No matter how talented you are, you need to have a strategy for recording. It must be locked down before you arrive at the studio, so you, your band and the engineer all have a clear idea of how the session will go.
Usually a studio proprietor will offer you a lot of free consultation before your first session. Well, he’s trying to win your business so he wants you to know he’s good at what he does. It’s a good time to extract information, so while he’s still in sales mode, work with him to get a clear timeline and his recommendations on how to get the best recording in his studio. Of course, always be respectful of his time!
Your engineer (who may or may not be the studio owner) should be flexible and opinionated at the same time. Huh? I know, it sounds confusing! But if you have a strong sense of how your band should perform in the studio and the engineer is inflexible, it’s just not going to work. However on the flip side, the engineer’s seeming inflexibility might be really good advice because he knows his studio better than you do. It’s a fine line, so trust your intuition.
Every band has their own formula for recording. You need to come up with one that works for you and your band. For me, I recommend getting the drums down tight first. The drums are the most time consuming part of recording. Set up alone can take a couple hours! So I get it out of the way first. When the drums are done, I move on to the other instruments (guitars, bass, keys, etc) then the vocals.
The vocal is arguably the most important part of your recording session. It’s different for everyone but it’s very uncommon to be able to complete more than one or two songs per session. The freshness leaves the voice after a while. So plan accordingly. Once a singer feels burned out you can hear it in their voice. Vocal sessions are usually done in short sessions after all of the instrumental tracks are complete. Once I had a singer in the studio who absolutely nailed a lead vocal from beginning to end on the first take. She didn’t believe that she had sung it so perfectly, so she thought we needed to fix it. We kept going back and fixing parts, but when the session was over we scrapped all of her fixes and went with the first take. She had so much emotion and aliveness in the original take that slight imperfections were irrelevant. And that’s how it is sometimes, the imperfections add to the humanness of the voice. Knowing the strengths and limitations of your singer should help you plan your strategy for recording vocals.
When the lead vocal is done, it’s time for the harmonies. Then, maybe auxiliary percussion or other things that spice up the tracks.
Keep in mind the capabilities of the studio when you are planning. Do they have enough microphones to record everyone live? Are you sacrificing microphones or pre-amps if you do record live (all instruments at once)? You may be at the very bottom of the engineer’s microphone case by the time you mic up your 1968 Marshall 50 watt plexi. And that would not be doing it justice, would it?
There is no major formula for creating a strategy, you have to do what works for you. It might involve a timeline. You might need to be flexible. You have to make agreements with your band mates and sound engineer. As you move through your session, those agreements may change, but at least you have a starting point.
