The Debut Album Studio Recording Experience, Part II: Self-Producing the Session

Traditionally, the musical performance in a studio recording is viewed as the most important part when making an album. Musicians often put so much weight into their own performance that they entirely ignore their responsibilities as a producer. Since most debut album artists have no budget to hire another producer, this article will concentrate on self-production. Nevertheless, the performance – acoustic with real instruments or virtual with MIDI equipment or both – is the nuts and bolts of the recording, and its importance cannot be overrated.

The technical part of recording, or capture, is often considered the territory of the engineer, but as a conscious musician, you want to make sure there are no surprises ahead. You may after all choose to mix and master in a different studio, and need to make sure your recording is technically compatible between all the studios in which you work.

Ask the engineer what "DAW" (Digital Audio Workstation) the studio uses – Pro Tools, Digital Performer or Logic Pro – or if it records on digital multitrack tape. While digital formats such as DTRS and ADAT are transferrable to computer for editing and mixing without quality deterioration, don't settle for analog tape as your only recording source. This is simply because analog tapes are expensive and therefore, if rented as it used to be common, often old and worn out from years of use. Also, don't believe in the hype that digital recording would sound harsh and all analog would be "warm" and great. That statement was originally based on a lack of quality in early digital equipment, however, today's digital recording and processing techniques are of high quality, flexible and very reliable.

The bit rate of a CD and most Download Masters is 16 Bit and the sampling rate 44.1 KHz. Don't worry about what these numbers mean, just recognize that this is your final format. Ask the engineer to record in 24 Bit and either 44.1 or 88.2 KHz, not 48 or 96 KHz which are used by the film industry. Conversion from 48 to 44.1 KHz wouldn't be bad, but the idea is to avoid extra steps whenever possible. Keep it simple and straight-forward.

Ask the engineer to simultaneously make a two-track mix of everything recorded, and burn it on a CD-R with index marks between every take. You will want to listen to each take before choosing which takes to mix, and possibly choose editing points if any one take is not working out as such. This will save you a lot of listening time in the mixing studio. When mixing, you will want to be entirely familiar with everything you recorded, and also all possible performance related problems.

When ready to record, at the risk of stating the obvious, make sure everyone has the sheet music to each song. If jamming and spontaneous playing are common in rehearsals, try not to eliminate or especially interrupt them, but instead keep them under control by telling what's next. To overcome the fact that you will end up playing the same song many times, try to think of your session as a gig, where the audience demands your songs over and over again! Don't worry if someone made a mistake during the previous take, just keep playing, and take it as if it was all meant to be. When you have two or three versions, move on to the next song. Try to be non-judgmental at this point; there's plenty of opportunity to be self-critical later.

The engineer keeps log of everything recorded, so don't go to the control room between every take or even every tune to check how it sounded. By listening every 75 or 90 minutes, you'll save a lot of time, and you'll get an advantage of hearing back a song which you didn't play last. If it's about a small thing you'd like to verify, just ask the engineer to quickly play it back in the headphones, and then move on right away. You can even ask your sidemen to take off the headphones while you check. This saves on their concentration for the next task.

After the session is over, be prepared to take all material with you in a hard drive. Make sure you bring an empty hard drive to the session, not the one with your photo library and video camera scratch files. This may be your only copy of the recording, although many studios keep a safety copy for some time. When you get home, if you have a computer, make two safety copies of everything, and leave them untouched until your recording is finished and released.

Mika Pohjola has recorded over thirty albums as a leader, in studios of all sizes.