The Basic Recording Process

Decide what music to record

Original or Cover tunes

If you are recording music that you have written, then all you have to do is decide which songs to record. If you are recording music written by others then you have a couple of things to consider:

Song rights
To record and release someone else’s music (that’s doing a “cover”) you need to purchase a “mechanical reproduction license”. These are easy to get – contact the artist’s publisher. Typically you pay a small amount per song per unit. For instance: if you record 3 songs by the latest star and you sell 500 CDs you may pay $0.10 x 3 songs x 500 = $150.00

Getting the background music
You may need to locate sheet music for the song. If you cannot locate sheet music but you have a recording you can hire a musician to listen to the recording and reproduce it in the studio (which will typically cost more). Your studio can often help locate a musician suitable to do this.
You may be able to find a pre-recorded backing track without the lead vocal. Give this to your studio engineer to merge with your singing.

Record the instruments and singers

There are many different ways to approach recording and to a large degree the best choice is different for different artists.

Backing tracks

An economical way to record a singer is to purchase backup tracks – pre-recorded music without a lead vocal. Your studio engineer transfers the backup track into his recording system, records the singer, and then blends them together into your final product. While economical, you have no option to change any part of the music to better suit the singer and the final sound is not quite as realistic as having a real band.

Studio musicians

A studio musician is a player or singer with strong skills and significant experience in the recording studio. Being a good live player does not mean that you can be a good studio musician. While it can be costly to hire a studio musician, you will save money on studio time – the studio musician will do an excellent job and do it in less time.

Self-accompanying

It is a rewarding experience to play your own instruments for a recording. Depending on your skill level and experience it can also drive you crazy. Be prepared to play over and over and over again to get it “just right”. After all, YOU have to live with the recording for the rest of your life.

The Process

Some musicians will rehearse a piece until they know it so well that they can play the whole thing without the other players in their group. They will then send one player into the recording booth at a time, record their part, the next player goes in after, listens to the first part on headphones and plays his part and so on.

Other groups must have all the players in the same room at the same time (the Rolling Stones do this) because they have a real energy when playing together and they don't want to lose it in the recording process.

And then there are various in-between approaches, where certain key players play at the same time and others play later. There is a balancing act when recording and the two sides that compete with each other are:

Capturing the "live" energy vs. Clean tracks of each instrument and ability to fix mistakes

Some professional studio musicians are so talented that, as a group, they can go through a song 3-4 times and one of them will be close to perfect. Then there is the rest of us who need to rely on being able to re-do certain parts. We have to live with this recording for the rest of our lives and having to hear that same mistake over and over again it just too much to bear!

One other note, having instruments recorded individually means that you will not hear the other instruments in the background of the track. For instance, if I play my guitar and sing at the same time the microphone for my voice will also pick some of the guitar and the microphone on the guitar will also pick of some of my voice. If I hit a wrong note either singing or playing and want to go back and fix it, well, I can, but I may still hear a "ghost" of the bad note coming through on the other track.

Mix the recording

Recording various instruments and voices on separate tracks (multi-tracking) provides flexibility, allowing one to re-do mistakes in one part without having to play all the other parts over again. If the bass player hits a wrong note, he can just replay that section by himself while listening to the other pre-recorded parts on headphones.

The recordings that you buy in the stores (or download from the Internet) are not in a multi-track format. They are in a 2-track (stereo) format, one track for each ear. Mixing is the art of blending multiple tracks down into 2 tracks.

When budgeting time for a recording project, allow a similar amount of time for mixing as you do for the actual recording.

Mastering the mixed-down recording

Mastering can be described as putting the "finish" on a recording. The final mix is smoothed by balancing the low, midrange, and high parts of its sound, making it ready for radio-play and pressing CDs. When producing an album, mastering also allows the songs to be placed in a specified order and balances the volumes of each song to make sure the listener of the final product does not have to turn the volume up and down while listening.

The mastering process can often make or break a recording - this is not an area to skimp (or skip!)

Duplicate the final product for distribution

Once your project is mastered you are ready for mass production. If you are releasing a CD this means that besides duplicating you need to think about printing an album cover, CD inserts, and CD cases and possibly shrink wrapping.

There are many small duplicating companies that will do short-run duplicating onto CD-R’s, allowing you to manufacture your final product in small batches as needed.

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