Deborah Holland
Peak In The Classroom and To The RescueBy Randy Alberts
"A lovely, thoughtful voice."
- Sing Out! magazine
"A lyrical ironist to match Warren Zevon, Holland is equally gifted with melody."
- a CD Baby reviewer
"I only used Peak before to edit and master my tracks," recalls solo folk-pop-jazz-rock artist, vocalist, and producer Deborah Holland. "But after this experience on my new record, I've changed my view on what Peak's uses can be in my studio."
The experience Holland refers to is one in which Peak literally rescued a song on her latest CD release, the self-produced Bad Girl Once (Soccer Mom Now). Each non-vocal sampled instrument part in the song "Hard Times" had been drastically pitch-corrected during production and suddenly revealed previously undetected levels of distortion when it came time to mix the track. Until the album's mixer and her friend, Frankie Blue—as a last ditch effort to salvage the song—suggested experimenting with a trio of pitch correction programs, Deborah had been preparing to make the difficult decision of cutting the heartfelt song from her new CD.
"I was practically in tears because it had taken me many, many hours to get all the instrumental parts in tune and in the right locations," says Holland, who released three solo CDs prior to her new work. "Frankie saved the day by performing an audio experiment on the song. He took all the original, unedited samples and tried pitch adjusting each in three different audio programs to eliminate or at least lessen the distortion. The other two programs he tried barely improved the sound at all. But when he tried Peak, the distortion was completely gone! We were both blown away by how much better the quality of the samples were, as well, after processing them in Peak."
Holland and Blue also used Peak to VSO the tempo of the song "The Violin Song" and to rescue some other pitch-corrected instrument samples on the song "Waiting For The Fire," as well.
"Once we knew how well Peak worked," she adds, "we'd just pull it up if there was ever again any problem in the audio quality."
Where Peggy & Johnny Meet
Holland's dynamic, engaging voice and edgy songwriting have been described as "somewhere between Johnny Rotten and Peggy Lee." One visit to her website's lyrics and MP3 songs pages prove the accuracy of that critique. Her songs on Bad Girl Once somehow describe vividly the very fine line between her earlier days living a Kerouac-esque rock 'n roll lifestyle and today's role as a responsible soccer mom and full-time tenured professor of commercial music at Cal State Los Angeles. Between the coursework and lectures, her kids' lives, and a son's violin lessons she somehow finds time to write all her songs and lyrics, produce and help engineer all her tracks, and tour in support of her latest solo releases. But Deborah—the vocalist and co-songwriter with Stewart Copeland's and Stanley Clarke's seminal alternative pop-fusion trio Animal Logic in the late '80s—is the first to assert her inspirational props where props are due.
"My work in Animal Logic was crucial to who I am today," credits Holland. "Stewart and Stanley gave me the confidence to trust who I am as an artist. I'm a better songwriter, vocalist, performer, and producer today thanks to them—in fact, I doubt I'd be doing these records at all if it weren't for my experience in Animal Logic. I was able to work with some of the finest musicians, engineers, producers, and mixers in the world on those albums, and I soaked it all up."
Holland, who has also recorded duets with Jackson Browne and Glen Phillips of Toad the Wet Sprocket, says she incorporates now every bit of songwriting, singing, and production inspiration she received during her years working with Copeland and Clarke to her songs and recordings today.
"Stewart had a very particular process of overdubbing my harmonies that I still use today. He'd have me singing notes that, in theory, shouldn't have worked at all, but did. It's a very intuitive approach, not the traditional 'sing a 3rd above' and such, and it leads to a very lush and exotic vocal sound."
Scoring and songwriting for film and television factors into this busy producer/professor/mother's average day, as well. Since the '90s Holland has done episodic scoring for Fox TV's VIP, Showtime's Out There, and numerous other scores for ABC, NBC, New Line, and IRS Media.
Packing Peak In Her Lunchbox
Holland recorded and produced the majority of Bad Girl Once at her home studio on an Apple G4 dual processor machine. Besides Peak, she also uses MOTU Digital Performer, Ableton Live, and the Ilio Entertainments' sample libraries. This new album being her first all-digital project since her last, the analog-recorded The Book of Survival in 1999, Deborah hired one of her students in the Commercial Music graduate program to help engineer and program Bad Girl Once.
"This CD was the first chance I've had to really embrace audio and music technology for my own music," says Holland. "I hired Robert [Gilliam] to help out because, between my being a full-time professor, mother, and songwriter it would've been too overwhelming for me to deal with all this fascinating technology and my creativity at the same time."
It was through a fellow teacher at Cal State, Geoff Dunbar, that Holland first discovered Peak six years ago. She then decided to buy the software and incorporate its use into the curriculum of the college's music technology programs. Students there have been learning their new craft with Peak ever since.
"BIAS helped me get started using Peak in my home studio at that time, as well," she continues. "Besides my solo CD projects, I've also used it for the production of my film and television scoring projects. I use Peak to edit and master those instrumental pieces, and to create MP3s and other audio file conversions. I have to admit I'm still an old-fashioned songwriter who sings their works-in-progress into a small portable cassette recorder, but perhaps I'll someday use Peak for that step, as well. Besides, it's getting harder and harder to find blank cassettes!"
Using Peak In The Real World
As Director of the Commercial Music Program at Cal State L.A., Holland calls upon most everything she's ever done as a musician in passing her knowledge on. Songwriting, film scoring, music business, recording techniques, and commercial arranging are a daily part of what she teaches.
"And a big emphasis on music technology, too," she points out about her coursework. "In fact, when we discovered the same distortion problems with the drastically pitch-corrected sampled instrument parts on the song 'Waiting For The Fire' as we'd experienced with the other songs, I brought that audio file into class as an assignment. I played it for the graduate program students to test them on how they would choose to cope with removing the distortion with Peak. I love giving my students these sorts of real-life studio challenges in which they have to learn to deal with problems effectively—that's where Peak shines."
Once outside the walls of Cal State and her home studio, Holland's "real life" is all about her two boys, ages 5 and 12. With all the edgy, street-wise, and life-ironic lyrics in her songs—from "stealing from a church on a Kerouac-Cassady fling" and "seeing life as a rich bitch through a homeless person's eyes" to a long-ago time when she sat on a Venice Beach bathroom sick from too much tequila—one can't help but wonder if lyrics that honest and revealing ever come up at the Holland's dinner table.
"I don't think you need a soccer-playing kid to be living the life of a 'soccer Mom'," laughs Deborah. "I'm not even sure you need to be a parent, either, to experience that lifestyle so many of us live. It's really all about the bizarreness of being—or trying to be—a responsible adult. But my lyrics especially hit home for me when one of my kids asks, 'Mommy, did those things in that song really happen to you?'"
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to hear and/or purchase Bad Girl Once (Soccer Mom Now), visit:
http://cdbaby.com/cd/deborahholland
www.deborahholland.net
www.myspace.com/deborahholland
Deborah Holland Discography
Bad Girl Once (Soccer Mom Now)
Rage On Records 2006
The Book of Survival
Gadfly Records 1999
The Panic Is On (Songs from the Great Depression)
Gadfly Records 1997
Freudian Slip
Dog and Pony Records 1994
Animal Logic II
IRS Records 1991
Animal Logic I
IRS/Virgin Records 1989