Song Recording I Reach For You

“I Reach For You” is one of the songs that will always represent one of the best experiences I’ve had as a recording artist. The whole process of Song Recording that made this track come to life was meaningful and I will always cherish.

I had arrived in the US recently after being a couple of years in Colombia, I was heartbroken because I had recently broken up with my girlfriend which I loved very much, and my career as an artist which I had worked so hard in building the best I could did not reach the point I had hoped, my songs were not playing on the radio anymore, I had no sponsors, no money, and I was seriously thinking of leaving music as hobby rather than a profession. I had failed and nobody was responsible but me. So I prayed to the light that if continuing to push to make it in the music industry was my path to show me a clear sign.

That day I received an email for the advertising of a program called IDA (inspire and develop artist) thru a subscription company I had signed up for a couple of years back called Taxi. One of the famous producers that I had always dreamed of working with was Rudy Perez and through this email campaign it explained you had access to be with Rudy for seven days and with another three mentors which were muti platinum singer Jon Secada Engineer and Entrepreneur David Frangioni, Producer songwriter and performer Mark Hudson in the IDA program. When I saw the ad I am imediately felt a great desire to participate in this program because of the people who were involved and obviously because of the experience so I sent my email, information and everything that was required for the audition for the program and a couple of days later someone got back to me saying that they were looking and that I seem like someone who could participate in the program, so I took this as a positive sign very but I would need sponsor for this so I said If I can find the sponsor I’m in if not its the will of the Creator.

I called one of my friends who has been my brother in the music career he’s a genius and CEO of the company, because in order to be part of this program I would need sponsorship, so seeing as how this brother in in the music has always supported me and in life, he wanted to open the door and give me a chance to be part of this program so thanks to him, my brother Santiago, I was able to participate in this wonderful and beautiful experience to whom I will be eternally grateful.

Once everything was organized I was on my way to meet this producer I had dreamed of working with for so long which was Rudy Perez and the first day we arrived we got to meet and greet Rudy, as well as all the other wonderful mentors and participants of the program, a group of very talented young singers, performers that it felt really more of a privilege to be among so much talent and to see that we were going to be mentored for a week by these musical geniuses was a very exciting process

I had a recorded before and already had made productions for other artists, but to meet people who have been such an important part of our musical history and the way that Rudy Perez has been was really something extremely exciting, and to get to record an original song with him was even more exciting

in modern times record labels don’t work so much in developing artists they work more in the process of boosting an artist when the artist has enough recognition and that the artist proves that they have a following and that they generate sales, that people are into their music that’s what record labels do nowadays so it’s very difficult to get a seed investment from a record label, in order to do that you have to really show that as an artist you have demand from the people, and this is not something easy to do, so the IDA program was developed to show new artists how labels used to do things in a certain way and development in the past.

To be very honest the program did what it said it would do wonderfully because from the moment we got there until the moment it was finished, we felt like stars in the making, it was pure music coming out of everybody and every room, songwriting hearing ideas from great musicians, learning from entertainment lawyers, producers, so many people who gave their insight on things to help us as artists develop our careers

We came to the point of grinding and the work started. After we met the mentors who we sat down with and kind of gave them an insight of who we were as artists and what are trajectory had been, the moment came to write a song. We were given several tracks produced by the different producers who were participating in the program and in one of those folders was a track that I identified myself with which was produced by Rudy Perez. The music of the song captured me immediately and I felt it was a track that I could write on top of, so I began the process of songwriting that would later be very much improved and modified by the mentors who were assigned to work with each one of us, and in my case whose name was Willy Perez – Feria A great producer songwriter singer who really knew a lot about the music industry and who was assigned as the tour manager of the program. I learned very much from Willy in the experience of songwriting

My personal situation was that I had recently broken up with the girl I loved very much as I mentioned, she was far away and she was someone I had envisioned a future and a life with, so heartbroken as I was at the moment I had a lot of fuel to put into music so many words came to mind.
You can have all the words in the world but the people who really know and have the experience will come into the picture and help you develop a hit song with those words and to develop music that makes a song the best it can be and in my case, after I presented the initial draft to Rudy, who actually mentioned “it’s good but it’s a little boring” so working with Rudy and Willy and all the other writers Michael Leeryk, Peter Wallace, Michael C Baugh we actually developed a song that we all considered was an awesome hit.

One of the beautiful things that happened during the program is that I had the opportunity to record the song at Rudy’s home studio, so that gave me the opportunity to spend time with Rudy and to understand a little bit more of his musicality, in this sense all I can say is that when he sat down in front of the piano to play a song for us at his home he breathed in deeply and began to sing and you could see how Rudy is just a channel of beautiful music, you felt like he wasn’t even really the one who was playing it’s like a force that was flowing through him and making beautiful notes, this is a moment that I will never forget and that I tried for it to sink in my cells as much as possible because just the memory of that inspired me to become a better musician, a better singer, a better songwriter and producer performer, everything

The recording of I reach for you was an intense experience because we had been only a couple days writing the song and I was not accustomed to a lot of the melodies, I had to sing the song that I was hearing for the first time and deliver the song in record time because we had a deadline. All this was part of The IDA experience in order to feel what it was to work under the pressure of the music industry so when I was in the booth after recording most of the song and being a couple of hours in the booth recording the song, there was a phrase that was high because my voice was obviously tired because of the effort and because we had been working for days nonstop and for Rudy, so it was a little bit stressful because he’s one of the best in the world so at that moment the phrase wasn’t coming out too well and Rudy just looked at me and said “you know Daniel just sing” and when he said that the song was finished and the phrase came out beautifully.

After the song was recorded we can had the opportunity to be assisted by a fashion expert which was Rudy Perez’s daughter who gave us advice on our look, we also got the opportunity to perform for the mentors our original song with the assistance of the band which made it very exciting all this was an experience and in life things are about your experience.

Time past and I got the opportunity to record the Spanish version of “I reach for you” that was later chosen as the IDA theme song, which was also a beautiful experience where I got to work with one another amazing songwriter called Omar Sanchez who also taught me so much about songwriting that I can’t even mention and makes me so grateful. so here are the two versions of I reach for you a song written with the seed of a very intense love, tailored by the best in the industry to be a song that I know will transcend many generations to come