Rough to Release

This episode was originally going to cover group recording, loudness, mastering and distribution but that would have been far too long so we're just looking at the recording side today. Recording more than just yourself. So far we've largely assumed that you're working for, by and with yourself; the key exception being Part 8 where we looked at co-writing . We're going to build on that now and briefly talk about recording / producing groups and remote collaborators. Broadly speaking, groups fall into two categories when it comes to recording. There are 'traditional' set-ups, where the group is self-balancing and arranging (perhaps with a conductor) and your job is to faithfully capture that sound. Classical music, brass band music, and a lot of folk music fall into this camp. The other set-up is the more modern approach, typically used in pop, rock, country, metal and similar productions, where each instrument tends to be captured separately with a view to much ...

 OK, so we've written the song, established the creative vision, recorded all the parts, and deleted half of them. Now we just need to mix it all together.  Easy right? Guess what, I've got another book recommendation for you... The companion to Recording Secrets is Mike Senior's Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio . Now I'm obviously not going to attempt to summarise an entire book / career into a blog post, but for the purposes of finishing our songs, here are a few suggestions about approaches. Lo Fidelity I'll start with a mistake I made when I first started to think about my recording and mixing in a more detailed way than 'stick a mic in front of it and plug it into the 4-track. The mistake I made was in chasing fidelity. I reasoned that if I wanted to create a recording that sounded like a bunch of real instruments then I should start by making each instrument sound as much like the real thing as possible. Then mixing should just be a case of setting the ...

In the previous chapter we looked at production and setting out the vision for the song. So now we have our spark and spice mixed together and our direction set, how do we go about turning that into a reality? If you're a proper composer or you're just really good at thinking about musical parts, it might be as simple as writing down everything you want to play, hitting record, and playing it all.  If you're anything like me then you might be quite a long, long way from that. So I have a 'Demo Dub Delete' cycle, and you might find it helpful too. Demo Firstly, and most importantly, capture the essence of the song as completely and accurately as you can. For me, this involves practicing to a metronome a few times and then recording to a click. As well as being a bit of good discipline, this also makes it easier to add midi parts later if the baseline is solid. It can get a bit awkward if you have a tempo or time-signature change, ideally work out where those things a...

 We interrupt this series for a brief word from our sponsor. (It's me, I'm the sponsor, no-one is paying me for this shit). I've got a new single coming out on Friday, and it's almost happy. https://ditto.fm/years-drew-stephenson Click the link for the music service of your choice. Normal service will resume tomorrow.

 I've gone back and forth about the order of these next two chapters several times, I'm still not sure they're in the practical order, but I think this is the right order for the finishing-your-song flow. What is 'production' when we're talking about music and home recording? In the 'good old days' the music producer was someone who would work with the band to help them establish and execute their vision. They would cover things like artist management (making sure everyone was happy and productive), label liaison (making sure everyone was getting paid and deadlines are hit), session management (making sure the engineer and artists were on the same page), but they also had a hand in the arrangement of the track, the composition of any supporting parts and that all important job of taking the vision out of the artists' head and getting it on tape. Sounds like a fascinating job, but how many people here can afford to pay a professional to do all that? Y...