RECORDING TIPS TO CONSIDER!

Preparations
Record your song during live shows and at rehearsals on something as simple as a cassette in a boom box. It may reveal weaknesses in your arrangements. Have all the vocal parts worked out. If you plan on using a click track or sequencer, practice with the click track and sequencer. It may help tighten your performance if you practice with a slower tempo. Have more songs ready to go than you plan to put in your finished product.

Studio
Be early. Your time starts when booked. If the studio is empty you may get a chance to get in and get comfortable and relaxed. Maybe get a free mic set up. Make sure you and engineer have the same goals in mind. Before booking the studio have a meeting with the engineer and bring samples of band mixes you like so he has a good vision of what you want. Make sure your instruments are in good shape. New strings and drum heads worked in a bit are the best. Think about how you might layer your instrumentations to tracks needed. Tell the engineer. It's nice to walk in and just start playing with no wasted time on technical studio interfacing issues.

In The Studio
Emotion and feelings are what sell a song, not necessarily the way it was recorded. If you mess up finish the recording and you can go back to fix that section with a puch-in. Maybe it can be fixed with a cut copy paste move done by the engineer. Record individual instruments without effects unless it is part of the instrument. Guitar pedals should be recorded direct with mic-ed amp, but take a direct out from the guitar to make a clean track just in case. Record the audio and MIDI tracks of synthesizers. If you have more than 2 audio outputs on your synth, use them to separate your sounds. Plan to double up some tracks like chorus parts. Keep friends and guests out of your recording they become a distraction very fast. Know when to quit for the day. Stress shows in the recording. At the end of the session make a quick mix to take home and evaluate. Make sure you are getting fairly close to the sound you want. Fixing things in the mix is much harder than getting it right now. Get a track list too. It may help in additional parts to record. You cant keep tuning up often enough. Vocalists bring your tea and honey throat elixirs.

Make a Final Mix
Listen to your music as how most of your fans will listen to it. Take a day before taking a second listen to the mix. You probably became adjusted to a way you like to listen to other bands. Play your mix the same way and see how it compares to the name acts you idolize. What you want to look for is that each instrument is comfortably heard. Listen to the mix at low levels. It should have a similar tonality. Take CD of name acts you like with you to the studio and listen to them where you are going to do the mix.Appoint a person who will be the producer and the spokesperson for the group. That person will communicate with the engineer. It's not good to have arguments on how your song will be mixed at this time. Keep an open mind to suggestions from the engineer. His ears are better accustomed to doing mixes. You may not hear it right there so take it home to be objective.

Final Mix
Always think of the overall picture of the recording and not your individual instrument. Taking your home recording project to the studio is a smart thing too. There you will have an engineer that can make your recordings and mixes much better than you can do at home. In the studio they have sound fixing tools you might not be familiar with. And the studio has a tuned room for consistency in getting a good mix. Your final mix should be put in CDr format. At the professional studio you can get other formats. Also make sure you have a run off of the master tracks of the individual parts that made your mixes. You need this if you want to remix for TV, film and radio mixes. These parts are usually stored on a hard drive at the recording studio you recorded in and they may be erased for the next studio project. Make sure like in ProTools the engineer makes the master discs IBM/PC compatible. Otherwise you are limiting your choices of studios for remixes. Then ask for extra copies of all the discs so just in case one get damaged or lost. You are covered.

BONUS TIP
Sell your DVD world wide by asking the engineer to convert all final mixes to MP3. Some upload sites for selling your music need this conversion. Might as well be prepared with what you need to promote yourself!!!

K&R's All Media Productions Inc.
28533 Greenfield, Southfield, MI 48076
(248) 557-8276 * Toll Free (888) 802-0420
Email: recordav@knr.net