Kevin Sun

Check out this guest post on the nuts and bolts of planning, recording, designing, and releasing your debut record! It's written by my good friend, drummer, and trivia-master Curtis Nowosad, who is based in Winnipeg, Canada.             My name’s Curtis Nowosad and I'm a drummer from Winnipeg, MB, Canada. I recently released my debut album, The Skeptic & the Cynic , and Kevin asked me to write a post about what exactly it is that goes into the recording of an album and putting out your record.             Intro           In the broadest terms, you need three things: time, money, and music. No matter how much you plan, you’ll likely get run into problems that will delay the progress of your project (more on that later). For me personally, the entire process—from the decision to record to the album release—took almost one year to the day. As I star...

While in Banff, I had the opportunity to learn from tenor saxophonist Greg Tardy about some of the more practical considerations regarding the saxophonic lifestyle: namely, issues of saxophone maintenance and equipment considerations. One of the more novel things he recommended to me was switching from a neckstrap with a plastic hook to one with a metal hook; the reason he gave was that making the switch would have a subtle impact on the quality of my sound—"It makes sense: metal on metal," he told me. I actually didn't believe him at first—as most people would, I'd think—but he immediately undid the plastic hook on the saxophone and put on his metal hook, asking me to play into the horn. I definitely heard a slight difference, and Greg added that replacing my plastic thumb hook with a metal one would also contribute to an improvement in my sound. His philosophy regarding horn maintenance and decisions about equipment can be summed up simply as, "It all adds up...