The Steel Guitar Forum

Here in Holland, I work for a dayprice.
They rent me for a morning, afternoon or evening,
Also, more charge for A-sessions than for Demo-sessions.
A sessions work with the unionprices.
Johan

<SMALL>...the only "petroleum engineers" I've seen wearing a uniform were at the Hess station</SMALL>

You had me scratching my head on THAT one for a while. Apparently, I know how to spell, I just don't know which word to type. Either that, or I was uninformed about how to spell uninform.

>>> The Unofficial Photographer Of The Neighbors

If you do too much of THAT, you might get to see some people wearing a diffent kind of uniform -- like black/white stripes.



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The Unofficial Photographer of The Wilkinsons

What do you suppose a Nashville A-teamer makes per session?

When I lived in Hollywood, I had some neighbors that lived in the apartment building across from me who would do very intimate acts in their living room with the drapes open. But they were so hairy, they looked like Wookies. It was pretty scary so I had to close my blinds.

<SMALL>What do you suppose a Nashville A-teamer makes per session?</SMALL>

For the record, the number I *thought* I heard (of 4,000 to 6,000 actually -- I just said 5,000 for simplicity) was definitely referring to musicians recording for CD's that would be released on major record labels for known artists.

I still think that number being "per musician, per track" sounds high, though. Then again, I don't have any basis for comparison (other than what others have said here).

At a rate like that, you could record one track a week, and take 12 weeks vacation a year, and still make $200,000 a year.

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The Unofficial Photographer of The Wilkinsons

"What do you suppose a Nashville A-teamer makes per session?"

For major label work, these guys are double scale, or $595.00 per three hour session (plus the contribution to their health/pension fund and cartage)

<SMALL>or $595.00 per three hour session (plus the contribution to their health/pension fund and cartage)</SMALL>

How much do the *extras* end up costing?

How many songs do they usually end up getting done in a 3-hr session? Or, to put it another way, how many sessions does it normally take to complete an album? I realize there's probably a large range on that.

And the leader gets double that?

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The Unofficial Photographer of The Wilkinsons

Wow! Some of you guys must be really fabulous players!

As most of you have guessed...this is a very closely guarded secret, and the range runs the gamut from what I charge (never more than $250/session, even when I've done 6 songs!) to who knows how much. But I'm sure $5,000 is high...unless you're hiring Eric Clapton. Only the top players around here could charge $200/song. And they wouldn't do many sessions...with that rate. I don't believe in "pricing myself out of the market", so maybe this is why I get the session work that I do.

How do you know when you're charging too much? Like any other business... it's when someone else does it better and cheaper.

Hey Bobbe, Ever do a session for chickens instead of cash? I got my wife some new teeth one time for doing Mexican Trilogy.

The real money is if there is a 'back end'

Larry, LOL !
It was great... a nice little yamaha U-12 upright. With a couple of AKG mics and the invaluable placement advice from Forumites, it sounded great.
I'm still trying to figure out why he hired me for the job. When he asked me about my repertoire, I told him I only know 2 tunes; Bill Bailey, and Lush Life.

-John

One of the back-ends is the Special Payments Fund. All labels who are signatory to the union (ie all the majors) pay a percentage of their sales for records that sell more than 20,000 units into the SPF. At the end of the year, the total number of sessions on the books are divided into this fund, and there is a dollar amount determined per session. You get a check for the number of sessions played that year multiplied by the dollar amount per session. This adds up to a fair chunk for a studio player that does a lot of dates.

Another back-end is residuals on jingle dates, which can be some fairly tall coin on a national spot that airs for a good while...

David--the "extras" are the health/welfare contribution at about $40 a session/per player, plus cartage, which is generally in the $100-$200 per player for a round-trip cart (of course this money goes to the cartage company, not the player).

If everyone is double scale, there is no double for the leader.

One other interesting point is that there has to be a leader for every session (not counting the double-scale I mentioned). Soo, if you are doing an overdub by yourself, you are the leader, so it is double-scale for a one person overdub.

Oh yeah, time and a half after 1:00PM on Saturday, and double on Sunday and holidays...

Did I mention lots of paperwork for the employer...

Hope this helps.<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by John Macy on 14 August 2001 at 01:54 PM.]</p></FONT><FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by John Macy on 14 August 2001 at 01:56 PM.]</p></FONT>

The cartage doesn't always go to the cartage company, If I cart my own rack and set up, it goes to me and actually, the cartage is one way, the return is gratis.

That's right, though I believe if you cart yourself, the fee is preset by the union. In my case, everyone I use on sessions is with a cartage company, with the exception of fiddle players and guys like Jerry Douglas. I'll try and go back and look at a contract and see what it was.

I do demos in my home studio. I produce, arrange, engineer, program drums, play electric, acoustic and bass guitar, pedal and lap steel and dobro, mix, master, make copies and serve coffee. I make about minimum wage.

"and serve coffee"
French Roast or generic? Perk or drip?

Just curious! BTW, I like mine with a shot of Irish!!!!
Gary Lee

Mike, you mean you don't let Doug play the Dobro? Larry

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GO TITANS GO!!!

Out here in the "boonies", I got a
100 bucks for doing steel on one tune
last month at a brand new
studio about 30 minutes away.
If the song is <u>really lousy</u> though,
I usually charge more.<center>
<img src=http://members.localnet.com/~jsganz/Smile.gif>