Recording

• The number one thing, that will waste your money in the studio, is lack of rehearsal.
• It will cost you time working your part out in the studio.
• It will cost you time recording it because of errors.
• It will cost you time, fixing it if there are errors.
• It will cost you quality in the final production.

**Make sure you have rehearsed as much as you possibly can and know what your part is.**

Obviously the more instruments there are, the more sound checking, balancing and recording there is to do. Drums and percussion take longer because of the setup and sound checking time needed for the dozen or so microphone signals that are typically required.

Another obvious one really. If you’ve got world class musicians, they’re highly likely to get it right first time. If you’re not a world class musician, but you want to sound like one, then it may take many takes and overdubs to get things right.

The first track will take the longest to record as all the instruments need to be set up and sound checked. Further tracks will take a lot less time. It’s much more economical to record a bunch of tracks at the same time.

You need to decide what your tracks are going to be used for. If you just want a demo or a natural raw sound, then the process is going to be much quicker than if you want a highly polished sounding commercial track. As explained next, there are many techniques used today to make artists sound like they do. Layering parts during recording is one of them. If you want to use those same techniques to get your sound really polished, then I can do that for you, but everything adds to the time. A rock band may need very little of these extra recordings (or not?), where as a commercial pop track may need many more (or not?).

This depends on ‘how polished the final results need to be’. As explained, the more layers, the more time needed. At a very basic level, vocals, backing vocals and rhythm guitars are typically double tracked at least. There may be more than just double tracking required to achieve the best results (3, 4, 5+ layers). It’s a production decision that needs to be made. Let’s take a rhythm guitar part for example. You may want a double track of it (left and right) for the main chord inversion. Then two thickening layers at a different chord inversion. Then it may benefit from layering it with a picked melody line or another instrument like piano or mandolin. It may also benefit from layering it with a cleaner or more distorted version. The options are almost endless.

Professional editing techniques can be used, and are used in all commercial tracks, to make the recording as near to perfect as required. During the recording phase of the process they are used to correct minor timing issues, selecting the best parts from each take, correcting phase issues and layering. During the mixing phase, all the professional editing techniques are employed. These methods are often used to fix mistakes made be musicians, that either don’t have the required skill level yet, or haven’t bothered to rehearse their part properly. The number one killer of studio time, is musicians that are unrehearsed. Don’t let that be you!