Suzie katayama biography examples

Ostin and Waronker achieved god-level status in the s by working with self-directed singer-songwriters — keen-eyed students of musical history who could write and execute their own music with minimal production help.

Suzie katayama biography examples

In early , though, they made another savvy signing. Elliott Smith was fresh off the success of the Oscar-nominated Miss Misery, had some early recordings for his next record already in the can and was, as ever, exploding with new songs. XO , his first DreamWorks record, did very well for them, and saw Smith taking advantage of the expanded sonic possibilities afforded to him by greatly expanded budgets.

The album made use of horn and string players, plus a session drummer or two one being Joey Waronker, son of Lenny , and was recorded at some impressive facilities: Ocean Way, Sunset Sound and the Sound Factory. Studios in Portland, which Smith himself had helped to build according to Crane, Smith was extremely accomplished at mudding drywall. For the follow-up, recorded largely in , Smith abandoned restraint.

Such things do not happen to musicians who stay signed to Kill Rock Stars. It keeps you at a distance. There is, you realise after several listens, not really a chorus. According to Schnapf, he and Smith disagreed over the optimum ratio of solo-acoustic to full-band songs, with Schnapf pushing for more of the acoustic material. DreamWorks, meanwhile, wanted the record to be shorter, while Schnapf believed the only way the right balance of soft and loud could be achieved without leaving out strong material was for the record to be longer.

The finished tracklisting suggests a degree of overthinking, not to say muddled thinking, and feels like a compromise. LA is harmony-drenched rock, notable for its galumphing rhythm and closing Bangle-esque harmonies pinched from Walk Like an Egyptian. At the Lost and Found is a song I really go back and forward on. Sometimes its tinklingly repetitive piano figure sounds endearingly naive, at other times infuriatingly repetitive.

Halfway through the second verse, Smith seems to recognise the problem and drops the riff to a lower octave. I wonder if the song would work better for me if it had all been played there. Recorded at Abbey Road with Joey Waronker sitting in on drums and Sam Coomes on bass, it has a notably different energy to the other songs; it may even have had a live basic track.

On the other hand, if you have a build-up of wax in your ears, listening to those songs on repeat would be a cheap way to scrape them clean. Any fool can string random chords together. The key is how you make them live together so that they sound natural rather than arbitrary, whether through voice leading within the chords or through a melody that justifies the choice by including the strong notes of the chord, rather than floating unobtrusively on top.

In Pretty Mary K, Smith does a little of both. Posted By: octopus October 14, As with most five-year-olds enamored with Saturday morning television, Suzie Katayama was dazzled by the animated images dancing in front of her eyes, fuelling her imagination and making her laugh. A few hundred albums later, she remains fascinated. The Los Angeles-based Katayama has created a respectable niche for herself as an in-demand session cellist and touring performer, stretching her expertise between musical, television and movie projects.

Plying her trade with an 18 th century Testore cello and a Salchow bow, Katayama answers the call from recording artists, arrangers, orchestrators and producers to enliven sessions with strings. She often serves as a solo entertainer, as part of a small ensemble or sitting in an orchestra chair. All the people I work with are brilliant and I consider myself extremely fortunate.