I’m sure that you have wondered many times how can you be more productive in your home studio and work faster.Saying faster I mean how can you finish your song without skipping some important steps of the production.
As I told you before , a song’s production has three phases: Pre-production(the structure of the song,arrangement ideas,tempo, and more details that we have to prepare before getting into the phase of production.Today, we’ll talk more detailed about this phase recording a song.
You have set everything done about the song you are about to record.You have the right structure,you have come up with some fantastic arrangement and instrumentation ideas and you are ready to get started.I have some tips and techniques to suggest that will help you to be more productive in your home studio.
First of all,you start with your midi recordings .You have to choose the right vst instruments to record a piano, a strings ensemble or a drum kit ,if you don’t have the facilities to record a natural one.We live in a privileged time and thanks to technology we have a DAW ,where we have 16 midi tracks and we can record countless takes on every single track and it’s better to be prepared and rehearse on what we are going to record.What do I mean by that? Let’s say,you want to record a piano for you song and you start recording,erasing,recording,erasing and so on until we have the “perfect” performance. Because of this advantage and the huge strage space we have in our computers ,we can easily shift our focus and keep recording this instrument for hours or a whole week. It’s better if you rehearse the parts you are going to record ,so you can have very soon the “right” performance in your recordings. You must set time boundaries for your recordings and you must be very confident that you will make it.It’s very easy to correct some little mistakes in the editing phase.
And now it’s time for your audio recordings.You have made some decisions on the instruments you are about to record on this song.For example acoustic ,electric guitar, bass and vocals. You have configured your input levels to get the best possible recordings.Let’s say you have scheduled to record an electric guitar,but you aren’t a guitar player yourself and that’s why you have called a friend to help you out.As I told you before ,we can record countless takes of each instrument and you can spend many hours and days on recording one single instrument.For this reason I suggest to schedule a rehearse with your friend before recording day.You can also record a demo of the song and send him by e mail just to practice the parts he’s going to record on his own. In that way he’s going to be more prepared for the recording day.You’ve got to remember that your time in your home studio is very limited and very valuable too.If you have two hours or three to record ,you have to get these recordings done as soon as possible! Important! You have to set how many takes of every instrument you are going to record on this electric guitar.You have to be accurate and let your friend know how many takes he’s going to record and that you haven’t the whole day to spend on this recording. If you apply this rule to your home studio,it will help you in the editing phase,because you won’t have to search for the best parts in seven or more takes of each instrument.This will make you work much easier and faster.In that way you motivate the musician to perform faster and stay focus.You have to keep on recording with the rest of the instruments on this way.If you have to record bass , for example, you have to rehearse the parts you are about to record, if you plug the bass directly to your audio interface or you will record it through an amp.I suggest to record a guide track or rehearse with the musicians before recording so you can always be on schedule.
Technology gives us the advantage to have a DAW and storage space ,to record our songs in our houses and to have all we need for editing mixing our music and share it to the world. This advantage sometimes makes us lazy.Yes,my friend! The advantage to have countless takes ,makes us to spend more time on recording an instrument and the result you get is a never ending project!I will tell you something that you may already know.You won’t be perfect! At least for now!You will never be satisfied with your recordings.There will be always something missing from your sound recordings.That’s why you have to set boundaries to your recordings.
In mixing you can play with your plug ins, with the insert and sends effects,you can try which compressor you can use on guitars or on vocals.You can also spend countless hours on testing which eq is the best for every single instrument until you get the best sound recording,something that’s very wrong! We’ll dive in eq more detailed in next blog posts, tips and tutorials on how to use the eq correctly.You have to apply the motto “Less is more” and stay focus on your goals. If you don’t have a schedule you will never get your songs done!