Best tips for working with musicians?

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phlopip

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Tomorrow im doing my first lot of recording with people other than myself. Luckily for me they are all friends which makes it easier. However if it goes well i hope to record others. Do you guys have any tips on working with muscicians/ bands to get the best results?
 
phlopip said:
Tomorrow im doing my first lot of recording with people other than myself. Luckily for me they are all friends which makes it easier. However if it goes well i hope to record others. Do you guys have any tips on working with muscicians/ bands to get the best results?
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run away. :cool:



:D

In my case, a one room studio so I'd mic up the drums and run everything else (including guitars) DI.
I'd keep the drum and bass tracks and have the guitar dudes come in with their real takes...ie...miced up with their sound.
Last would be the singer (s)

Don't let the band do the mixing. :)

Play to a click. ;)
 
have a destination in mind and a plan on how to get there...

meaning, try to hear what the final product sounds like in your head and aim for that ideal if possible.

how do the guitars, bass, drums, vox, etc... sound in your head? what genre is the song? how should it sound in comparison with other songs in the same genre?

these types of questions...

also if you can setup some kind of process workflow or idea of what your tracking and when that will also help.

ie) first drums, then bass, R Gtr, vox, overdubs and leads, etc...

try to find the most important elements of the song and highlight them.

and most importantly make sure the musicians your recording are well rehearsed :D
 
Be prepared for all eventualities. Be prepared for tantrums, improvisation, ideas, suggestions, ignorance, know all~ness, aggresion, passivity, irresponsibility, debate/argument, pleasant surprizes, lacklustre playing, power struggles, power cuts, shit hot music.....
 
themdla said:
and most importantly make sure the musicians your recording are well rehearsed :D
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I can't stress this enough. It's also really helpful to have them rehearse to a click if that is the way you will plan on recording them. Some musicians have trouble doing this when they get into the studio.
 
phlopip said:
Luckily for me they are all friends which makes it easier.
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I hope you're right... I suspect it may make it harder because you may not want to tell them what they need to be told, or they may not want to hear you tell them what they need to be told.

Good luck - keep extraneous people (and that's anyone not actually currently being recorded) out of the studio...

Let us know how it goes!:D
 
Be the boss, when I was recording in a band eons ago we went to one studio where the engineer was a really nice guy, but too quiet. We went on a Saturday and Sunday, whole band on Sat, just me and the singer on Sunday. Essentially everything was done on the Sunday. The singer and I wrote all the stuff and knew what we wanted, redid half the shit that was done on the Saturday. Then we went to a big studio in Toronto, large money. The engineer was THE BOSS, no bullshit. We got way more accomplished. His bottom line was: you're paying whether you fuck around and get nothing done or we actually do something. So I'm good either way.
 
phlopip said:
Tomorrow im doing my first lot of recording with people other than myself. Luckily for me they are all friends which makes it easier. However if it goes well i hope to record others. Do you guys have any tips on working with muscicians/ bands to get the best results?
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DISTRACTION IS INEVITABLE. So distract the distractions...

Find who the ringleader is. There's always one. Sometimes there's another one who thinks he is (ahem Lead Guitar guy), but usually its the guy that writes the stuff. Egos dictate that in all bands "everybody writes their own parts" so yeah yeah whatever Mr Drum solo, you write it too... but who's song idea is it? Yeah sure we wrote this music based on the snare drum part. Point being, you can always tell who is the brains behind the track you are working on. Maybe different tracks have a different visionary in the band. So much the better. For whichever track, that guy is your ally and the rest of them are talented distractions with delicate egos.

Get the band leader/visionary/whatever to know that you are serious and the band will take it more seriously and not be distractions. Give them something to do when you aren't immediately working with them. Everybody wants their part to sound awesome. It takes a lot more time to mic a drum kit than a guitar amp, so that will mean a bored guitarist. I there's nothing else for him to do you'll hear all of his "helpful" advice on the drum sound and get stuck answering all of his irrelevant questions designed to make himself seem like he knows what you are trying to do. Yay. Mom loves when the kids help in the kitchen. If there's something else for him to do (my old studio I worked at had a playstation in the lobby, as well as a vending machine with heinekin and some small side practice rooms where people could go and noodle or write or jam together or sing two part harmony practice or whatever they wanted to do)

Musicians often bring their curious girlfriend or buddy too and the party atmosphere begins. Personally I don't care, keeps them out of the way while I work with the ringleader and whichever guy is on the spot for the current part we are working on. If I am spending an hour with the drummer, I am more than happy if the guitarist and bassist want to hang out and have a beer with their entourage. Bands get bored easily. Give them a lolipop or something.
 
All joking aside (although they are all true in that way that causes stereotypes to exist, nobody is actually THAT bad)

When doing session work as a player, instead of being on the engineering side,, distraction comes easier and easier as the session drags on. Smoke break.... listen back... another smoke brake... Plug in headphones... smoke break... go to bathroom... smoke break... record a take... smoke break... An afternoon session kills me on cigarettes by the end of it if I am not busy.

Use your friends as extra hands. Help you by switching cables, moving mic stands around while you sit at desk listening for sweet spots and giving directions. Get them to contribute even if its just grunt tasks, that's less grunt tasks for you to keep having to run back and forth doing while they sit bored waiting for you to do the more technical stuff. Suddenly, the time between smoke breaks doesn't shorten so much. In group projects, nobody wants to be the one doing nothing. If its recording a song or raising a barn, everyone wants to be involved when everyone else is. Yay! Now you have a group of appendages obeying your every master engineer command while you can sit back and work on the stuff that will bore them and not have to keep running back and forth between desk and room.

But beer and a Lava lamp work too I guess, just not as efficient, and they don't discourage smoke breaks either.
 
Besides all the technical stuff... have fun. That really cannot be stressed enough because it's all about feel. I had a rehearsal tonight and we laughed our brains out.

I've noticed that when I wake up, I'm more "on it" for about the first 4 hours. So if I have a gig or recording, if I can, I take a nap before the gig. Nothin' like taking a nap and when you wake up your gear is all packed and you just take a shower and go to the gig, and you've only been awake an hour or two when you start playing, instead of being in hour #13 starting out. I can't always do that but when I can that's the best.
 
buzzard bass said:
The engineer was THE BOSS, no bullshit. We got way more accomplished. His bottom line was: you're paying whether you fuck around and get nothing done or we actually do something. So I'm good either way.
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This is imperative.

Oh, and one other thing, best summed up in a joke:

Q: What do you call someone who hangs out with musicians?

A: A drummer.
 
Especially with friends it needs to be established that this is work and your friendship gets put on hold. When people work together on artistic things, they get attached. If you establish early that friendship has nothing to do with the creation process, you'll be ahead in the long run.

Tell them that you will only answer to one person in the band. Have them decide. That way you aren't taking "orders" from 5-6 "producers." Who has the clearest vision? Who has the best ears? Who can communicate the best in the group? If they can't/won't decide you can either tell them your done until they do, or you will decide.

Positive reinforcement goes farther than negative feedback. "Hey, that was a great take! Let's try it one more time, but this time, can you hold out that last word of the chorus." Will get you better results than "Well, that would have been great if you had done this . . . "

Once you have the mics set, and your sounds ready, HAVE FUN!!!! It's like anything else; you have to work to get to the fun. But when you do get to the fun, let it all hang out.



just my $.02
 
My general guideline: Don't let concerns about recording fidelity get in the way of letting a musician perform they way they want.

If a drummer says he hates click tracks, the band doesn't get a click track.
If the bass player and drummer say they work best recording together with the rumble of the bass loud and present in the room, you say "screw the bleed" and go with it.
If the singer has no vibe with a pair of headphones, give him two speakers that are loud as hell right in his face to simulate a concert setting and live with the sonic consequences.

I have done all of the above and more. The absolute most important thing to the sonic quality of a recording is a musician in the right frame of mind... Keep in mind that might mean you have to intentionally piss them off if it is a pissed off song. But for the most part it is keeping the mechanics of recording out of their way and letting them perform.
 
dintymoore said:
For me, friendship has everything to do with it.
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Well, yes. Maybe I wasn't clear. The recording and creating process cannot interfere with a friendship. "Dude, I think we should retrack that solo." "But I love that solo, it was so awesome!" And all of a sudden, friends are fighting outside of the studio because of artistic differences. Or you, when you mix, cut out a part that someone was in love with, and they're mad at you on a personal level. I was just advocating the compartmentalization of life. Yes, playing music with friends is where it's at, but letting that process ruin friends sucks.
 
Just don't let them get all Kissee Kissee on ya. :D

Recording fiends? Make sure they pay up in advance. :rolleyes:










:cool:
 
guitarplayr82 said:
I can't stress this enough. It's also really helpful to have them rehearse to a click if that is the way you will plan on recording them. Some musicians have trouble doing this when they get into the studio.
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Excellent advice! I wish the guy who first recorded me had suggested this. I didn't even know there was such a thing as a click track....so of course I had trouble trying to play with incessant clicking in my head. I'm getting more used to it, but still find it a challenge.
 
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