As many people know, American Idol is a cultural sensation. I know this first hand because I worked on the show during seasons 6-9.
What I am hoping to do is share with you insight on how American Idol works. More than anything, I am sharing with you first hand enlightenment of how a portion of the American Idol machine runs that very few people are aware of.
My employment on American Idol was working every Monday with the contestants producing, engineering and recording their vocals for the full length downloads. I was also responsible for producing, recording, editing and uploading the Idol performance show ring tones to the Fox/AT&T servers for seasons six through nine that many of you probably purchased. It's hard to predict, but during any given week of Idol I played an significant role in about 3-6 Top 10 Billboard & Itune hits every week and selected every ringtone download weekly for every Idol contestant for four seasons straight.
Now, you are unlikely to find my name associated with many of the top Ten hits or ringtones nor will you see my name when they roll the credits from the show. In TV, film and music, there is what they call "above the line" and "below the line". The big name producers are "above the line" and guys like me fell "below the line". Many others received credit for my individual professional endeavors. Not a big deal as that is just the way the industry operates and I accept that. I was comfortable to be part of the cultural experience of this TV show called American Idol. I'll get in to the details more about Idol in later blogs but for the time being I want to share with you my path that lead me to Idol because it was from this path and the experiences as a major label recording artist & subsequent producer that equipped me to work with the contestants. At the cornerstone of my experiences, my path to success isn't any different from most of the contestants that audition for Idol.
Have I sold millions of records as an artist or a producer? No. Do you know my name? Probably not. But what I do have that many of the people involved with Idol do not have is that I was a major label singer/artist, songwriter, and am a music producer, among other ventures. And, probably the most considerable part of this whole experience is that I've spent time on "the other side of the glass". What that means is that I have been in the recording studio vocal booth recording vocals for many years. I have felt what it feels like to labor in the studio singing. I know. I sucked when I experienced my first recording sessions. It's very tough. I also know what it is like to excel in the studio as, the more I sang on songs in the studio and recorded, the better I got. For the most part, artists are either a good live singer or a decent studio singer. Not many are both. I was one of the rare few that was good at both.
So, my experience is learning through trial and error. I know what it takes to write a song, record a song, sing the song in the studio, perform that song live, tour, promote, do phoner's, videos and interviews, etc. These are the reasons I related so much to the contestants and why many of them could relate to me. With the exception of being on a TV show, just about everything they were experiencing or about to experience, I had experienced already.
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