It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Subscribe to our Patreon, and get image uploads with no ads on the site!
Base theme by DesignModo & ported to Powered by Vanilla by Chris Ireland, modified by the "theFB" team.
Comments
Au contraire. A good studio should have been striving to make a good impression in the hopes of your repeat business in the future. How far into your session did the staff seem to cease caring?
soundcloud.com/thecolourbox-1
youtube.com/@TheColourboxMusic
If you can work without notes, I'm the envious bloke in the corner....
If, for the sake of argument, somebody had stumbled across a particular sound by running an electro-mechanical piano through a ring modulator, a phaser and a Uni-Vibe, a written or photographic record of this signal chain would make possible its recreation in the future. This might prove handy come overdubbing time.
In a recording studio, anything that saves time, also saves money.
soundcloud.com/thecolourbox-1
youtube.com/@TheColourboxMusic
When I’m tracking I run a spreadsheet of parts everyone is going to record and what I’m naming the tracks, equipment used and notes and then cross them off one by one.
again you would surprised how many times people have come out of sessions forgetting to record an acoustic guitar part or a horn part etc
It’s one of the reasons I hate recording myself. My brain is too wired into the organisation of stuff to be in any way creative
My first experience of in the box recall was when I did 300ft Gorillas album Gorilla tactics (Paul Hindmarsh of Line 6 fames band). To be able to send sessions between his bass player and myself was revolutionary.
Not taking a day to recreate a desk and outboard for a track was also very welcome but I’m glad I did all that stuff the old way. The knowledge and background has served me very well
Where the studio absolutely will add value is either drums or vocals because these are so dependent on room acoustics, mic and preamp selection.
6 hours might be a long vocal session if you are not used to singing and sounds like drums arent in scope for you so what I would do is have your guitars and backing tracks done at home ready to go then record as much vocals as you can.
If the engineer is also a decent producer use the time to experiment with vocal layers and harmony etc.
"Six songs gives me roughly half an hour per song, that should be plenty if only singing."
I think that is unrealistic if you want quality. Our singer is pretty awesome and it took us 2 x 3 hour session to get 4 songs done for our last EP (including some harmony work). Our songs have long instrumental only sections too.
I really like Zedd for pop music, IIRC he spends up to two days just comping and tuning vocals per song, the song he did with Hayley from Paramore is a pop vocal reference for me.
Karnivool didn’t tune vocals and I think it took them 6 weeks to do Sound Awake. And that guy is an incredible singer.
Whereas I think Christina Aguilera Beautiful was the only take they did. Amazing performance.
Its art at the end of the day.
But yes, the studio day happened, it was only three hours and nothing was really achieved except me concluding studios are probably not for me, as there was nothing I did there that I couldn't do just as adequately at home (notwithstanding my laptop issues) without having to pay quite a lot of money and book way in advance. I only used a couple of solos from the day, mostly so I could honestly say to those who bought me the time that guitars were recorded there.
Arguably, yes I think I would have been better doing vocals there instead, though my vocals are poor so I'm not sure there would have been much benefit as such over doing it at home it's just that I'd have got more done in quantity.
I still reckon I could easily do 30 mins per song though on the vocals. I did about three per hour at home once my USB settings were OK. I think good singers take longer as they will then be able to do much more with them. If I do it once and the timing is OK, it's a case of "Yeah it ain't gonna get any better than that" so I move on. There's no point polishing a turd...
I'm sticking to home set ups going forward.
soundcloud.com/thecolourbox-1
youtube.com/@TheColourboxMusic
soundcloud.com/thecolourbox-1
youtube.com/@TheColourboxMusic
Most people will probably make a better job of tracking guitars, keys and bass guitar in a relaxed home environment. Drums, vocals and orchestral instruments benefit from a well-prepared room, high budget microphones and outboard signal processors.
soundcloud.com/thecolourbox-1
youtube.com/@TheColourboxMusic
If that’s what works for you then stick with it.
This year, I did an album where i turned that on its head a bit, and while I still had to do the loud stuff at the studio space I did everything I could practically do at home in my little upstairs box room. DI'd bass, keyboard stuff, and all the vocals. It was a bit of a hurdle to get over the idea that people walking past in the street might hear me tracking vocals, but I got over it.
Then I mixed it in there too.
And objectively, it's not as good sounding a place to mix. But I've found the comfort and convenience of being able to work at home has massively outweighed that. Saturday morning, still in dressing gown with coffee in hand and inspiration hits? The project is 30 seconds away and I can try a new harmony line, re-track a verse, tweak a mix... and because there's not the same time or cost investment, I felt more open to experimentation vs. being in either a studio I'm paying hundreds for or my band's studio which was a big windowless room with grey walls.
The trick, of course, is still having focus/ intent enough that you ever get stuff finished. But for this project at least, I began recording early March and finished 15 tracks by the beginning of July. That's a record for me!
Bandcamp
Spotify, Apple et al