of people who were absorbed in the tutorials in the manufacturer rooms. The most determined and eager-to-learn artists — hopefully the ones with a bit of talent — are the ones who get somewhere.

I also saw thousands of people during WMC who were more concerned with showing off their new bikini and clear heels, blowing their savings on $14 drinks, doing water aerobics in the pool to blaring house music and flexing their tattooed guns. Maybe that makes the rest us a bunch of loser nerds who can't party for sh*t. And, well, sometimes that's true — for me at least. Seven times out of 10, I'll sacrifice fun for getting something done musicwise. I think my friends wonder why I like spending so much time in the dark. The reason is because I'm obsessed with my music hobby/second full-time job. And yes, I think a lot of people are having more fun than me. I'm probably aging faster than I should be, too. But that carrot is still dangling in front of me, and I can't for the life of me figure out how to stop chasing it.

We nerds are not alone: Once upon a time (and this is my personal guess), Timbaland was a nerd. Whether he was or not, the fact is, he had a dinky Casio keyboard, made beats and played in bands. He couldn't seem to get a break. What he and Missy Elliott were doing back in the early '90s was so left of mainstream hip-hop, people weren't dying to pay them $4 dollars for their beats, let alone hundreds of thousands. One of Timbaland's first production projects, for an artist named Sista, got shelved and never saw the light of day. Man, all that hard work for nothing! But it wasn't for nothing. As you'll read in this month's “Band Aid” column by producer LRoc, rejection teaches you a lot about winning. I don't have to tell you how successful Timbaland or even LRoc are (you'll see from the stories). But successful producers/artists like them should remind you that it's okay to deny doing beer bongs in favor of learning about spectral analysis and compression ratios. Just allow yourself the occasional beer so you can still have some “real” fun in the process.

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