(Photo taken from Twitter)

Eddie Evelyn-Hall came to Access To Music twice to audition our students for Syco Entertainment, and I had the opportunity to get an insight of that side of the music industry.

For those of you who don’t know, Syco Entertainment is a unique production company that combines TV and music, and Eddie works as a Talent Producer for them.

The likes of One Direction, Little Mix, James Arthur and Susan Boyle are just some of the many artists in the label. “But we also have people who’ve signed that haven’t come through television process, like Labrinth. We are unique in that way.”

Eddie casts for X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent, but he also helps singer-songwriters who aren’t suitable for the shows, so he works with the A&R department helping the aspiring artists develop into artists that could be signed by the label without having to go through TV process. They also give people a hand with their songwriting, “we link songwriters up with people who are new artists. So yeah, it is a talent department that casts for the TV as a forefront but also we cast for other things for the department as well”. If you think your songwriting skills could be improved, you could get in touch with them and see how it goes.

After he told me about the process and what they actually do, I had to ask the question everyone thinks when watching the live auditions - who says ‘yes’ to those acts that aren’t so suitable for winners of the show [If you know what I mean]. Well, according to Eddie the Talent Department is not responsible for the bad singing, he said they “would never put somebody forward who’s being represented by the Syco Talent Department who’s a bad singer.” Well, how do they end up there, then?

At least our students aren’t bad singers at all - Eddie enjoyed auditioning the Performance students and he thought they were fantastic. However he thought there were a few who didn’t tick the boxes as to what he’s looking for. “But in the same breath there were at least 5 or 6 people that I thought were great, and one band that were potentially very interesting.” Not all is lost, well done guys. And if you feel like giving it another try, or contacting them asking for help, they are willing to do so if your talent is amazing “we’ll just say to them ‘keep us in the loop, let me know what you’re doing.’”

As a talent producer, Eddie has to look for new artists every now and then, for the label and also to put them forward to X Factor and BGT. Bearing in mind that nowadays it’s hard to find something different, due to the fact that people have expanded the genres of music to such an extent, people end up copying each other...or, in Eddie’s opinion, being inspired. “I think that there’s a lot to be said about being confused, being copied and being inspired by. What is being original? Everything comes back around - it’s being inspired, developing, moving forward and any good artist has done that. A comedian is the perfect example of somebody who does that. Comedy is continuously moving forward, continuously pushing boundaries, it’s pushing that bar and that would never happen if nobody was inspired by someone else. You can’t go forward without going back.”

Eddie says that the way you perform is what gets his attention, and your performance begins the moment you walk in the room or on stage “the performance is everything.” So if you think that the singing is the only thing that counts, think again, and think about your song choice and your image regardless of your shape, size or form. “Some people say that Adele doesn’t have an image, in fact she has an incredible image and she looks amazing. She styled that out and she owns that. Johnny Cash famously wore black head to toe because it worked for him. The people who are alternative artists still have a strong image. Having no image is having an image itself.”

The Syco Talent Producer has seen a lot of artists like Amelia Lily and Misha B, but he finds it really hard to say who is the most proud of. Being at the right place at the right time with good feedback was all he did and it would be wrong if he took credit for it. “They’ve done it all themselves. The majority of the time, they were there, they just needed the help and the kind of meet in the middle.” So he’s proud of everyone he’s put forward and would gladly put his name behind them. He doesn‘t look for something in specific when he’s talent scouting, apart from the criteria he’s following. “Casting isn’t black and white. Talent spotting isn’t black and white. So I never stick to one thing”. It depends on the artist and if they’re ready for the next level, if they are growing as an artist, if they know where they’re going, who they want to be, how they want to sound and Syco loves working with people who know all of that.

We then went on to talk about former X Factor contestant, Tamera Foster, “she is a primary example of someone who’s talented but wasn’t ready, unfortunately. She was right to come on the X Factor because it is a development program essentially, but maybe she wasn’t ready for that type of work.”

People often mistake A&Rs as bad people who are going to be harsh with you, real divas that expect nothing but the best. Well, it isn’t like that. I observed Eddie doing the auditions and I could see that he is kind and easygoing. If I was auditioning, I would feel very relaxed once we engaged in conversation. After all, A&R people just want your best. “I would never put someone forward if I didn’t think the end goal was that they could be signed by Syco. And it’s that simple.” So, they’re just like your protectors - they mentor you and give you constructive criticism. “Yeah, massively, without a doubt. - laughs- They’re human beings and nobody should be forced to be ridiculed and we don’t do that from my talent department. We’re called talent for a reason and I think people should be supported, nurtured and helped, not ridiculed. That’s not our thing. I like to think that I’m warm and when they walk into the room they feel relaxed because that’s not me, I’m not a cold person.” Eddie is someone who is curious and genuinely interested in people and wants to know who you are, not just how you sing and perform. “I’m always curious as to what makes people tick. I grew up in a large family with music and the arts were a massive part of that.”

  Eddie was at university studying Drama and Theatre Studies when he decided he wanted to be a Talent Producer. His strength was behind the scenes spotting talent and not on stage. He doesn’t have a common talent, instead his talent is “spotting talent. Helping people, nurturing them, producing them and getting them to achieve their goal. It makes me feel really proud.”

Eddie Evelyn-Hall advises the students to work on song choice “First and foremost, song choice and confidence. Confidence is always something that lets people down. Like I said, from the moment you walk into the room you should add hit to that. So you should be confident, think about your song choice and just own it. You’ve only got one shot and that’s real cliche but you don’t want to leave there going ‘God, I wish I done better’. Also it helps me get an understanding of what type of artists you are, especially a cover, shows me how you approach that and make it your own.”

  I hope this has helped you analyse your weaknesses and how to work on them. Good luck to the ATM students who auditioned.

  Keep It Locked

A few weeks ago ATM Norwich held a development day for their students to improve their musical skills. Our task as music business students was to collect material for the college blog. We seemed to take that as some kind of challenge (probably because that's how our tutor Wendy has taught us). We stole an empty room, did some furniture removal, plastered the wall in posters, borrowed some lights and guess what... we had our own little TV studio!

We interviewed some students and did a tour of the college then we thought we should 'switch it up abit' and brought some sweets; we used these to bribe the tutors into our 'chamber' to interview them. Take some questions about development day, add a few 'fun' ones in and the results are somewhat brilliant!

Part 2 of our somewhat revealing interview with ATM Norwich tutors Alex, Dan and Ian. By the way, we will get better at this!

Gareth “Snoz” Lawrence is the drummer for heavy rock band The Blackout, and thanks to a lovely PR lady called Hayley, I was allowed to meet him for an interview before their Waterfront gig on the 19th of January. It was the first time I had conducted a serious interview with a proper well-known person, and it happened to be the drummer for one of my favourite bands. I thought I’d be far more nervous.

But Snoz walks into the room like he’s an old friend from school who simply wants a catch up and a pint. Even though all of the interview techniques I learned about years ago in college are constantly running through my head, I can’t quite relax enough to sit back on the sofa like he does. It’s Snoz from The Blackout!

“This is the first time I’ve done this,” I say, turning on the dictaphone.

“I’m gentle, honest,” replies Snoz.

The dates for The Blackout’s Final Party tour, showcasing their fourth album Start the Party for the “final” time, which is on its way around the country at the moment, were originally set for October, but towards the end of the fifth show in Manchester, vocalist Gavin Butler suffered from a hemiplegic migraine and had to leave the stage. The dates were rescheduled, giving Gavin enough time to rest, under doctor’s orders.

I go straight into some questions, firstly asking Snoz how the previous night of the tour had gone. The band played their 2009 album The Best in Town from start to finish at the Islington Academy.

“It was pretty good. It was already sold out anyway. No one brought their tickets back, which is good.” He sighs with relief, “we panicked about that.” I recall seeing post upon post from the members’ and the band’s social media pages, letting people know the situation, and how they could get refunds if they couldn’t make it to re rescheduled dates. It was almost as if the had expected a huge backlash.

“The venue said oh, we’ve got another night free if you want to do another show. We tried to make tickets as cheap as we could and just thought ‘let’s try and do something a bit special.’ We didn’t think anyone would turn up for it, but it was rad, it was wicked.”

Snoz had tweeted earlier on in the day that he had met fans in Islington show who he hadn’t seen for years, and his eyes light up as he tells me the same.

“All the kids that used to come and see us years ago have obviously got a bit older now, they got jobs and stuff, but they all came to the show last night. It was amazing.”

The band have been playing a lot of the album on this tour anyway, “but from start to finish, it was just like a nostalgia thing for a lot of people I think. Which is weird, because I feel as though we haven’t been a band that long!”

I then ask about the issue behind why the tour had to be cancelled. “Yeah,” Snoz sighs, “Since we played proper shows, you know, where people actually come and see us, we never cancelled a show. This whole tour being cancelled was gutting.

“Gavin was like, ‘ah, we’ll work it and try and see if I’ll be alright.’ Thing is we couldn’t risk it, because he’d had this thing a couple of weeks before, and obviously hadn’t rested enough. We’d done two weeks of touring and then it happened again and we were like, ‘we can’t take the risk because next time you don’t know how bad it might be.’ It broke our hearts.

“We got a motto in The Blackout, ‘if it can go wrong, then it will go wrong’.” He goes on to say that the band found the Latin translation and wanted to put it on a t-shirt. “It turns out that was wrong! If it can go wrong, it will go wrong! Lucky we didn’t put it on a t-shirt, because it would be like, ‘what does that mean? A squirrel is up a tree, and you like it?’ You know what I mean?” Snoz bashes the fake leather sofa, albeit gently, with a clenched fist. Frustration was the key word for the band in 2013, thanks to setbacks similar to that one, and ending with the tour cancellation “last year was a nightmare, and then it culminated in that.”

One biting cold February evening (February 2nd, to be precise), I braved the cold weather with as many layers as I could find in my wardrobe to watch City And Colour on the 9th date of his UK/European tour at Norwich’s LCR.

This was my first experience of the LCR as a music venue, and I was instantly taken aback by the size of what is predominantly used as a University common room. There was already a sizeable crowd in the venue, with about a dozen gathered around the front of the stage, and at least double that around the bar, as is customary for most gigs. Myself and my friends positioned ourselves centrally on the main floor and chatted until the house lights dimmed, preparing the audience for the arrival of the support act.

Due to the fact I was only aware that I would be attending the gig the night before, I did not have time to listen to the support act before the event, so I had no expectations for Hannah Georgas, who was backed by a band of 3 - a drummer, a bassist and a guitarist/keyboard player. Dressed head to toe in sombre black with disheveled red hair and natural make-up, she puts herself out there to be listened to as a musician, not to be judged as another pretty Pop girl of the music industry. Her first song ‘Elephants’ built up from a loud oscillating bass line with her haunting vocals before dropping into a full band Pop-Rock song, kicking off the evening with a bang. Her band was tightly locked in on every nuance of her playing, and although being very talented themselves, they did not overpower her fragile vocals and delicate synth parts; however, she could have definitely worked some more on incorporating them into her performance, as she seemed very shut off from them on stage. Switching between playing guitar, synth and singing alone, Miss Georgas showed how multi-talented she was with her delicately crafted songs. Despite some sound difficulties with one of her band’s vocal microphones causing some feedback, the songs still carried strong. There was an issue with starting one of the songs, so she started to ramble and came off awkward rather than the confident performer she had shown us previously. Listening to her music after the gig, I was less impressed with her studio work than her performance on that night, and definitely feel she should replace her drum machine with the live drummer she had as the music flowed better and created a stronger atmosphere with the full band. Hannah’s set was short and sweet, coming in at around half an hour and setting up the night positively.

The house lights went down and I began to anticipate the next support band, but shortly after, started to wonder if there was going to be one, as they had removed the other drum kit from the stage. My suspicions were confirmed when ‘Back To Life’ by Soul II Soul bursted through the impressive sound system, announcing the upcoming arrival of the band. Knowing that this wouldn’t be an act of a support band, the minute of the song waiting for the band to appear on stage had everyone on edge in anticipation. As Dallas Green, under the pseudonym City And Colour, and his backing band strolled on stage, there was an uproar from the crowd, which had filled in every surrounding inch of space. They took their places behind their instruments and kicked the set off with ‘The Hurry And The Harm’. I was surprised to see one band member sat at a lap steel with a Fender Rhodes to his left, which he switched effortlessly to and from between songs. Instantly, the lighting had me awestruck - it was perfectly timed and mesmerizing. My favourite technique was when a spotlight lit up behind Dallas, so all you could see was a shadow where he was stood, and then the same effect was doubled on the guitarist when he joined the song with his solo.

For the first part of the set, they barely seemed to come up for air, but a third of the set in there started to be some banter with the audience as the band left the stage to leave Dallas to do his solo set. Someone yelled out that they’d seen him at Glastonbury in 2011, and he told us about how he’d had to wait hours for his pass because, being on a smaller stage, he struggled to find someone who knew where to put him as everyone was fussing around the main acts, such as Beyonce with her “Beyonce-copter”. During his solo set there was a lot of audience communication, probably due to the fact they weren’t being drowned out by the weight of a full band, and the changed were a bit slower between songs. Dallas talked to the audience confidently and on their level brilliantly, dressed stylishly smart in hues of browns and greys that suited him beautifully. Before launching into ‘Body In A Box’, he urged the audience to get their phones out and hold them up. He then told them to put them in their pockets and leave them there for the next three minutes, stating that YouTube could do without “another crappy version of this song”. He said that he wanted to have this moment with his audience in the present, and that he wanted them to sing along so they could have this memory forever. His solo set really showed how impressive a vocalist he is, hitting all of the notes album perfect, and sometimes better.

The band returned after another 20 minutes, as enthusiastic, or more so, than before. The interaction between Dallas and his backing band was wonderful to witness - they were finely in-tune with each other and all extremely talented, representing City And Colour’s music beautifully, bringing it to life straight from the recordings. I was particularly impressed with the guitarist, whose solo’s were both melodically brilliant and technically impressive. The last part of the set seemed to zoom past, and before I knew it, we were at the encore. The audience were very demanding for their encore, and they weren’t kept waiting, nor were they disappointed when Dallas took to the stage once more alone for ‘The Girl’, which was definitely the crowd favourite for the night. The backing band joined him onstage for one last time to complete the three song encore, before taking tiny bows and leaving the stage - Dallas leaving his guitar to feedback on top of his amp. I stood for a second, the crowd being so hungry for his art that I debated with myself whether he would take to the stage for a rare second encore, but the house lights came up to announce the end of an amazing evening.

Acoustic session with Fran Davey singing Maybe One Day. Here is the lovely Fran Davey who kindly came into our pop up TV studio to let us film one of her many beautiful songs. Fran is a singer/songwriter from Felixstowe who is studying on the PM3C2 course at Access to Music.

Harry Bunting, 16, MT3

Ben Sparrow, 19, DM3

What have you been doing as part of the Development Day?

Harry: I have been making a massively dark orchestra piece! Because I didn’t like the drum loop I had.

Ben: I just started adventure time and then I put in the chords and bits of synth.

How are you finding it, fun?

B: Well, yeah. I spent some time looking at a picture of Nicolas Cage ‘cause that was what my project file was called

Are you doing the same as the other Music Tech guys? Making a part of a track and the you got to give it to somebody else?

B: Yeah, and master it as well.

And you told me that you didn’t like yours…

H: Yeah, well, the original beat was 11 and half bars long. Eleven and a quarter bars long!

B: Mine was 4!

H: It was supposed to be 8! It was supposed to be 8 bars long and I had 11 and a half bars.

How do you think this day will benefit you?

H: I’m having fun which is good.

So you came into college thinking you would be having normal lessons?

H: I had no idea what we were going to do, I was really unsure! Someone said “synth day” so I thought that would be cool.

Do you think you will benefit from this in the future? Having to do something outside of your comfort zone?

H: Yes, because I’m using Logic which is a program I never use. I normally bring my laptop.

If you could change anything about today what would you change?

H: I would keep the production of each thing in the same level. Level 3 DMs are matched with level 3 DMs. If someone might not know anything about Digital Production they might put it all out of time.

B: I’d say mix up more to be honest!

Anything else you would like to add?

B: I kind of was looking forward to trying out different types of synths on keyboards, but I think we’re doing that at the end of the day.

Interview by: Holeigh Melton and Rob Foley

1. Video interview John and Tom.

Earlier today we caught up with Jack and Billy, to find out what they thought of the activities there were involved in for Development day.  

What have you been doing as part of your development day?

J: To start off with we’ve been making a drum track and at the moment we’re making a melody. We’re switching around so we’re not always getting the same track to work on, taking one part of a track and giving it to someone else.

How are you finding the activities today?

B: It’s really nice because it puts you in a new environment and you’re kind of dropped in at the deep end almost. You’ve got no idea what you’re going to get, like a lucky dip kind of thing. It’s really refreshing.

How do you think today’s activities will benefit you?

B: It will help to broaden my horizons and help me composition wise, showing me how to do things in different ways.

J: It’s a new experience for me as I’ve never done anything like this before, giving me a new opportunity to learn. Before I’ve stuck to the tech side of things but today I’ve had a go at composing.

Interview by Rob Foley.