Portsmouth's Premier Recording Studio
| How to prepare yourself and your equipment for studio recording |
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The first thing is to make sure you work out what
songs you want to record before you come into the studio and practice
them until you are all happy. |
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Arrangement |
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sure you know exactly how to play the songs you intend to record. By this,
we mean that you know the exact chord structure, arrangement, accents,
timing, stops and starts etc. It's amazing how many times band members
will realize in the studio, that they play certain parts differently from
each other and have done for years. This is because very often, small
mistakes don't show up when you play live at high volume, but in a studio,
it's like being under a microscope, so it's a good idea to get together
with some acoustic guitars, or other low volume instruments and go over
the songs from start to finish. Make sure everyone knows the right chords, the right melody, solo lines and that any harmony or doubled parts, are played in time together. Again, small differences in the way backing vocals or harmony guitars for example are phrased when playing live are acceptable, but for a studio recording, the devil is in the detail and making sure the phrasing is tight (as well as the tuning), this will help your recording sound more professional. |
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Preparing
your instruments |
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| This is another area where attention to detail goes a long way. For most instruments to sound good they need to be well maintained. | ||
| Drums | ||
| Ideally these should have new skins which have been stretched in and well tuned. Any moving parts such as kick \ hat pedals should be lubricated so there's no squeaks from them. Any loose lugs and fittings should be tightened. Different drums work better in different songs so if you have a selection, bring them along. Different snare drums for example give different tones etc. and smaller drums work well in lighter styles of music. Don't forget things like lots of sticks ( you may break some while here ) damping gels or pads, drum keys etc, although we have a selection anyway. | ||
| Guitars \ Bass guitar | ||
| Guitars need new strings, stretched in to maintain tuning and the intonation needs to be spot on. If there are any loose pots and loose buzzing earth wires then this needs to be corrected so there isn't or you will hear it in the recordings. Again different guitars can suit some songs better than others, so bring your selection along to try out. The same applies to guitar and bass amps. The more choice the better. | ||
| Keys and other instruments | ||
| With electronic keyboards you can record in more flexible ways. You can record your part in midi for example so you can change your mind about the exact patch your using right up until the final mix. If your parts depend on your own custom patch's or samples though then make sure you have these with you. This includes any soft synths or virtual instruments. | ||
| Vocals | ||
| As a vocalist your voice is your instrument and so like anything else, it has to be looked after. Make sure you are well rested and you aren't coming into the studio the morning after a big night out. Bring bottled water, honey and lemon or whatever you normally use to keep your vocals smooth. | ||
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| Matt O'Neill tracking acoustic guitar for AcousticLiveLounge | ||
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Mental
preparation |
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| If you have have never
recorded in a professional studio before then some of the process can
seem strange compared to playing with a band in a live environment onstage.
Although ultimately here at 2020 we will always record in a fashion that's
most comfortable with you the typical modern recording process can include
parts being recorded separately rather than all together, drummers playing
to a click track, monitoring yourselves with headphones rather than hearing
yourselves as you would when playing live. With this in mind it's a good
idea to have a think about how you want to approach your recording session.
While we can easily accommodate a 10 piece band playing and being recorded
live, we can also approach the project by recording each instrument track
by track if that's the best approach for you. To give you some idea here are some common ways to record and the pros and cons of each approach. |
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All
live at once |
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| In this fashion, the whole band plays together in the live room and it's recorded to multiple tracks. This can capture some great energy and excitement that comes from a band interacting together. It can also be a very fast method to record. The down side is that if anyone makes a mistake while recording, it must be tracked again. Each instrument maybe on it's own track, but there will always be a lot of spill between microphones, so the final mix would not be as clean and as separate, as a project that was tracked one instrument at a time, especially the vocal track. | ||
Live
backing track with separate overdubs |
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| This is the way a lot of classic rock and pop tracks have been recorded over the years. The drums, bass guitar and guitars are recorded with a guide scratch vocal. This captures the energy of the performance for the foundation of the song. Then the vocals, backing vocals, guitar solo's etc are overdubbed on afterwards and the guide scratch vocal deleted. This approach, when recorded in a large enough room like the live room at 2020, can yield much better results than the ' all live at once ' approach. | ||
| Record each part separately | ||
| With this approach each instrument is recorded separately one at time. The drums are recorded first, often to a click track to maintain meticulous timing and then the song is built up around it, by adding bass guitar, guitars, keyboards, etc, before finishing up with lead vocal and backing vocals. Any other embellishments can be dropped into place after. This approach yields the ultimate in isolation between instruments as there's no spill at all to contend with. However it can take longer. | ||
| Remember the best way to record is always the way that gets the best performance from you the artist. Although we are here to guide you it's ultimately your project, your time and money and we will always adjust our techniques to suit you. If your more comfortable playing your guitar in the control room while your amps mic'ed up in the live room then that's not a problem. If you need to maintain visual contact with other band members then that's easy too. | ||
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| Herbie Armstrong in the control room during the "Still in my heart" mix and edit session | ||
| Post Production - Mixing | ||
| Once all the tracking has been completed it's time for the post production work. This generally means editing and mixing all the tracks into the final stereo wavs that will make the final CD. The amount of work here can vary from project to project. Some projects just need a little background noise cleaned up and a basic mix set. Other projects might need the drum hits to be quantized to a tempo map, vocals compiled from multiple takes, backing vocals tuned and aligned etc. The amount of post production and mixing is often appropriate to it's genre of music, a rap project with multiple beats and loops and 78 tracks of backing vocals will need more post production than a stoner rock project with one guitar, one bass, one vocal and drums for example. | ||
| In house \ Out house producer | ||
| Here at 2020 your very welcome to bring in your own producer to steer your project through to completion. As always we will accommodate your needs. If you need us to just engineer the project, we will. If you want advice in terms of production geared towards getting the best results, we are happy to help.If your project is going to be mixed by a third party or at another studio, then we can prepare the session on a drive with all the necessary audio files and comments information included. We use the industry standard format that is Protools, but we can consolidate into wavs to suit any other format such as Logic, Nuendo etc. | ||
Telephone 023 92 296988 : Mobile 07733185462