A Possible Star Waits for the Call

I’m thinking about giving up writing for a career in music. You see, I’ve known for 50 years or so that the only reason Sinatra got ahead as a vocalist and I didn’t were the breaks. Not the voice. But I accepted that and got into other lines of work. And over the years, I’ve run into a few million other people who were convinced that they had deprived the world of a great musical talent by becoming stockbrokers or plumbers or teachers.

An uncommon number of these people have apparently ended up in Orange County, according to two enterprising young men named Bob Emmet and Billy Purnell, who are the owners and operators of EP Productions in Huntington Beach. Emmet, 30, and Purcell, 32, have the skill, the music savvy and the equipment to tell you if you really do have talent--and what to do about it if you do. And they’re small enough that their studios aren’t intimidating and eager enough that they return telephone calls. Like the one from the Newport Beach neurosurgeon who fancied himself as a saloon singer or the Anaheim dentist’s wife who had been trained years earlier in opera but now wants to do pop, or the young Cypress mortgage banker who wrote song lyrics.

She turned out to be a find. Her name is Doreen Campbell, and she came in armed only with lyrics. Normally, Emmet and Purcell would have helped her find a composer with whom to collaborate and told her to come back with the finished product. But they found her lyrics so good that they decided to write the music themselves. The songs have won top prizes in several songwriting contests, and the partners are hopeful that they will enjoy commercial success as well.

Emmet and Purcell have both been professional musicians for more than a decade, playing with groups and doing solo piano and vocal gigs in hotels. They started EP Productions six years ago in Pico Rivera and had tough going until they moved to Huntington Beach early last year. The difference, they explain, has mostly to do with the type of clients.

“We had plenty of aspiring Hollywood types to work with, but they wanted us to give our time away,” Purcell said. “People here are willing to pay for quality service. We’ve been impressed with the professionalism in Orange County. We’re dealing with a lot of people here who decided that music wasn’t a viable career, so they made it in real estate or banking. Then they begin to wonder, and they come to us. Most of them are reasonable about their talents. We can’t perform miracles--take people without talent and turn them into stars. We can make a singer sound technically correct with our equipment, but we can’t give them soul or energy. If they have a bad ear or aren’t even close, we tell them.”

Their technical equipment looks like the cockpit of four 747s side-by-side. I didn’t understand any of the terminology. I just know that by programming what seemed like a limitless array of musical sounds--actually 64 different instruments--through a computer, they can back up singers with everything from a combo to a full orchestra. They can also “humanize” the sound. Emmet explained: “Each beat has 240 different fractions. We can program the computer to make deliberate mistakes--but nothing you can hear. Otherwise, we would have perfection that would sound like a machine.” Somehow, I found the idea of programming mistakes into a computer comforting.

But enough nuts and bolts. How does this work for people who--like me--are loaded with untapped musical talent?

“Well,” Purcell said, “people who want an assessment can mail in a tape or even sing to us over the phone, but we would much prefer that they come in.” The initial consultation is free. If there’s no hope, the partners will say so. If clients just want a tape to take home or if some talent is detected, “we’ll counsel them into a style and make a demo tape for $250 to $500.” If the demo turns out to be commercial, EP Productions will also help to market the singer or songwriter, hopefully on the EP label. (They just produced their first album.)

Thus armed, I told them--modestly--that several girls I dated in high school told me that they would rather hear me sing than Sinatra, and I felt that that talent, although latent, was simply waiting to be rediscovered. I thought I detected a slight crease between the eyes of both partners, but they said sure, they’d be glad to listen to me. We had a little trouble coming up with a song. I was all prepared with “Star Dust,” but, they said apologetically, they really didn’t know that well enough. But since I’ve committed the lyrics of about 3,000 standards from the ‘30s and ‘40s to memory, we had lots of options and finally decided on “Night and Day.”

I watched while they put a jazzy rendition into the computer--the kind of beat I do best. I’m not sure if the key was right, but I’ve never understood keys so I’ve learned to be flexible. Emmet produced both a piano and a bass from a portable keyboard, and Purcell punched in drums and some other instruments from the console. Sounded great.

Then they put me in this padded room with a microphone and gave me a headset so I could hear the music. It came across rather like a humanized Tommy Dorsey, and after one false start, I picked up the beat right on cue and ran through it without a slip. I was a little disappointed that we didn’t do the verse, too, but I didn’t say anything. I may be one of the few people in the world who knows the lyrics to the verse as well as the chorus of “Night and Day.”

I hurried back into the production room and we played the tape. I’d be the first to admit that I was a little rusty in spots; after all, it’s been a few years. I watched Emmet and Purcell for telltale signs of enthusiasm, but they have clearly learned to mask their feelings. Purcell said he thought I did a nice job--said I had a good sense of rhythm--and Emmet nodded.

I asked them if they thought I was ready to turn pro and they said, well, I probably needed some work but they’d think it over. So I told them that they should feel free to call anytime, day or night, and they said, sure, that was good to know. Then they gave me my tape, which surprised me a little, since I thought they might want to run it by some booking agents. But it’s not a real demo tape, just a little bitty one; I presume we’ll get into the real thing later. Oh yes, they did point out that in addition to discovering new talent like me, they do such things as custom-written commercial jingles, special effects, background music for film and video--”anything” Emmet said, “that goes on tape.”

They won’t have to mess around with that stuff, though, once they get me launched. Funny, they haven’t called yet, and it’s been almost a week.