Recording music from afar

Behind the scenes, Austin's eSession.com links songwriters and top-tier musicians online

At one time, one of two things needed to happen for a recording artist to get top-tier session musicians to play on his or her album.

The songwriter needed to go to the talent, which meant going to New York or Los Angeles, Nashville or, OK, Austin, booking a session in a studio, getting the talent together and cutting the record. This involved coordinating schedules between any number of people, including the producer and the engineer. Then there was the cost of the plane ticket for the songwriter. And that was before the musicians' and studio's fees. All of this meant a big hunk of the budget for an album.

Benjamin Sklar
FOR AMERICAN-STATESMAN

(enlarge photo)

eSession.com developer Gina Fant-Saez, with her dog Wisdom at the Web site's offices in Austin, can count the book 'Pro Tools for Musicians and Songwriters' among her credentials.

2007 XL STUDIO GUIDE

• Cindy Cashdollar's ringing sound
• Singing the praises of studio sidemen
• Recording music from afar
• Central Texas recording studios

The other option was to bring the session talent to the songwriter. This involved plane tickets for the session talent, and, if you really want to get fancy, shipping the talent's equipment to the location. That's on top of session fees. This option usually ended up even pricier than the first.

Gina Fant-Saez aims to change all that. In April, after three years of development, the veteran Austin-based audio engineer launched eSession.com, a recording solutions company, Web application and talent-matching service all in one.

"(The application) is sort of landlord, agent and executive producer all at once," Fant-Saez says.

Through eSession, artists, bands, songwriters, musicians, labels, producers and engineers can work together without being restricted by time or distance. The system helps recording artists hire talent — who have profiles on the site — and aids in exchanging and storing digital files.

Fant-Saez has been getting Austin artists interested in the technological cutting edge for over a decade. After some years in Austin as a musician and engineer, she moved to New York in 1987, studying music theory at New York University and Juilliard, receiving a master's degree from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and refining her abilities as an engineer, with special emphasis on digital recording.

She returned to Austin in '97 and opened Blue World Music, the area's first ProTools studio, while still traveling to New York and Nashville to work with clients such as U2, Chris Vrenna and Nelly Furtado. Last year, Fant-Saez's book, "Pro Tools for Musicians and Songwriters," was published by Peachpit Press. When it comes to digital recording, the woman knows what she's doing.

As you might imagine, getting Austin — a town that has never exactly embraced change with a smile — to accept or even explore the possibilities of digital recording was the proverbial pulling of teeth. "It was utter hell," Fant-Saez says with a laugh. "It was like asking people to replace their cassettes with CDs. People had a way of doing things, and they didn't want to change."

She's hoping eSession will find a bigger fanbase more quickly because of the way it emphasizes autonomy, empowering musicians who have already invested in high-quality home studios.

"The industry has really changed completely in the last seven or eight years," Fant-Saez says. "Everyone has their own home studios and high-speed Internet."

Digital sessions have, of course, existed since the advent of digital recording. "Once I put T-1 lines in my studio, I could have had Don Walser sing on a Disney film track or Shawn Colvin sing on a Sting track and send it off," Fant-Saez says.

But eSession wants to take this sort of convenience a couple of steps further. Here's the basic idea: eSession contains a database of more than 600 musicians and engineers, each with at least 15 major label credits. These folks are called eTalent (musicians with less experience can also register at a slightly lower tier called eMembers who do not show up in the database unless searched for). An artist finds the eTalent they want to work with and, for a $25 fee, sends them a "Work Request" in the form of a demo or a finished track. (Work requests to eMembers are free.) The artist is essentially auditioning the work for the eTalent to let them figure out whether it's a good fit, how much time is needed, etc. (Of each paid Work Request, $10 goes to the talent member for listening; $15 goes to eSession.)

If the talent accepts the job, a monetary offer will be negotiated. Since the talent doesn't theoretically have to leave the house for this, costs can be low.

"I've had A-list talent play on songs for as low as $150 to $500," Fant-Saez says. "They know that independent artists have small budgets, and they just really want to do work."

If the offer is accepted, 50 percent is paid up front, and the artist uploads tracks to the "Song Page," which is eSession's work space. The talent members download the artist's tracks, add their music and send back a rough mix for evaluation. Once the artist is satisfied, the talent uploads the final tracks, which cannot be downloaded until the final 50 percent balance is paid. ESession takes 15 percent of what talent charges. That's pretty much it (though Fant-Saez would like to start charging a subscription fee to let artists store at eSession the massive amount of data needed for entire albums).

You might have noticed that eSession handled everything in the transaction, from talent matching to fee negotiation to file storage. "We want to be able to provide solutions for all of it," Fant-Saez says.

So how is it working out? Pat Mastelotto has played with everyone from Mr. Mister and King Crimson to XTC and the Rembrandts (see also the theme from "Friends"). He moved to Austin in 1994 and has known Fant-Saez almost as long. Mastelotto has been testing eSession since before the launch and knocked out about 20 sessions so far.

"It's a great idea," he says. "If you're nervous about calling a particular musician, it is so much easier just to scroll through there and find your hero and then send them a work request and go from there."

As a drummer, Mastelotto knows as well or better than most that over the past 20 or so years, session work became increasingly hard to come by. Synthesizers, drum machines and samplers became an integral part of the music-making landscape, taking away bread-and-butter session work left and right. With a family, touring becomes more of a burden. Frankly, eSession.com lets him work from home. And all of his drums are at his disposal.

"You hire me to do a date, it costs $500 to pack a truck with my drums and you're only going to be getting some of them," Mastelotto says. "With something like eSession, my entire palette is available to me. I can find that little cymbal with the rivets that's somewhere in my garage. I can use the leather-headed drum that's too fragile to travel. And I can do all of this to cut some guy's record in my house."

This is what Fant-Saez wants to happen, to use technology to its fullest, to get work to musicians who need it and get musicians to artists who need them.

"In theory," she says, "anybody around the world can collaborate with anyone else."

jgross@statesman.com; 912-5926