- Have a clear understanding of budget, goals, sounds you want, etc
- Make sure I also have a clear understanding of your budget, goals, sounds, etc
- Make sure understand that YOU have control over the sound of your recording
Have a clear understanding of budget, goals, sounds you want, etc
So many bands just sort of show up to record without having a clear plan of how much they want to spend. Numerous albums have started out being simple “live in the studio” type of recordings that were meant to have full band tracks recorded in just a matter of hours with minimal overdubs. Some of these recordings have been stretched out as long as 6 months with billions and millions of overdubs. It’s not necessarily a bad thing to extend out a recording, but it is always nice to have a plan from day #1.
In my experience, a live recording of a band is just as good (and maybe even better) than doing tons of massive overdubs. We can debate issues such as click tracks and such, but at the end of the day my goal is to make records that are fun to listen to. Just be aware that there is no guarantee that a recording that takes 100 or 150 hours to make will be any more fun to listen to than a record that takes 12 hours to record. It all depends on the music, the quality of musicians, etc of course. Just understand that there is no real improvement in sound quality from recording instruments separately.
If you want to really take your time to get all the performances “perfect”, I’m 100% up for it. Just understand that this is going to take exponentially more time to record. As a dude getting paid by the hour, I feel an obligation to keep costs low while at the same time making the most effective recording possible. So if you are willing to spend the bucks for extensive overdubs, I’m all for it. Just let me know ahead of time.
Also take some time to figure out what you are going for sonically. In the end, you have already made these choices when you selected your instruments and wrote your songs. However, it’s very important that you make sure your music sounds “right” before walking into the studio. It’s your job as a musician to make sure you instrument’s tone sounds exactly like what you are going for before we even talk about microphones, compression, and other engineering thingies.
Make sure I also have a clear understanding of your budget, goals, sounds, etc
I’m HUGE on communicating with the band. All recording problems stem from the engineer and the band understanding each other. In the end, I’m only trying to help you make the best record possible. It’s important that I know how much you intend to spend, the amount of time you plan on taking, and your vision of what the recording should sound like.
Before we start the recording, make sure to let me know a few albums that are similar to the type of production you want. Of course, it’s impossible to clone the sound of a given recording. (I find that we are WAY better off maxing out the music we have in front of us as opposed to trying to clone the success of others in the past. You can get a great lesson on this in Groundhog Day starring Bill Murray). It’s EXTREMELY important to me that I know what you are going for from the beginning. My engineering decisions will be greatly dependent on your goals. If I think you want a Beatles drum sound and you really want a Pantera drum sound, we’ll be in trouble. (I really screwed this up on the Mike Renick live in the studio recording!)
Make sure understand that YOU have control over the sound of your recording
If you are expecting me to “make” the sounds for you, you have another thing coming. A recording engineer is a lot more like a photographer than a graphic designer. My job is to take pictures of your band’s naked bodies…more or less. While there are subtle tweaks we can do, the only real way to make a great sounding recording is to make an accurate recording. The second we start relying on me “fix” stuff is the second the recording takes a huge turn for the worse.
A great example of this is with drummers who didn’t get their toms to sound huge in the recording. Regardless of urban legend, most of the sound of drums I record comes from the overheads. So if you want great big toms, play them so they sound great big in the room. Again, I’m just capturing what you are doing. My ability to “enhance” is extremely limited no matter if I’m using 2 mics on your drums or 20 mics on your drums. I’ve recorded enough drummers to know that the drummers who sound great in the room are also the drummers that sound best on recordings.
This applies to all instruments. If you like at the mic as a device that simply converts your performance into something that can be stored on a hard drive, your recording will sound great. If you look at the mic as a magical device that can transform crap into candy and frogs into supermodel princesses, you will have problems.