Studio Recording

[Jimmy Bones]

Hey guys.

So, this Sunday, me and my band have recording time at a local studio. We're budgeting roughly $500 worth of recording/mastering time which comes out to about 10 hours.

My question to you guys is, how many songs do you suppose we can pull off in ten hours, and what would you recommend we do to get prepared?

Also interested in hearing funny good or miserable experiences you may have had while in a studio.

We're recording here: http://www.vibeasylum.com

[capnsandwich]

It all depends on how many instruments, how many takes for each track, how well you guys play, how good the engineer is, etc. I'd say you can get a set list recorded in 10 hours but then comes the mixing and that's a different animal.

[anarkink]

10 hours to track, mix and master? If its not live off the floor, then 1 song max.

[moondog24]

Originally Posted by Jimmy Bones

Also interested in hearing funny good or miserable experiences you may have had while in a studio.

Not experiences I've had, but if you want to be entertained/horrified for hours, then read this and this

[jimmy rocket]

Originally Posted by anarkink

10 hours to track, mix and master? If its not live off the floor, then 1 song max.

Yeah, I was going to say 2 songs if you're a 4 piece band. If you're very efficient you might estimate 1 hour per person per song, but that's optimistic.

I've spent a whole week in the studio just for 5 songs for a split CD.

One thing that might help is for you and your band to do a good deal of pre-production yourselves. Go over everything with a fine tooth comb. Note choice, rhythms, etc. so that when you get into the studio you move as efficiently as possible.

[Steve]

My boys and I at our normal studio could maybe crank out 4 using the studio drums but, we've all known and worked with each other forever so, there's not a lot of head scratching going on. 3 runs at a 4 minute song plus overdubs, that's an hour with the poking and joking included.

That gives you six hours for post. If you don't have to "fix it in the mix" that's plenty.

If the studio has a drum kit set and mic'd already, that'll cut at least two hours off the waste. Getting drums right and gates tuned can be a real time killer.

I would suggest that you focus on quality and not quantity. It takes as long as it takes.

If you get one done right, you'll keep it, enjoy it and be happy with it for a long time. If you make compromises for quantity, you're going to want to do it again as soon as the swelling goes down.

[capnsandwich]

Originally Posted by jimmy rocket

One thing that might help is for you and your band to do a good deal of pre-production yourselves. Go over everything with a fine tooth comb. Note choice, rhythms, etc. so that when you get into the studio you move as efficiently as possible.

This is a must.

Also, one thing one of my bands is doing is getting everything recorded by ourselves. that way we're eliminating a lot of the costs of tracking by doing it ourselves. We've got a good drum kit, good mics, and Sonar 4 Producer edition. It's a good program for what we're doing. We record all of our tracks and take the bundle files to the engineer and have him mix them. It saves us money and we can concentrate more on the mix than the tracking when we're in the studio.

[EricF]

Originally Posted by anarkink

10 hours to track, mix and master? If its not live off the floor, then 1 song max.

+1

Recording the instruments is usually the easy part. Mixing and mastering takes longer than you'd think.

[(b)Assman]

Recording isn't usually a fast process if you're trying to make CD quality music. You may be able to do 2 songs if you play well.

[BASS SUCKS]

Our band was recording in a studio last weekend, it took 11 hours to lay down 6 songs. This was only live recording + some overdubs and touch-ups. I'd say we're pretty damn tight too. Granted, everything was set up when we arrived, which cut huge amounts of time off.

[Jimmy Bones]

Ok, guys.

We went in and got three songs done in about 7 hours - that's about 2 hours in recording/overdubbing, and the rest was the engineer doing his thing.

Check it out and tell me what you think?

http://www.myspace.com/officialcrookedhalo - It's the top three songs with very few plays on them. Compare Living to Die with Coloring below it, and you can tell the major quality differences.

[Jimmy Bones]

Nobody?

[matskull]

Originally Posted by Jimmy Bones

Ok, guys.

We went in and got three songs done in about 7 hours - that's about 2 hours in recording/overdubbing, and the rest was the engineer doing his thing.

Check it out and tell me what you think?

http://www.myspace.com/officialcrookedhalo - It's the top three songs with very few plays on them. Compare Living to Die with Coloring below it, and you can tell the major quality differences.

Honestly, I would've spend my time the other way around.
Your band could've benifit from a better performance and better tracking IMO, especially your singer.
But overall, everything seems to fit together.
The bass tone sounds cool too.

[Jimmy Bones]

Originally Posted by matskull

The bass tone sounds cool too.

<3

Nice to hear that from another bassist.

When we were doing sound checks and such in the studio, they had the drums checking for mic placement for 20-30 minutes, the guitards played for about 10 minutes each. I got all of about 15 seconds to fiddle. Everybody else, the drummer especially, was ragging on me about nobody liking to hear the bass, even engineers. Pissed me off.

On our first fiver when they assistant had to have the guitards do retakes, i went out for a smoke, and the lead engineer started asking me what sort of bass and pickups i was using. Said my tone was perfect for our purposes, and didn't need more than a moment to recognize it.

Then we got into a good discussion about pickups and such. Found me another EMG fan.

I agree on the singer bit, everybody save the other band members are making that comment. The singer himself called me up today complaining about his sound, too.

Frankly, I say it's him, not the engineer... but that's just me. I'm slowly trying to coax him into taking some coaching to expand his range and give him some confidence in melodies.

Not to say I'm some sort of awesome bassist or anything - I'm not a mediocre bassist club member for nothing - but I don't get ragged on like he does by our listeners.

[Vallejo]

95% of anything I record is done in my home studio. Diva singers and guitarists with more ego than talent rack up more studio hours than I could ever afford.

[matskull]

Originally Posted by Jimmy Bones

<3

Nice to hear that from another bassist.

When we were doing sound checks and such in the studio, they had the drums checking for mic placement for 20-30 minutes, the guitards played for about 10 minutes each. I got all of about 15 seconds to fiddle. Everybody else, the drummer especially, was ragging on me about nobody liking to hear the bass, even engineers. Pissed me off.

On our first fiver when they assistant had to have the guitards do retakes, i went out for a smoke, and the lead engineer started asking me what sort of bass and pickups i was using. Said my tone was perfect for our purposes, and didn't need more than a moment to recognize it.

Then we got into a good discussion about pickups and such. Found me another EMG fan.

I agree on the singer bit, everybody save the other band members are making that comment. The singer himself called me up today complaining about his sound, too.

Frankly, I say it's him, not the engineer... but that's just me. I'm slowly trying to coax him into taking some coaching to expand his range and give him some confidence in melodies.

Not to say I'm some sort of awesome bassist or anything - I'm not a mediocre bassist club member for nothing - but I don't get ragged on like he does by our listeners.

Yeah your tone fits your style nicely, it sucks that you band didn't give a ****...kindda weird actually, everybody should've cared about the tone of everybody else.

Concerning your singer, like you said it's not about the engenneer, it's about the performance.

I myself am a sound technician, I've been doing it for 5 years or so and if there's something I've learned it's that the whole "we'll fix it later in the mix" is the worst thing you can do in the studio, you should always work a lot more on capturing an excellent performance than fixing stuff and mixing.

Did you mic the bass amp or was it just a DI?

[KaizerWilhelm]

To track a song, estimate 1 hour of tracking time to one minute of song time. So if you have a 5 minute song, budget 5 hours of TRACKING time. That does not include mixing or mastering.

If you want it to be good, space everything out. Record everything now, 2 months later mix it. Then take the final mixes to SOMEONE ELSE and get them mastered. Don't trust the mixing engineer to master it (no offense if y'all are engineers, I am and I know this is true). You need a new set of ears.

And yeah, get a good performance don't fix the bollocks in mixing, if you can hear a processed vocal line, so can everyone else. Just listen to Lil' Wayne and Kanye, totally processed and it sounds like crap. Don't do it!

[DeluxeRed]

Prioritize what you want to accomplish. Start at the top of that checklist. Don't spend any time doing anything that you don't need to while there is stuff that you need that still has to happen.

Plan every minute in advance. Walk through the session before hand in your rehearsal space. Talk to the studio and engineers, or drop by, to see what they expect of you, what equipment is there or you will need to bring, how much space you have, where you load in/out.

Have a checklist of all of the equipment you need to have with you, and make sure it is there.

Have someone with you who can log every minute, every event. See where the time was spent so that you can adjust for the next time.

Keep it simple. SVR and DT would walk in an cut tracks live (usually at 3am). Scholtz and Boston took 9 years.

Keep control. Take advice from the engineers (et al), but remember YOU are the paying customer.

Learn all you can and have fun.

[bassbully]

Its all about cost to me. My band had a tight schedule one like the OP had. It has grown We did 10 hours of tracking on day one and followed with another 8 the next day. This gave us 8 songs ...tracking only.This now is only good enough for the bass and drums and some vocals. We go back in a few weeks to lay down guitars and multi -strings to the mix along with backing and some main vocals. I guess we are looking at another 20 hours? Mixing comes after as well as more $ The problem is where do you stop and how far do you go when you are indy? If you have a label paying for this great. But when its out of your pocket and its for promotion and to sell CD's at shows you have to just get the best product out there you can for the money sometimes.

[Sartori]

Recording always takes much longer than you think it will.