Only one short tip

Keep a few of your 2 year old's toys in the studio... if drummers don't have something to play with, they will either start asking questions or start touching stuff in the studio. They prefer things with large letters and bright colors.

Velvet Elvis
 
Make certain whatever you're about to record sounds great before you record it.

Sounds simple, but it's amazing how many crappy sounding sources (bad drum heads, tuning, instruments with old strings, cabs with rattles, amps with hums and buzzes, singers with poor pitch or mic technique) get recorded first, then the mics, preamps, compressors, mixers, recorders, engineers, and studios get blamed for the way the crappy sources sound.

Garbage in, garbage out.
 
Take the bells from around your cats neck and throw them away. Those little fuckers have ruined many a decent take for me:)


no, really, let your mind be open to new ideas that you may not have tried before. You will be surprised at the results . . . or horrified! either way, it is fun! peace
 
Actually one of the best things I've learned...

Perfection can kill emotion...

There are too many times that I've tried to go back and "redo" scratch tracks because I thought I could get a better sound etc...

Well... usually I did get a better sound, but the performance lacked the feel of the original run... and most of the time I wound up restoring the original take from backup tapes etc and using it.

Velvet Elvis
 
headphones "cans" and mixing rarely mix, don't do it, it's weird anyway ;)

keep beer close for upset insecure musicans, eh, pissed techs also...

oh yeah, rec flat and at spec eq, then, screw it up later :D
 
Think about where the amp is in the room.

"Why does the guitar sound so boomy?"
"Ummm...because it's booming in the room..."

Sometimes recording quieter and with less distortion can sound a hell of a lot better.

Oh yeah, if you can't sing....don't.
 
One of the most useful things to do is... being CURIOUS about recording, and asking questions, which you already are, so keep doing that and you will find what you need. People love to help.
 
I'll piggy-back a comment onto my one earlier about keeping scratch tracks...

Here it goes..

Always record with the intent of keeping the track (IE - spend time to get the sound RIGHT even if you think its going to be a scratch track... you just never know what you might end up keeping).

Velvet Elvis
 
sae,

On the last band project I did (national release even), I wound up keeping 2 or 3 bass scratch tracks, some acoustic scratch tracks and even a couple guitar solos that I had done on previous takes... And that was even AFTER I tried to redo them thinking I could get them better.

If it sounds good... use it :)


Velvet Elvis
 
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