Thursday, September 17, 2009

Recording Advice

Q: My band is recording our first EP in a couple of weeks. Could you please share any insight on how you prepare to perform your guitar parts in the high pressure, clock ticking environment of the recording studio? I don't mean engineering advice, but performance/guitarist tips or even mentality. So far I've been woodshedding the most difficult guitar parts I have to pull off (two shred solos) at home. I record myself, listen back and work specifically on the parts that get sloppy. I play them out of time, then with a slow metronome speed, and then finally up to speed with my goal being to eliminate unwanted noises and to play each note clearly in tune and in time.

A: If this is your first time in the studio, it will be an eye opener. Since the session is your own, there are different thing to consider as opposed to a session for someone else. In some ways it is a lot less pressure, because after all the time is your own and not somebody else’s. Things you might want to think about besides your guitar parts:
1. Get the endings and intros straight before hand. Rehearse your band and figure out how you want to end the songs. Live endings and recorded endings are usually different. Live endings, you bash out a chord and your drummer does a fill and you end it and he play another drum fill. In the studio, you usually don't do live endings that way. Have a listen to various studio recordings and check out how the bands end the songs. For reference, here is two versions of one of my songs, check out the endings. You’ll have to click on the titles of the songs individually but there are four live version songs of songs that appeared on my second CD, compare them and see.

Have a listen to “House on the Hill,” and “Tell me A Story” here:


http://magnatune.com/artists/albums/bigbadsun-strange/

and then have a listen to the studio cuts here:


http://magnatune.com/artists/albums/juergenson-badsun/

You would be surprised how much time gets sucked in the studio on intros and endings so try to get it straight a head of time or you'll end up rehearsing on studio time.


2. Rehearse your band with a click track. If you guys can't play to a click, you will also suck time trying to get in sync. This goes for your guitar parts as well, practice them to a click or rhythm track, this will help you lock in when the time comes.

3. Figure out how to play without any effects on your guitar. Ambient effects definitely come after you record your part so get used to doing it that way. You can use distortion, just make sure you turn it on at the very last second because it is noisy. As it is your time, the engineer might not say anything about you bringing delay or reverb but it will ruin your sound possibly and maybe even make your part unusable if your delay rhythm is different than the song tempo. It is much better to record dry.


4. Get you headphone mix right before hand. Since you have to play dry, have the engineer send you back your guitar mix wet. I sometimes have him send it back really wet, even wetter than I would have him mix it, but this can make it very easy to record. Don’t forget, what effects he sends back to you in your headphones, doesn’t stay in the mix. If you are not sure how to describe what you want, and you are used to playing with a wet sound, just ask him to send it back with about 700 ms and two or three repeats. Maybe have him give you one channel dry guitar and one channel effects on your little groovy headphone mixer and you can mix it there yourself.


5. Try to record Drums, Bass and guitar together. You can throw away the guitar track later so it doesn’t matter if you screw up or not. Your guitar part is just to help your drummer and bassist keep track of where they are in the tune. If you are using a vocalist, it also helps to have him sing as well just to keep everybody true to the form. As I said you can scratch the tracks later and redo them. If you don’t have any booths, you can record your scratch track direct. You bass player will most likely get recorded direct anyways so you can all be in the room with the drummer this way. You can of course move your amp into a booth if there is one but as you are throwing away the track anyways, it doesn’t make much difference. When you record your guitar part (the one you are going to keep), if you have a big room, you can be in there with your amp. I tend to record this way a lot. It helps if you keep the amp far away from you because the loud amp can overwhelm your headphone mix leading a variety of problems. You should definitely practice through the amp you will be recording with because if you practice through something else, the difference in tone might be enough to throw you off.


6. As far as getting nervous, there is no real reason to. As I said, it is your project and your studio time so you shouldn’t feel pressured. The time you should feel pressured is when you are recording for a pain in the ass producer who wants the perfect guitar part done in ten minutes. But if you are having a real hard time getting it together, just simplify. It might help to prepare a simpler part ahead of time if you really need to be out quickly. If worst comes to worst, record the other parts for all the songs minus the guitar solos first, because you can always do your guitar parts after the fact without your band there to bug you. So even if you need an extra day, you can knock out your tracks in one day.

7. If it is a pre-written part, make sure you have it 120 percent down because you lose about 20 percent because of nerves.


Hope this helps,
-CJ

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Guitar playing is an art and not everyone is a gifted guitarist. This article is devoted to all those guitar lovers who have at some point of their life or the other, experienced a deep desire to learn playing guitar. Well, guitar learning is not as difficult as people say it is. http://www.ultimateguitarschool.com/