The Recording Process

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For those of you with experience in recording studios, this will be Recording 101. Some songwriters, however, might get something out of this blog. Looking back on my first two recording attempts (producing 2 albums) I can honestly say that I was not prepared for the experiences. I am sure that the recording engineers shuddered at my novice approach to making “records”. I thought it would be easy to reproduce what I play on stage because I have performed the music many times. The main difference between the two types of performances is that one is normally not being recorded and the other records every little mistake the artist makes. Garbage in, garbage out. Recording time is much too expensive not to be intimately cognizant of every word, every beat, every note.

Production notes.

Here is how I now prepare for my weekly time in studio:

  1. Make a video/ or audio recording of each song and place them in Dropbox with everyone involved having access. This would include other musicians and the engineer.
  2. Print out the lyrics to the song to include beats per minute, musical key, and chord structure. Get this info to all involved.
  3. Use the Dropbox video/audio as the “scratch” track from which the song is produced. If not, get to the studio and lay down a basic guitar and vocal scratch track that will be used as the backbone for each song.
  4. From here the process might diverge. In my current album, “Gone Too Far”, I hired a studio band to come in and in two days recorded bass, drums, and lead guitar. This recording then became the foundation for my acoustic guitar and vocals.
  5. In my second album, “Island Kind of Life”, I recorded my acoustic guitar while listening to my scratch track and then added vocals later. We recorded many of the songs with friends and family adding crowd noises like a live stage performance.
  6. I rehearsed each song on “Gone Too Far” at least 20 times with timing notes marked and harmonies highlighted in green. Transitions I marked in yellow.
  7. I noted the times on the initial recording to easily find starting points for each verse, the bridge, and the choruses. This facilitates rehearsals.

There is much more to the process, but I can cover that stuff later. My suggestion…get to work. The recording process can be daunting, but you can master it with the proper preparation. Questions?