OK so it’s finally going to happen. You’re going into the studio. It’s likely that you’ve been saving for sometime to do this and you are excited. In order to get the most out of your experience it’s a good idea, that you have dotted I’s and crossed T’s.
So in order to do that a little bit of Pre Production is in order, But…
What is Pre-Production for Music?
For music, pre-production is the process of scrutinizing every aspect of a collection of songs and the musicians who play them including their capacity to communicate about those songs together before the costly event of recording that music begins. By doing so, the artists involved are able to discern problem areas in which necessary adjustments can be made as well as identifying instances of artistic inspiration and cleverness as opportunities to build upon.
As necessary the collective of artists will work together to refine all the aspects of communication and performance and song refinement in order to maximize the efficiency of time and money allotted for the project. They do this all in a sophisticated effort to birth some new batch of music that they each strive to see is brilliant.
In this article we will take apart a number of important aspects of the pre-production process, explaining how and why each step leads to you being most efficient and ultimately arriving to an end product that is worthy of all of the effort.
Say It Succinctly
Rather than have your songs going on and on take some time in pre-production to identify and edit out the fat. It can be very easy to lose your listener by having the songs just drone on in some self-indulged manner.
It might feel like artistic expression or license but depending on what your goal is, It may not be. So what are your goals? In this day and age there really is no time or money to record filler songs.
Most everyone who is not on a major label is releasing everything they write on streamers. You’ll want to make sure you use your time and money effectively to create a product that will engage your listeners and have a wide reach.
Requirements for on-air radio play require that the songs not go too far past the three-minute mark. 30 seconds in either direction should be the limitation that you strive for. Additionally compressing these songs down to the necessary parts, can be a catalyst for the songs to find their perfection. Skim the fat and what is left will be a lean and effective piece.
Communicate With Your Producer From the Onset
Establishing a working relationship with your producer from the very beginning will go a long way to create an ease of communication and coherent vision for the project.
The producer you are working with may be busy with other projects and that may be very normal. If that is the case then take it upon yourself to reach out by text or email to update and inform the producer of the process that is being made. Make sure not to be troublesome but also make sure to have chosen a professional who is happy to interact and guide you through the steps you are taking even if it is from a far.
Make sure to ask the producer for any requirements they have from you as a band. In order to make the recording session run as smoothly as possible the producer will likely request a song list, tempo maps and demos in advance.
Be sure to coordinate with them about the specifics of what they need and be responsible to deliver those items to the producer in a timely fashion.
Building a rapport with the Producer and Engineer will help to make the process of recording your songs seamless and flowing. Be sure to always be personable and professional.
Keeping Key Within the Vocalist’s Range
This is one area that can be easily overlooked. One of the bandmates may have introduced a great new riff to the band. What is important to that band mate is the playability of the riff so the band inducts the song into the playlist as it is.
What is unbeknownst to the band is that this particular chord phrasing is just outside of the singer’s vocal range. So in order to sing the song the singer is making compromises that may not present the song with the same power that it may otherwise had been delivered.
During the next rehearsal pay close attention to the singers ability to manage the notes on the top and bottom of the scale. If the singer is struggling with them then it behooves the band to go ahead and try the song in a neighboring key. In my experience changing the key to one that it is more appropriate is very empowering. By doing so it will bring a more desirable energy into the recording.
Prepare Demos
Before going into the studio, you owe it to yourself, the producer and the engineer to have already taken the time to put together some rudimentary demos. The demos are the best way to communicate the idea of the song amongst those who will be working together on it.
The demos are a useful tool for discussing the production potential and any ideas to how best achieve those goals. Without having a demo any proper planning would be greatly hindered. Every person involved would be working in the dark. That would certainly lead to inefficiency in every respective task necessary to recording the album or song.
With out having the demos previously recorded you and your band will be cutting into valuable studio time to do the very same thing that a demo could have done in three or four minutes.
The demo doesn’t need to be extravagant. Basic is best. Perhaps just guitar and vocals would suffice. If the band is tight during rehearsals then maybe just a recording of one of the rehearsal sessions would do.
The demo together with handwritten tempo maps or time signature changes communicating complicated information to the engineer and the producer help to inform and allow them to make early preparations.
If it’s possible you should already be in regular contact with your producer at least a few weeks before studio time. They should have received the demo at the earliest possible convenience in order for them to have ample time to consider and conceptualize everything that they must for the production.
If you’ve taken the demo to the producer in advance then they can do all of their planning and still have time for some back and forth dialog together with the band. Every detail that you can hash out before going into to the studio saves you money.
Additionally if you record the demos on a DAW compatible with whatever system is being used at the studio It could add an extra value for you to pre-build your guide tracks and time changes into the session. On studio day the engineer can just open the file and off you go.
It’s all about being organized and efficient. Pre-production gives you the chance to be sure that you are both of those things and making a demo is just one step in that effort.
Prepare For Communicating Quickly
The responsibility of being organized for a recording session should also include the bands capacity to communicate in and amongst itself. Some times in the studio we have to use verbiage to convey characteristics of a vibe or to convey instructions for reaching that desired vibe. You may hear things like fatter, wider, its too thin, its too muddy, that’s too much, dial it back. Stop drinking so much!
Ok so maybe the last one was just to break some of the ice off of this gargantuan topic but you know what I’m getting at. There has to be some specialty interpersonal vernacular that is settled in on and intelligible by all contributing parties.
If not, when you give a suggestion to your guitarist, they may not understand at all what you are talking about. And with the producer and engineer standing on either side of you staring at them they may feel intimidated.
So much so that you may notice their eyes start to fog over as they attempt to feign a smile and tentatively start twisting knobs ever so slightly. Your guitarist will try their absolute best to hide the horror that they have no idea what is being asked of them.
All the while they are hoping beyond hope that the gods of rock will allow for the incremental twisting of the knob to quickly find a position that leads to your satisfaction so that you will go away.
They are embarrassed because they have no idea what is being asked of them and because you seem so confident about what you are saying they just assume its their mistake.
The studio is no place to have this type of break down. It’s very important not to hack away at one and others confidence right before they are required to perform some very complicated feet of musicianship.
What is preferable is that we reinforce the confidence that will ultimately contribute to a recording that you will be proud to reflect on even when you’re too old to remember anything.
Its not like I’m suggesting that you walk in to your next pre-production rehearsal and announce to your bandmates that you’ve stumbled across this great expose on preparing for a recording session and in that expose the author advised that the band needs to create their own language and that you had taken it upon yourself to compose the first draft of your very own band dictionary. No, That isn’t my intention at all, or mostly not.
The point is this effort is to strive for efficient communication for your benefit. So just keep an eye out for problems.
If In your effort to work out the tones during pre-production you still find difficulties, then it maybe time to bring something up about how you should discuss this in the studio should you be in a similar situation.
The same is to be said for recording a take on your demos for the producer, if you find that it is difficult to be on the same page in terms of communication during that process, than now is the time to resolve those issues and make sure you are all settled in on common speak.
When the day of your recording session arrives, everyone will go into the studio knowing how to convey particular impressions that would otherwise be very strange to have to articulate. Each person can rest assured knowing that what they may need to say will be understood.
Choose Tones and Styles
During pre-production the band needs to come to concept on every detail of the recording. Included in that will be making detailed determinations for everything right down to the tonality of each instrument.
How driving should one thing be and how wide another. It’s important to know your genre and the typical sound of that genre. Then it’s important to carve out your own sound and tone within that genre.
Pre-production is precisely the time for you to determine how to get the sound from your amps you want. It would also be the time to make arrangement for use of any amps or cabinets at your disposable for the recording session.
Be sure to use a guitar equipped with the right pick-ups for the tonality you’re after. If you want more of the body resonance of the guitar then perhaps you should consider passive pickups, but if you’re looking for more overtones then maybe you’d prefer active pickups.
If you’re playing rock-n-roll music and you’re looking for that real driving distortion then you’ll be happiest with dual-coil pickups, but if you’re playing something brighter sounding then you’d be better suited with single-coil pickups.
Work towards having a good idea of everything you’d like to achieve and find solid reference material to help you demonstrate the ideas to others. Those items you have for reference are the best way to communicate to the producer and engineer what you are hoping to accomplish.
It gives the engineer a great starting point for knowing how to set levels and mic cabs. Doing things of this nature is what will help to be able to capture recordings that translate into the music that matches the vision your band has for the project.
So knowing how to get the tones you want and practicing how to get them on demand are two imperatives for pre-production. Don’t be afraid to use this time to experiment. Necessity is the mother of Invention and in times like these creativity has a tendency to shine through and you may just come up with an idea that is really fresh and unique.
Don’t be afraid to forge into uncharted waters. If you start to get too big for your britches the producer and your bandmates will assuredly pull you right back down to earth. Until they do, there is really no bad idea, especially now during this stage. Everything you’re doing is explicitly useful in helping to rule things out and to defining actionable ideas. Have fun making preparations and don’t forget to smell the roses.
Identifying The Songs Characteristic
In your rehearsals you should have a lot of time to be able to work out the particulars of your songs and parts. You should also have a lot of time to perfect playing and preforming those parts.
The problem a lot of artists face is finding their way back to the same page during the next rehearsal after having gone home and decompressed. On a number of the tracks you are intending to record you’ve already made great strides. But just how exactly do you get back to those particular feelings or expressions the next time playing that song after it has gone cold?
Finding your way back to a certain specific intensity or tone may be just a bit easier if we verbally designate that song with an emotive characteristic that embodies the song.
For instance, if you started calling one song the fire song, and another the blue song a performer could easily take cue from those emotives as to how to embody the mood necessary to perform each song. Each of those terms immediately convey and articulate the embodiment of what the song is. This could prove a useful strategy to leverage the bands ability to harness consistency a little bit better and a little bit faster.
Tempo and Metronome
The tempo of the song is another area that needs to be tested. Try playing the song at different tempos; be open to the possibility of change. Perhaps just a little bit faster and the song will really cut through. You’ll know by the goose bumps appearing on your arm.
On the other hand maybe slowing the song down just a bit will cause the same effect. You’ll have to try to know. It may be that the current tempo you’re playing at will be satisfactory. This exercise is to confirm that either way.
Once you have locked into the correct tempo for the song. It is important to be conscientious that current recording studios track to DAWs and all of the editing on DAWs is done to tempo grids.
So it is likely that it will be most convenient in this era of modern music for the artist to track to a metronome or click track. This track is played to the band members through their headphones in an effort to lock each member of the band to the designated Tempo / BPM (Beat Per Minute).
Recording to a metronome click is not for the uninitiated. So if you and the members of your band do not have experience doing so. It is best that you make it part of your pre-production preparation.
The recommendation is that you use a metronome during your rehearsals from here until your song has been recorded. This will be a very invaluable practice for you and all of your bandmates.
Going into the studio is filled with all sorts of unnerving and unexpected surprises. Don’t let this be one, get ready now.
Take A Day Or Two Off From Rehearsal Before Your Session
After a few weeks of rehearsals everything can really start to blend into a muddy mess. To remedy that it’s probably best to give it a rest. You really don’t want to erase the excitement and spontaneity of recording by having over-prepared.
So after your last session when everyone is certain that everyone else is familiar with the song, it’s formatting, the tonal requirements of their parts, changes to the arrangement and anything else then set the guitars and drumsticks down walk away and take some well deserved rest.
Giving yourself and your band-mates a few days to decompress will only result in excitement and enthusiasm. I can’t really speak to the science of the phycology of it but its like studying for the test in school. You really don’t want to be up all night the night before cramming for the test. It’s far better to have prepared in advance and to give that new information time to marinate.
You can spend a little bit of time during the break reflecting on the changes and the order of parts. Just enough so you don’t forget. When you get into the studio you and your band mates will be prepared, fresh eyed and ready to go.
Make Sure Your Gear Is Ready
Going into the studio and having preventable gear problems is an undesirable experience. Be sure to designate some time before your session for gear maintenance.
Make sure that going into the studio you will be playing on instruments that you are familiar with playing. If you’re borrowing a friends guitar in order to get a better tone. Please be sure to do that in advance in order to familiarize yourself with that instruments playability.
Borrowing instruments aside. Have your instruments serviced by a qualified tech. Make sure the guitars and bass’s tonality and action are where they need to be. You do not want to have strings rubbing on fret immortalized on a costly recording not to mentioned rendering it useless. So be sure to have the action and intonation adjusted on both the guitars and basses as necessary.
Be sure to have left yourself at least a little bit of time to get comfortable with any of the modifications.
Additionally guitars should have new strings and drums should have new drumheads. Be sure to allow for enough advanced time that they are stretched in before the session. We do not want them stretching out of tune during the recording. Any cracks in any of the cymbals should be attended to advance as well.
Lastly, in the event that you will be using your own amps make sure the guitar and bass amps are operating properly.
When you finally have everything together, you will have to make the determination about how many songs to include on your album. We detail what goes into that decision in this great article. You can read it here!
In Conclusion
This has all been just a collection of thoughts and strategies intended to inform you and to impart some basic sense of confidence in what it is you are doing and what it is that you may need to do next.
As I’ve said before don’t be afraid to take a moment to stop and smell the roses. Sometimes in doing so we give ourselves a chance to remember how cool it is to get to have an opportunity to be doing something like this. Not to mention how lucky it is that you have been as true to yourself as you’ve needed to be to find your path to this particular to intersection.
Take a minute to feel free and indulge in the enthusiasm and maybe just maybe that very enthusiasm will seep itself into the fabric of the music that you are presently creating. If by some off chance that that enthusiasm becomes something of a tangible part of the recording, then wouldn’t that just be fantastic.
For now there is still a lot to be done…
So go and get to it.
Goodluck