On Making Music - MR Adam T Walton

On Making Music is a guide for original music-makers of any genre, encouraging originality and covering many different aspects of being a musical artist in 2014: songwriting, arranging, recording, getting gigs, management, making money, DIY releases etc. I'm Adam Walton, I have been making a new music show for BBC Wales since 1993. On Making Music is my high-minded attempt to give something back to the force that has thrilled me, frustrated me and fed me for the last two decades. It was driven by my experiences, both as someone who has listened to tens of thousands of demos over twenty years, hearing the same mistakes being made again and again, and as a struggling music-maker from a provincial town (Mold in North Wales). My band and I made every elementary mistake imaginable: signing bad contracts, recording the wrong songs, believing our own hype, never submitting our music to anyone... It saddens me that music-makers in 2014 are making the exact same mistakes I was making in 1994, and this is my attempt to offer advice that will help them to avoid those pitfalls, and also to inspire them. However On Making Music isn't just about my experiences, or my advice. It's informed by words of wisdom I have harvested from two decades' worth of interviews that I conducted with legendary music-makers like Black Francis (Pixies), Ray Davies (The Kinks), Jarvis Cocker, Elliott Smith, Kristin Hersh, Ian Brown, Gruff Rhys and many others. There are also a number of topic specific, exclusive interviews with some of the UK's most highly regarded, contemporary music-makers: The Joy Formidable; Charlotte Church; Future of the Left's Andrew Falkous; Welsh Music Prize winner Georgia Ruth; former Boo Radley Martin Carr; Van McCann from Catfish and the Bottlemen, et al. And sage voices from the music industry also contribute their advice: Radio 1's Huw Stephens, Stephen Bass from the highly influential and successful Moshi Moshi Records, the Turnstile management team and record label, and more. It's important to note that On Making Music is not a po-faced rulebook or a set of commandments. I believe, strongly, that the most important philosophy to encourage is one of originality, not conformity. Music has been gentrified over recent years and the 12 months it has taken to research and write On Making Music will have been entirely worthwhile if it inspires more music-makers to be themselves, to make music fearlessly and with less concern for fitting in with the expectations and demands of the media and the industry. And to have fun. That is absolutely key.