General Question - order of recording and how

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KevinDrummer

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I've had some limited experience in the studio, but I want to ask how most of you lay down your tracks. I know it varies with the situation - but can you generalize about the majority of the stuff you've done?

Say its a band with an original song. I assume you want to get the drums down first. How do you accomplish this. Do you have the drummer play with phones along to a scratch track the band records all together live? Or a click track hoping he can remember all his parts without any context? If you have him play along with the band, how do you achieve isolation of the kit in a "size challenged" studio?

Is the typical order drums, bass, guitar, vocals?
 
if i'm recording other people, i generally like to record the bass and drums together as those two instruments really need to be in the groove with one another.

if the bass player and/or drummer need a point of referance for vocals, i might have the singer do a scratch vocal in a different room.

then generally a scratch guitar, the lead vocal, then the guitars, synths, guitar synths or whatever else you wanna add...

If i'm recording myself, i start with a scatch vocal & guitar track played to a click and then add the drums and continue the process from there...
 
glimmer_doll said:
if i'm recording other people, i generally like to record the bass and drums together as those two instruments really need to be in the groove with one another.

if the bass player and/or drummer need a point of referance for vocals, i might have the singer do a scratch vocal in a different room.

then generally a scratch guitar, the lead vocal, then the guitars, synths, guitar synths or whatever else you wanna add...

If i'm recording myself, i start with a scatch vocal & guitar track played to a click and then add the drums and continue the process from there...
Click to expand...

I assume you either run the bass in a different room or go DI?
 
KevinDrummer said:
I assume you either run the bass in a different room or go DI?
Click to expand...
yeah, generally the bass is DI. Sometimes if needed i will re-amp it later...
 
My general way of doing things:

1.) Set up drums, get a good tune on them, place and experiment with mics, run a few short test tracks to see if the drummer is digging it, make adjustments until satisfied.

2.) Meanwhile the guitarist plugs into a POD and the bassist goes direct thru a preamp to the mixer. Singer gets a microphone in another room. Bassist and guitarist in control room with me. Headphones to drummer and singer, bassist and guitarist go off the control room monitor.

3.) Lay drum tracks plus recording "scratch" vocals, bass and guitar to get the best band energy and performance out of the drum. The scratch tracks also clue you in to if something is grooving or not, if it is in time, tempo etc...

4.) After we've laid down a number of takes for each song I have the band audition them and choose the ones to develop. This goes on until we have the takes we want.

5.) Any digital editing of drums that needs to take place occurs now except in cases of time cues for intros, etc....

6.) Tear down drums while setting up bass. I will have the bass setup to have a cabinet w/ mics and DI signal. Get sound for bass, lay tracks. (I lay bass before guitar to make sure the rhythm section is working out good, also so the bass can be the low end moreso than the guitar as guitarists are less likely to want a bass heavy sound if the bass guitar is in there first.) When satisfied delete bass scratch track.

7.) Make sure bass sound is 'happening' and lay bass tracks. Bassist is in control room monitoring. When done tear down and set up guitar amps for distorted guitar tracks.

8.) Get guitar sound by miking cabinet and doing some tests with the drums/bass tracks. When guitarist is happy roll tape.

9.) Set up for acoustic, lead or clean electric sounds similar to above.

10.) Delete guitar scratch tracks.

11.) Track additional instruments if necessary--often times synthesizer or sampler sounds.

12.) Prepare for doing main vocals. Test a number of dynamic or condsener mics to see which ones sound what way for that singer. Choose mics with singer by running short tests over the recorded audio. Choose mics for each song and write them down if using more than one mic during the session.

13.) Lay vocal tracks. Get earplugs for me if singer sucks. Do a ton of punch ins to get it as good as possible. Possibly let them record entire takes and cut/paste the good parts into a master 'comp' vocal and then go back after a few passes to fill in the weak part holes. Double vocals if necessary.

14.) Lay background vocals in similar fashion.

15.) Have a long mix session a few days later.

16.) Have long mastering session a few days after that.

In general this process takes 2-10 days depending on the number of songs and the degree of perfection the band wants to take. I try to find out from the onset exactly what they are striving for and prepare them ahead of time for what we are doing with a tenative schedule and expected hours to complete the project (not barring the inability of the band to get their parts down correctly because they suck).

Hope this helps.
 
curse these double posts.

we need some sort of cap on the number of visitors on the site at one time...those non-contributing bastards are clogging the server...

ok...enough rant, back to the music
 
glimmer_doll said:
curse these double posts.

we need some sort of cap on the number of visitors on the site at one time...those non-contributing bastards are clogging the server...

ok...enough rant, back to the music
Click to expand...

That would be me, so far! I think I can conribute, though - I'm fairly intelligent and have some experience with certain aspects of home recording.

And thanks so much to CloneBoy for the detailed post. Anyone else have differing opinions/experience?
 
KevinDrummer said:
That would be me, so far! I think I can conribute, though - I'm fairly intelligent and have some experience with certain aspects of home recording.
Click to expand...
well, you are at least a registered user...i'm talking about the unregistered people who usually seem to vastly outnumber the registered users

there should be some sort of registered user bandwidth priority or something. Not that i'm complaining about this free & totally awesome site, i'm just throwin ideas out there...ok, this is getting waaay off topic...
 
I forgot to mention that if you are recording 'on the clock' for a client it makes sense to clean as you go and delete hums, hiss and any extraneous noise you won't want at mixdown with every spare moment you get. One of the huge advantages any visual DAW or hard disk environment.
 
When ever possible I try to record the whole band live for final takes and then do overdubs or replace any parts that were not good enough. I will not throw away the origianl part until I have one I know if better. Many times people play much better live with the band than they could ever play in overdubs.
 
My order is similar to Cloneboy, but I record a complete scratch track, then record drums over it, followed by guitar, then bass... vocals last. I like Cloneboys idea though, I think i'll give that a try this weekend... probably saves some time too.
 
When i recorded my friend's band, they recorded the drums first while playing their instruments/vocals through a mixer and everyone wore headphones. i was skeptical at first, but it seemed to work out pretty well. Then they recorded bass/guitar/vocals whenever we had the time.
 
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