How do be studio ready? Well, have you ever been to a recording studio? Recorded tracks in a studio? Maybe you haven’t? Maybe you’d like to? Or maybe you already have. Did you feel like you weren’t quite ready for what to expect once the track started rolling? Something that can be a surprise to find out is that most songs are not recorded live any longer.

Surprise!

It’s not just, hit record, play your instrument, sing your song, done. Each little nuance is dissected and placed into their own singular digital track by lead instrument, lead vocal melody, harmony, and all the other beautiful instruments and sounds. Each are recorded individually. Generally you begin with a skeleton (initial) track with the basics recorded to the click. This little tick-tock of monster is so essential to the recording process these days. If you aren’t able to play to this with ease, and find the BPM (beats per measure), you’re basically going to waste your precious and valuable time in the studio. But if you can come in, knock it out in five minutes, then you can begin the layering process. Since people often times are so busy, it ends up being so much easier to record in pieces.

Busy life? Take it in pieces.

Once you get the lead instrument (like guitar or piano) recorded to the click, then you can add the lead melody vocals. After that it’s a breeze to add drums, and other amazing sounds like electric guitar, bass, glockenspiel, trumpets, I mean you name it, it’s so much better to be able to record separately, and mix those sounds to be absolutely clear and resound spectacularly just in where they need to be within your ear. Does that make any sense? Each song you hear on the radio has probably been puzzled together piece by piece until the perfect project is complete. It’s quite a journey to finally get to that serene land of musical paradise dancing through your ear buds. All this is to say, that in order to make your life much, much easier and stress free, you need to be prepared in advance with all these things in mind. You can of course, record with no little metronome, but it’s not considered the professional way to do things. Here are some other good questions to considered before coming into the recording studio.

One. How many tracks you want to record? For example, do you just want one song, or are you wanting to record an entire album? Two. Will you be playing all of your own instruments? Or need the studio to hire musicians? This will definitely add to the cost if the studio finds musicians to play on your tracks. Three. Will you need any mixing, mastering, or post production work? This means, for example, a very simple example, is on your vocals, you probably don’t just want them dry. You probably want a little reverb and compression on them. Not too much to make them not sound like you of course, but a lil’ somethin’ to accentuate their already naturally lovely sound. Four. Do you need the song(s) immediately? Like, record all at once or spread out? For example, book the studio for a day or two straight. Or in contrast, you could do a few sessions here and there. Five. Really think about how much time do you think you will need to complete the project. If you’ve practiced in advance, and are sure about all the placements  of instruments and harmonies in advance, you could probably come in a be done in less than 8 hours. I’ve seen twenty two 7th and 8th graders for a school project come into the recording studio in one day, and record and complete an entire song (Click to see our blog post about them!). They were studio ready. And those are good things to think about. Do you know what you want the ending results to sound like? Or do you need a little more guidance from the producers at the studio. I hope this information helps you in your preparation for recording! Come see us!