What goes around comes around...
One thing that I have experienced since this thread was active was another case of "arrangement charts" similar to what Harvey takes about in post #24.
In the new studio we just finished a pretty major full album project (major as in the amount of effort put into it by all involved, not major as in a famous chart-buster
). All production/arrangement was done by my associate, Steve, who used his own version of charts very similar to what Harvey shows here; but had an additional and somewhat different, but very useful purpose.
Steve uses them a little like a combination of call sheets and storyboards in a movie production; he uses them to help plan studio use and scheduling (when is the bass player needed for tracking on what songs, where do we need to record the choir [yes, there was an 8-person choir used], etc.), to help remind us of what to expect- i.e. what is coming in the mix as far as "competing tracks" - and as a checklist to make sure we didn't forget to get anything, etc.
If one is recording just one song with three instrument parts, this may not be so necessary. But this was a 10-song project incorporating the usual suspects along with a choir, a horn, and several orchestral and other keyboard accompaniments, many of them session players or guest artists with conflicting schedules and needs over a three-month period, and these sheets were a very nice way of keeping things in order.
G.
