It feels like a reality show here. We live in a house full of musicians, and are thrown surprise tasks all the time. We are carted around in fancy vans to different field trips and we are all just waiting for our professors, or maybe the producers of this show, to tell us who gets “voted off” this week. The executives are deciding which artist they want to work with for the semester. It is like we are getting paired up for the next competition.
Wednesday we went to Kelly Clarkson’s musical director, Jason Halpert’s house. We learned about what it is like to be on the road with Kelly. Next, we went to Steve Liewicke’s studio. He has turned a house into a studio, and also a place the artists can stay while recording. Awesome idea. Then we went to Toby Mac’s “EMac” studio. Then, Thursday we went to the offices of The Grammys and learned about how winners are selected and how it all works. Then to Black Birld studio. Neither EMac or Blackbird have signs on the door, and they don’t look like a studio on the outside, because they don’t need one.
This is one of the rooms at Blackbird. The walls are made up of all different lengths of wood pieces.
By Thursday night, all of us artists felt very out of the loop, because the executives had carried around confidential files since Tuesday. We knew that in the files they had all of their ratings about our music and performances, and it was a bit unnerving. They had tons of meetings discussing us and which of us they wanted to work with. Finally, late Thursday night they filled us in on which manager we will be working with. I am paired with Joe, the same guy I was paired with for the showcase on Tuesday. I think we will be a good match because we listen to the same kind of music. When we had our meeting before the showcase, i felt like he understands “the vision” I have for my music. Also, he plays a ton of instruments. Now the semester has really began.