The Wrecking Crew Director Denny Tedesco On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast

The Wrecking Crew was one of the greatest group of studio musicians ever assembled. During the 60s and 70s, they played on just about every hit record, television show and movie that came out of Los Angeles, including hits by Phil Spector, The Beach Boys, Mamas and Papas, Cher, Simon and Garfunkel and many more.

Denny Tedesco is the director of the film The Wrecking Crew that documents the group's rise and fall. His father was the famed studio guitarist Tommy Tedesco, a main member of the crew.

I'm very pleased to have Denny as my guest on this week's Inner Circle Podcast to talk about the group and the film (which I encourage anyone involved in music to see).

In the intro I'll discuss the new AMP act that will make sure that producers and engineers get paid for streaming, and the latest on technologies that will help your workflow, like Thunderbolt 3 and the next step beyond touchscreens.

Remember that you can find the podcast at BobbyOInnerCircle.com, or either on iTunes or Stitcher.

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Session Musician 101

It's a good time for another book excerpt, this time from one that I've neglected on this blog - The Studio Musician's Handbook. Here's a little from chapter 9, entitled "Session Musician 101."

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YOUR MUSICALITY - Ears, Chops and Feel
Studio musicians are known for their musicality, which consists of your ears, chops, and feel, as well as your judgment. Session players have enough experience to know what to play and when to play it. They know how to best interact with the artist, other musicians, the engineer, and the producer to make the session the most efficient and fun. They have an innate feel for how to make you and your song sound great. Let’s take a look at some of the musicality attributes that you’ll need.

Your Chops
Studio musicians are expected to be creative, extremely versatile, and have a formidable skill set. They’re usually the best players in town. Overall, the session musician is playing to a recording medium where there is little or no entertaining involved. Playing live is all about entertainment and finesse gives way to the crowd and the heat of the moment. The same musician will come from a different place in the studio and will need to utilize finesse and restraint to create a different “feel” than when playing live. And there is a completely different set of challenges on a session. Live music terminates in the air and is a series of “snapshot” moments. Sessions can be seen as opportunities to create musical “building blocks” that terminate on recorded media and are meant to be frozen in time forever. That’s why session musicians fare just as well in the live idiom as everyone else. Sadly, the same cannot be said for the majority of musicians who cull most of their experience playing live.

Your Technique – Purity, Not Perfection
Successful session musicians all have an innate feel for their instrument(s). Their actual technique may not be textbook perfect, but they all have a way of sounding great when they play. Studio musicians know how to make their instruments sound “right” for the song, cue or jingle. They know just what axe to use and are capable of responding to direction in a way that yields audible results that are more than pleasing to producers’, engineers’ and artists’ ears. Session players are also remarkably consistent in that they can play a part many times over without losing the fire or feel. There’s a zone all session players strive for, where they’re hitting the note and the groove just right and are capable of sustaining that moment and repeating a performance as many times as it takes until that voice from the control says “We got it!! Excellent!”

Your Reading
Your ability to read music will determine the type of sessions you can play on. For record dates, the ability to read and transcribe lead sheets is essential, but many other sessions like jingles and television and movie scores require expert sight reading.

To illustrate the reading abilities of session players, here’s a story about the late Tommy Tedesco, one of the most recorded guitar players ever and charter member of the famed Los Angeles studio band The Wrecking Crew during the 60’s and 70’s. Tommy was playing on a Jan & Dean date when, as a joke, singer Jan Berry turned Tommy’s music upside down on the stand. The take started and Tommy proceeded to play the backwards score note for note. A frustrated Berry yanked the page off the stand and said, “You’re just showing off!”

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Traits Of A Studio Musician

In August, a book that studio bassist Paul ILL and I wrote will be published entitled "The Studio Musician's Handbook." It's an inside look at everything there is to know about being a studio musician, including how much you can make, how you become one, what it takes to become one, and what's expected of you. There's also a DVD included that takes you inside an actual Hollywood session so you can see for yourself what it's like to be a studio musician.

Here's a brief excerpt from chapter 5.

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You’ve got your first session, now how do you keep them coming? First of all, here are the traits that you find in all studio musicians.

Traits of a Studio Musician

Great Chops

Great Gear

Easy To Work With

No Ego

Takes Criticism Well

Proper Studio Etiquette

Let’s go over these one by one.

Great Chops
Studio musicians are expected to be creative, extremely versatile, and have a formidable skill set. They are usually the best musicians in town in terms of plain physical dexterity, and are able to play numerous styles convincingly. Your ability to read music will determine the type of sessions you can play on. For record dates, the ability to read and transcribe lead sheets is essential, but many other sessions like jingles and television and movie scores require expert sight reading.

To illustrate the reading abilities of session players, here’s a story about the late Tommy Tedesco, one of the most recorded guitar players ever and charter member of the famed Los Angeles studio band The Wrecking Crew during the 60’s and 70’s. Tommy was playing on a Jan & Dean date when as a joke, singer Jan Berry turned Tommy’s music upside down on the stand. The take started and Tommy proceeded to play the backwards score note for note. A frustrated Berry yanked the page off the stand and said, “You’re just showing off!”

"...the town is full of guys who play great, so that’s not even on the table. You have to find people who are doing what you want to do and connect with them, and when your shot comes, don’t screw up! It’s as simple and as cold as that."
Studio guitar player Gary Solt

"You don’t have to tell them (studio musicians) what you need, they just automatically go there. When you have to explain to someone how to make something feel better, it becomes a hard place to have it come from if you have to wrap your head around it first. As soon as you have to think about it you’re going to miss part of it anyway. But you can get there, you just have to listen and practice and always pay attention to it. For example, if I have Chad Wackerman on drums, I can tell him to lay back one more hair on the beat and he’ll know what I mean, where with younger players there’s only ahead of the beat, behind the beat, and on the beat. For advanced players there’s a hundred variations of all of those places."
Producer Frank Fitzpatrick

You can read more about The Studio Musician's Handbook on the excerpts page of my website. There's also a brief excerpt of the DVD there as well.