Making a Scene Presents

Making a Scene Presents an Interview with Todd Mack

For more than 40 years, singer-songwriter, producer, and community-builder Todd Mack has followed the road less traveled, creating a life in music that has taken him across continents, cultures, and unexpected stages. His songs have carried him far beyond the usual club and theater circuit, with performances at the famed Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents’ Club, a bomb shelter in Israel, a remote island in Fiji, an olive grove in the West Bank, and the Taichung Jazz Festival in Taiwan. Wherever he has traveled, Mack has used music as a bridge: a way to connect, listen, tell stories, and find common ground.

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Making a Scene Presents Gerry Casey's Interview with Ciarán Hodgins

Ciarán Hodgins is an emerging Irish blues and rock artist from the northwest of Ireland, fronting The Ciarán Hodgins Band, a high-energy rock and blues power trio based in Ballyshannon, County Donegal. Rooted in the electric tradition of blues-rock, the band brings together raw guitar fire, driving rhythm, and a deep respect for the music that shaped generations of Irish and international rock players.

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Making a Scene Presents an Interview with The Customers

Customers are a guitar-driven rock band originally formed in Los Angeles, California, in 1995 by songwriter and vocalist Ryan Sexton. The group’s story began when a demo of Sexton’s songs made its way to Elliot Roberts, Neil Young’s longtime manager, who was then helping launch Young’s label, Vapor Records. Roberts heard promise in the songs and asked whether Sexton could put together a band to bring the material to life. From that opportunity, Customers were born.

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Making a Scene Presents - Arrangement Before Mixing: Fix It in the Song, Not the Plugin

Welcome to the Plugin Pileup

You press Play.

The drums sound powerful. The bass sounds huge. The guitars und like a choir descending from the heavens with excellent credit.

There is only one small problem.

You cannot hear the song.

The lead vocal is buried. The bass and kick drum are wrestling in a dark basement. Three guitar parts are fighting over the same few notes. A giant keyboard pad stretches from one end of the frequency range to the other. The background singers are performing as if they have just staged a successful coup.

So you do what many home-studio producers do. You open an equalizer. Then a compressor. Then another equalizer because the first equalizer clearly did not understand the assignment. Then a stereo widener. Then a saturation plugin. Then a masking tool. Then something with a glowing tube graphic and the word “vintage” in its name.

Two hours later, the mix is louder, wider, brighter, warmer, more exciting, and somehow even harder to understand.

This is often the moment when the artist decides the problem must be a lack of expensive plugins.

It probably is not.

Many mixing problems begin before mixing. They begin while the parts are being written, chosen, performed, layered, and recorded. They begin when every instrument is given permission to play all the time. They begin when a guitar, piano, synthesizer, bass, and vocal are all placed in the same musical range. They begin when the verse is already at full power, leaving the chorus with nowhere to go except slightly louder and perhaps wearing a hat.

The hard truth is also good news. You may not need another plugin. You may need a better arrangement.

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Making a Scene Presents - How AI Can Turn One Song Into a 30-Day Marketing Plan

Your Song Is More Than One Release-Day Post

Independent artists are often told that they need more content.

More videos. More posts. More stories. More emails. More reels. More reasons to dance in front of a phone while pointing at words floating over their heads.

The pressure never stops.

The problem is not that artists have nothing to say. The problem is that most artists do not have a system for turning what they have already created into a steady flow of useful stories, fan conversations, and income opportunities.

A song may take months to write, record, mix, master, and release. Then the artist posts the cover art, drops a streaming link, asks everyone to listen, and moves on three days later because the algorithm has already developed the attention span of a caffeinated squirrel.

That is a terrible return on the time, money, and emotion that went into the music.

One song can support a full month of marketing without the artist repeating the same sales pitch thirty times. The song contains lyrics, emotions, production choices, personal stories, visual ideas, fan questions, live-performance moments, merchandise ideas, video clips, and reasons for people to join the artist’s journey.

Artificial intelligence can help uncover those pieces. It can organize them, rewrite them for different platforms, create variations, suggest visuals, draft emails, outline reels, and build a working calendar.

But AI should not become the artist.

The artist supplies the truth, personality, music, feelings, and point of view. AI helps turn that raw material into a usable plan. Think of it as a fast assistant who never gets tired, but occasionally says something ridiculous with complete confidence. You still need to be the boss.

Most important, the goal of this campaign is not simply to create thirty days of social media activity. Social media should be the doorway. The artist’s own website, email list, store, fan community, and permission-based fan system should be the destination.

A like is nice. A direct relationship is better.

A view may disappear into a platform report. An email signup, direct purchase, ticket buyer, Fan Passport follow, or membership can become part of the artist’s real business.

That is how one song starts doing more than collecting streams. It begins building the music industry middle class.

http://www.makingascene.org