FROM IDEA TO 2X AWARD WINNER
ONE SONG’S ROAD TO SUCCESS
Let’s dive into how producer Misha Olson of Speed of Sound and artist Dan Medeiros teamed up to craft the song “Dreams,” which won both Best Inspirational Single and Best Music Video at the 2024 Iowa Music Awards.
STARTING OUT
WHEN DID THIS SONG BEGIN FOR YOU?
Dan:
“I started recording [this song] in 2010 back in Canada. Dreams [then called “These Dreams”] was a brand new song that I had just written. I tried recording it with a producer there but couldn’t seem to get it right. Over the years of trying to record different songs with different people, I had become demoralized to making music and was ready to give up. After I moved here in 2016, I tried recording with someone here who packed up and left in the middle of the project, taking my music with them. I felt burned and started to see it as a sign that maybe I wasn’t meant to be doing this. Then, Misha and I started talking. I could talk to him about what I was trying to portray in my music and he immediately understood it. It was the first time I had felt that connection with someone I had worked with musically, so I decided to take a leap of faith and try recording just one more time.”
Misha:
“My experience with Dan (and this song) goes back to 2019, having worked with him a few times in live settings. Right before the COVID lockdowns in 2020, I experimented with some live streaming out of my old studio location, and Dan performed this song on one of those streams. This project started in 2021 when Dan came into the studio with an acoustic guitar and an idea to try to record this song. I don’t think either of us really knew what the arrangement would become, but we both shared this feeling in the pit of our stomachs that it could be so much more than what it was — we knew it could be something really amazing.”
“I could talk to him about what I was trying to portray in my music and he immediately understood it.”
“I have to trust who I’m working with. We need to have that connection, and I found that with Misha here at Speed of Sound.”
“Trusting someone with your art can be terrifying... I knew early on that this song was very special to [Dan]; I wanted to give it the attention I felt it really deserved. ”
CREATING AND ARRANGING
WHAT WAS YOUR EXPERIENCE OF THE PROCESS OF CREATING THIS TRACK?
Dan:
“It was purely organic, and that’s when you get the best out of things. Nothing was forced. We weren’t pushing to record something or mix something if we weren’t feeling it. I looked forward to every session that we had. The time I spent here was comfortable, it was relaxed, and I came out of it happy and full of hope. The process was better than I’ve ever had in my life, and I’ve worked with so many producers, I’ve been through hell and back. It was nice to actually enjoy my time working with somebody. Something that’s so personal to me - these songs - art dictates my entire life - that’s why it has to be ready. I never want to release a song that’s just a filler. Every song has to be exactly what it needs to be, and I have to trust people with that. I have to trust who I’m working with. We need to have that connection, and I found that with Misha here at Speed of Sound.”
Misha:
“Trusting someone with your art can be terrifying, and Dan was taking a leap of faith to trust me with this project. I knew early on that this song was very special to him; I wanted to give it the attention I felt it really deserved. This song took on what I felt were a few different forms as it evolved over the two-year creation process. At one point earlier on, Dan came in and re-recorded the acoustic part the song was built around, saying he wanted to readjust how it was played to leave room for other elements in the arrangement. I think the bass part that made it to the final was an amalgamation of three different people’s writing. The point that opened my eyes to see this song’s full potential was sitting down and listening through Josh Ickowitz’s drum takes. Combing through and arranging these takes really brought a new sense of energy and vitality to the song that had me eager to build out the rest of the arrangement. Vocals were recorded and re-recorded a couple times throughout the process of making this track as we adjusted how they might fit into the arrangement. Once we had guitar, bass, drums, and vocals, it made it a lot easier for me to start arranging keys and strings. That cello part after the first chorus, the sort of rise and fall, was one of my personal favorite to write, closely followed by the piano leads (which I actually put in at the very end of the project as a surprise for Dan to hear in the initial pre-master). At one point, we felt the song was exceeding the limits of our own talents, so we brought in Kathryn Fox (Strings/Vocals - Weary Ramblers) to lay down some of those sweeping violin parts [featured more prominently in the second chorus and carrying throughout the third chorus] that really add to the sense of nostalgic melancholy that, in my opinion, is really the hallmark of the song.”
Dan: “Oh god, that piano. Didn’t we pull that piano out of someone’s house and put it on a truck? It was so heavy. I was surprised by how good it sounded. It really was a great addition to the song.”
Misha: “Haha, yeah, it was a marketplace find. I still have it. Was going to get rid of it after the project but I think I might keep it now. That old upright tone really lent to the feel of the song.”
MISHA, WHAT WAS YOUR FAVORITE PART OF THIS PROCESS?
Misha: “Getting that final approval on the pre-master; when Dan listened to it and wrote back, ‘I’m in tears, this is perfect.’ It’s a feeling that’s hard to explain, but to hear that after how much time was spent crafting this track, I felt like I did something right.”
HOW THE MIX MATTERED
HOW DID THE MIXING CONTRIBUTE TO THE SONG’S SUCCESS?
Misha: “For starters, this song has a relatively dense arrangement—there are a lot of elements all going at the same time, working and flowing together, and they all had to relate to each other well, with different things having their turn in the proverbial spotlight. Choosing how those things would balance out — I knew it could make or break the final product. And then there was the decision of how the mix itself would feel. Did I want it to sound massive, modern, and huge? Or did I want things to lay back more and sort of float in a more 90’s-inspired context and let the arrangement itself give the song its size? Feeling a more laid-back route was the way to go, I made the decision early on to maintain the integrity of original performances as much as possible. The drums you hear are 100% live, the guitar you hear was all one long take, the piano was live. The vocals and strings had a bit of editing, but that’s about it. I think that decision to get things right “at the source” made a huge difference and set this mix up for success. I also feel that treating the vocals as part of the arrangement and not separate from it was a huge help to this song turning out the way it did.”
Dan: “The mixing took that raw product and turned it into something just… Again, you can have a great song, but if you don’t have a great mix, that cohesiveness that you’re trying to create just doesn’t come through. Every little thing can change the dynamics of the final product. It can come off completely different if it’s not mixed properly. Misha found that absolute perfect balance of everything — nothing got lost in the mix. Everything either helped everything else, or was there to be that up front and center piece that it needed to be. Everything got showcased in the song.”
Misha: “That was the big challenge for me. The arrangement wasn’t too heavy — it’s not like we had an entire orchestra— but we had cellos and violins and violas and bass and guitar and drums and piano. It was still fairly dense and most of everything was still going all the way through the song in some capacity. So trying to feel out the point at which an item should have the spotlight really made a massive impact on how the song turned out. Each part was packed with emotion, so the mix really blended all of those emotions together into what I think is an end product that had a personality of its own.”
MISHA, ANY ADVICE FOR OTHERS WHEN IT COMES TO MIXING?
Misha: “Remember, it’s all about the song. If you listen to the song and say ‘I don’t even hear the mix, all I hear is the song,’ then that’s an indicator that you’re on a good track.”
“Misha found that absolute perfect balance of everything — nothing got lost in the mix.”
“It’s all about the song. If you listen to the song and say ‘I don’t even hear the mix, all I hear is the song,’ then that’s an indicator that you’re on a good track.”
MASTERING
“[The mastering] was able to take what Dan and I felt was a good and balanced mix and push it that little step further to make it shine.”
“What needed to pop, popped, and everything else just had that perfect tone.”
EXPLAIN QUICKLY WHAT THE DIFFERENCE IS BETWEEN MIXNG AND MASTERING
Misha:
“Well that’s a bit of a loaded question. But in a nutshell, mixing is taking recorded and arranged elements and blending them in a way that allows you to hear the song for what it is meant to be. Mastering takes a completed mix and ultimately applies those final touches to make it shine and prepare it for distribution."
SO EXPLAIN THE IMPACT THAT THE MASTERING HAD ON THE FINAL PRODUCT
Misha:
“When it came to this song, like most of my work, I really want the mastering to take the mix and give it that extra polish to go from good to beautiful before it gets distributed. That means the mastering is just as a critical a component as the mixing itself. For this reason, I choose to partner with Mystery Room Mastering, trusting that these projects will be given the level of care and attention that they deserve. Justin [Mystery Room] was able to take what Dan and I felt was a good and balanced mix and push it that little step further to make it shine. I would describe it as the difference between a good drawing, and a beautiful photograph. Just for giggles I took my own crack at mastering this song and when I listened back to Justin’s master vs. my ‘master,’ it was night and day. Justin’s mastering took a good mix of a great song and made it amazing.”
Dan:
”The pre master mix was the most perfect mix that it could be. It was exactly how I wanted to hear everything, the levels and dynamics were what they needed to be. The master came through and it was exactly - I’ll never forget, I had my headphones on listening to it in the dark in my basement and I was in tears crying the whole song. Every little thing had me completely sobbing. I was so happy and it made me feel exactly what I wanted to feel when I heard that song. I immediately said to Misha, “That’s it, log that in, I can’t be any happier with that; it’s not possible to be happier. It took everything and made that final, finished product without ruining what we had worked so hard on in the mixing process. What needed to pop, popped, and everything else just had that perfect tone. It’s so hard to explain but when you hear it, you can feel it, and I felt everything in that song; I felt it.”
THE VIDEO
EXPLAIN THE PROCESS OF MAKING THE VIDEO
The video was months of trying to understand what I needed to visually convey to the listener; what I felt in that song, I needed to see in the video. The song was about thinking back on those fleeting moments of our past that made us who we are, however seemingly insignificant at the time. I saw myself in the moments portrayed in the video.
THE CLIPS IN THE VIDEO - WAS THAT HOME VIDEO STUFF, OR FOUND CLIPS?
Dan: “It was a combination of the two. Some of the clips are from my own life, while others are clips I saw or went searching for and said ‘I might as well be in that clip because I did exactly that as a kid, or I was there.’ I was very particular. I went through hours and hours and hours of footage, scanning and finding those little things that stood out to me as, ‘I had those exact memories’ and they made me feel the things that I felt when I wrote and recorded the song.”
SO THE VIDEO IS A PEEK INSIDE YOUR OWN LIFE
Dan: “Exactly. That was me. I never want the songs to be people listening to Dan. I want people to hear the song and say ‘That could be a song about me.’ It’s very important to present it that way.”
DISTRIBUTION AND MARKETING
EXPLAIN HOW THE DISTRIBUTION PROCESS WORKED
Dan: ”I used CD Baby for distribution for the song, and put the video on YouTube myself.”
WAS THERE A REASON YOU USED CDBABY AND NOT ANOTHER DISTRIBUTOR?
Dan: ”There was just a sense of familiarity with it for me, since I’ve used it for all of my other work over the years. All of my work is on there, so it made sense for me to stick with that.”
WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MARKET YOUR MATERIAL?
Dan: “Everything I possibly can on my own. From performances to sharing on social media, interviews on local TV stations, submitting it for radio play locally, but I’m just one person, you know? I’m looking to start submitting it across the Midwest and further, but I’m trying to grow things locally first.”
WINNING AWARDS
SO HOW DID IT FEEL TO WIN THESE AWARDS?
Dan: “It was an absolutely surreal moment! Winning the awards for Best Music Video and Best Inspirational Song felt like a dream come true. So much passion and hard work went into creating this project. To see it recognized in this way is incredibly rewarding and humbling.”
Misha: “Seeing something I had my hands in receive any kind of recognition is always a hugely validating thing that tells me I’m on track with my work. But to see a song win two awards is outright humbling. I know the second award was for music video, but the music is 50% of the video! I’m proud of Dan, and I’m proud of myself — moreover, I’m proud of what we were able to accomplish together. Bringing someone’s vision to life — that’s why I do what I do.”
WATCH THE AWARD-WINNING VIDEO AND HEAR IT FOR YOURSELF
WHAT CAN SPEED OF SOUND DO FOR YOUR PROJECT?
Want to see if we might be a good fit for your own project? Get in touch and we can chat!
Ready to dive in and get started? Schedule your first session here!