As to the studio thing, let me first relate a little analogy from a book by one of my favorite authors, Terry Pratchett. If you haven’t read him, you should, he’s hilarious.

Anyway, one of his characters is a guardsman. While the author is talking about the guardsman, he also says something very enlightening about his boots. Let’s say we have two guardsmen, one from a poor family, with a wife and kids to feed at home. He buys $20.00 boots. Our other guardsman is from a wealthy family, with no wife and kids, and he buys $200.00 boots. $20.00 boots last about a year, if you are willing to walk around with holes in the soles for the last six months or so, because $20.00 boots come with crummy soles, and are not worth re-soling. New soles would cost almost as much as new boots.

$200.00 boots, on the other hand, will last a lifetime, if properly cared for. Anytime they need new soles, they are certainly worth it, because they are good quality boots, and cost much less to re-sole than replace. Also, the original soles, and consequently the replacements, are of much better quality, and will last maybe three or four years.

So, over the course of a twenty-year career, the guy with the $20.00 pair of boots buys 20 pair, for a total of $400.00. The guy with the $200.00 pair of boots buys one pair, plus maybe six re-soles. Let’s say re-soles cost $15.00 apiece. This brings his total to $290.00.

Not only does the guy with the cheap boots pay more, he also walks around with wet feet half the time, because of the holes.

How does this relate to studios, you may be asking? Well, it’s surprisingly simple, once you think about it, but it took me awhile to figure it out, too.

Over here in Studio A, you have a guy that is charging $25.00 an hour. Over there in Studio B, you have a guy that is charging $75.00 an hour. (A mid level rate, although it may seem low to those of you in New York or LA)

Why the difference? Is our man in Studio A just too stupid to realize what he could be charging for studio time? Maybe he’s just a humanitarian, and wants to help us poor musicians? Probably not. (But if you meet one of the humanitarians, let me know).

Probably the reason Studio A is less expensive is because he has less experience, less and/or inferior equipment, or maybe because his “control room” is his bedroom and you record in his living room. Probably all of the above.

At Studio B, however, you get to record in a real studio that was designed to be a studio. You get professional level equipment that includes much more in the way of outboard gear, mics, isolation panels, rooms, etc. You get a real, experienced engineer, instead of someone that bought some gear to do their own recording, and then decided to try and make some money with it.

At Studio A, you may find yourself waiting, and waiting, while the “engineer” tries to get a drum or bass sound that will make the drummer or bassist happy. Or, worse yet, he may try and try, and finally give up, saying something like “Oh well, we’ll fix it in the mix.” (Don’t ever fall for that one!) Then, don’t forget, he has the other instruments to do.

Remember, someone is paying for all this time he is spending trying to get a sound. If he spends an hour setting up and getting a sound on the instruments, the price of the first hour of actual recording has just doubled. Sometimes it can take longer than that. If he takes a little over two hours setting up, you’re up to the rate of Studio B for your first hour, and that is just in your first hour of actual recording. (Remember, Studio B has to do a little setup too, he’s just much faster at it.)

Then take into account that each tune you record is likely to have different requirements, so he is probably going to have to do more setup, and since he is not experienced, it is going to take longer than it should. Time flies when you are paying for it.

I’m sure you get the picture, here. The engineer should be a help, not a hindrance. Unfortunately, I’ve run into all too many situations where the “engineer” is the most expensive thing, time-wise, in the whole process.

Oh, and lest I forget, a good engineer speaks when spoken to, at least when it comes to your tunes, unless you have hired him to be the producer, as well. Too many of these $25.00 an hour guys will hardly shut up. The best engineer I’ve ever worked with kept his mouth resolutely shut, and then, when asked, invariably came up with something brilliant. More about him later.

Okay, so let’s say you’ve endured all that, gotten all your tunes down to tape or disk, and now it’s time for that magical thing; mix down. You will finally be able to do and hear better than the rough mix, hear the way it is supposed to sound. By merely tweaking a few knobs, Presto! That sound you’ve had in your head all along, the reason you were inspired to purchase studio time in the first place.

So, you start in on the first tune. As you begin to fine-tune the mix, you notice a peculiar “Thwump, Thwump!” sound to the kick drum. You isolate the kick, and hear a definitely unacceptable level of distortion. You look, and see the needle on that channel is in danger of breaking off as it hits the right side of the meter every time the kick drum sounds. Wham! Wham! Wham! You look at the “engineer”, he looks innocently back, and obligingly turns the kick down. Now you have the same distortion, only quieter. What happened? He has recorded the kick drum too hot, probably because he was listening on headphones while you recorded, and had the wrong source selected.

You now have three choices. A) Re-record the kick, which may take hours, because he may have done this on the whole album, (And your drummer is probably not used to playing kick solo with band accompaniment, although he may have fantasized about it), or B) turn the kick down in the mix, and wimpify your whole sound, while not really fixing the problem; it will leap out at you at every quiet passage, and always will, every time you listen to the recording, even if your non-musician friends will seem unable to hear it, or C) leave it as it is, put it as high in the mix as you wanted, and hope, (or claim) you are starting a new trend.

Okay, now, somehow you’ve gotten beyond the kick problem, but since it was the concern of the moment, you have, up until now, hardly paid any attention to your bass sound. Now you start to listen to it, really listen, and at first you are relieved because at least you don’t have the problem of having been recorded too hot. No sir, no distortion there! But then, you begin to really listen, and you realize it’s kind of thumpy, without much high end or definition. Definitely not what you had in mind! Well, guess what. You can always take highs away, but you can’t put ‘em there if they weren’t there in the first place. The best you can do is take lows away, and boost the gain, which will leave you with a louder, thinner sound, but not at all the big, round, bright-but-full sound you always knew your bass had in it.

I could go on and on about the problems with cheap studios. (No doubt many of you think I already have; I’ve only scratched the surface, believe me!)

Now, I’ve promised you more about the best engineer with which I’ve ever worked. He is also a bass player, by the name of Doug Rayburn, and for you older, more esoteric types, of “Pavlov’s Dog” fame. (He also owned the Mellotron that had belonged to the Beatles; on one of the tape racks, the lowest key played the solo guitar intro to “Bungalow Bill”. For those of you that don’t know what a Mellotron is, or “Bungalow Bill”, or maybe even who the Beatles are, forget it, I’m not going to bother, at least not right now. If you really want to know, ask me later.)

Anyway, as I said before, he always kept his mouth shut unless asked. This was not because he didn’t have anything to say; this was because, no matter the fact that he probably actually was a superior musician to any of us at the time, he realized it was not his place to say anything, unless asked. After all, it was not his project, nor did he write any of the tunes. However, as I said, when asked, he almost invariably came up with an opinion incredibly apt and helpful.

The best thing he ever did, however, was to just sit there and say nothing when we said we were going to run a tune down to warm up. Some of you may know I’ve mentioned this before, but this was a wonderful thing, and deserves a second mention. When you are just running a tune down to warm up, you have no reason to be nervous; it is not going to be recorded for posterity. Rather, it is just you and your band mates blowing off some nervous steam, and warming up. So you have that wonderful combination between nervous and relaxed, not anxious, but perhaps a little giddy. And it is often at this point that wonderful things happen. Since you know it is just you and the other band members, and you are just warming up, you take risks you might not ordinarily take, or at least risks you would never take while recording.

So we would run the tune down, be satisfied with the way it went, and say “Okay, we’re ready to do a take!”, and he’d say “No, don’t bother, that was it.”. You’d be amazed at how often he was able to pull that “trick” on us, and, how good those takes were. I miss him! Doug, if you’re out there, thank you!

Anyway, I could go on much longer, but I think most of you have the idea. “Expensive” studio time usually really isn’t. Don’t try to save money by skimping on your studio rate. Of course, I am also not saying that all expensive studios are good. If you hear a CD from a local band you like (And I am not talking about the style of music, but the sound), ask them where they recorded it, and what kind of an experience they had. Of course there are limitations to this. If you are in a Heavy Metal band, and you hear a great Polka recording, or vice versa, perhaps you should do some more checking. However, I have had some good recording experiences as well with engineers that were not particularly familiar with the style we were recording; they were just good engineers.

So, that’s my sum total of advice, or at least most of it. And the reason for that seemingly innocuous little comment on my home page. I know it was long, but if it saves anyone the same costly experiences I went through (At least costly for the “star”), it may have been worth it.

(C) 2002 – Kelly Marsh

Special to Guitar Noise with permission of author

You rent a recording studio for a weekend, one that has a live room. (Not all recording studios have them). You arrive early on Friday evening. The first thing you do is set up all your equipment in the live room. This is a large room, about the size of a stage, where you play your songs as though you were on stage – except for the drummer who is normally in a soundproof booth. (Don’t drummers belong in a cage anyway?)

This is where it starts to become a drag. The next morning, you wake up around seven. (Yes, that’s A.M., not P.M., and it’s Saturday.) This is not the time to start boozing or pulling on a joint; you have a long, hard day ahead of you. Since you’re all set up, the sound check has been done the night before. You start playing. You play each song you want on the album five times (You don’t play a set five times; you play one song five times, then the next, etc.)

These are, of course, complete takes. If in the middle of the fourth take you had to stop because the bass player fell down, you have to start that take all over. These takes have to be as near perfection as possible. Remember that, for a ten-song album, you’ll be playing fifty songs, around five hours. You do take breaks, but not long ones; there’s no time!

Once this is done, you listen to each take and select the best one. What are the criteria? Make up your own. Are you looking for musical perfection or for that particular feel? Perhaps halfway between both? It’s up to you. The soundman will recommend his own ideas. Listen to him; he’s a neutral player. He might not even like your music, but he’ll have heard it and have a pretty good idea of what sounds best.

Now that you’ve selected the takes you’re keeping, you have to go over them again. Listen for and find the mistakes. Note them. (There are bound to be a few. It’s only normal.) Also, see where you need to add more tracks. If you’re the only guitarist in the band, it’s rather difficult to play lead and rhythm at the same time. Live, a combination of both will work, but not for someone who’s listening at home.

Finally, now that you’ve been up for almost twenty-four hours, go to sleep. But not for long. The clock is still ticking. Sunday morning, you start dubbing the new tracks and punching. Punching means recording a new sound over an existing one.

For example, suppose that in the first measure of the third verse, you played your first chord half a beat too late. You don’t have to record the whole track over. The soundman will select and isolate only the spot where the error is. In this case he may isolate the first two beats of that measure. Then he’ll rewind the tape to, say, the middle of the previous chorus. You start playing right away and through the mistake. The recorder will record only those two beats. So if you hear a producer say that you’ll have to punch, don’t start making fists. He’s talking about this recording process.

On Sunday afternoon, while you’re collapsing from fatigue, the engineer will mix everything together. Sunday night, after you’ve paid for everything, he’ll hand over to you the tape of your completed album.

This is a cost-effective (read cheap) way of doing an album and works very well if your band has very little studio experience and a lot of live experience.

I don’t recommend this process for a solo artist or for a band that’s not very tight. You might be concerned about the final quality. But it’s possible that several bands whose records you may have at home have used this process without you noticing. As an example, Moist’s first album was done this way. And it sounds great anyway.

Equipment

Console (Sound Board)

First you have to look at your budget and your style. Do you need a console? Do you need an effects board? You don’t need either of them, but some people prefer to work with them. That’s something you should examine before anything else. Having a console can be expensive, but it’s also very practical. With a console, you can set all your pans and fades, volumes, etc, before recording. You use a channel for every instrument (depending, of course, on the number of channels available to you).

I prefer to go directly to the computer and handle the engineering aspect from there. The point is that some people like to twist knobs, while others don’t care either way. Remember that whatever is available externally is also available through software. Therefore, the only thing a console will add is a tool certain people find easier to work with.

Effects

How do you prefer to work? This point is similar to the previous one. Do you want to handle all of your effects prior to recording, or do you want to add them after the recording is done? In my experience, I’ve found the second route to be much less time consuming. The only effects I will add prior to recording are distortion and wah. The wah I’ll do prior because of the control available while playing, and the distortion because it’s just easier to have it on while playing; you can really feel the sustain of the notes.

I add all other effects afterwards. I don’t even use an amplifier to record; I get the sound in “pure.” I find this saves a lot of time because you won’t always be sure ahead of time which effect will fit where. Most producers you’ll work with will be the same. You see, a song you play every night using a specific amount of chorus, reverb and flange might sound very different in the studio.

The best thing to do is to record your instruments direct, then listen to the overall sound of the song and add your effects from there. This also gives you a lot of versatility. You might discover that putting in a more discreet flange, adding reverb, and reducing chorus might work better for that specific song. If you’ve already recorded using effects, you’ll have to re-record. This means you might have to spend more time playing with your effects to get the right result.

Cables

This is an absolute rule: Spend a lot of money on cables, and keep your recording cables for recording only. Never use wireless systems. Buy cables that are more expensive and handle them with care: don’t step on them or twist them. A faulty cable will destroy all your work. Make sure the cables are of high quality. Don’t be afraid to ask a qualified technician at your music store for advice. Tell him or her you need cables for recording purposes. A ten-foot cable might cost you $30, but it will make a huge difference.

Electricity

Hums usually come from bad grounding. Test your sockets. Use a dedicated outlet for your computer and recording devices. Don’t play near a television set, or if you do, don’t turn it on. TVs can cause feedbacks with pick-ups. You can also get feedbacks with the radiation emitted by your computer monitor. Never play your instruments directly in front of your monitor.

Also, make sure you have the correct voltage for effect modules. Rolands tend to use 9.35 volts instead of 9. That’s why you get hums from a Boss pedal if you use a Radio Shack power cable instead of a Boss.

Computer

Recording on a home computer is safe and the quality is as good as a professional studio. Most studios now have computers in them. The old philosophy of the Mac being better than the PC for recording is wrong. Know what? It always has been. This is due to simple mathematics. Apple has about 5% of the computer market worldwide while 85% of computers used around the world are PCs. By having such a big share of the market, manufacturers produce more PC components than Mac components. Therefore, the quality is higher and cheaper for a PC.

Also, the Mac was built for video. Sound came as an afterthought. Most people who will tell you a Mac is better than a PC for sound are people who haven’t touched a PC in ten years. You can do it on a Mac, but it will be much more expensive. Yet, if you own a Mac, don’t go out and buy a PC unless you’re really planning on changing the computer.

Disk space

Recording takes up a lot of space on your hard drives. Be prepared for this. The best thing you can do is go out and buy a second hard drive (if you don’t already have one). Recording ten songs might take up to 10 GB of space on your hard drive depending on the amount of tracks you’ll be using. But remember to record in mono: it’s half the space of stereo files and stereo files don’t add anything. You’ll be thinking about stereo only when it comes to mixing.

Record your files on your first hard drive, then make copies of all of them on your second hard drive. Why? Because if your first hard drive blows up (and this does happen) you’ll have a copy of all your files on the second drive. Back up your files every day. More often if you can. Burning to CD is out of the question. It would take at least 10 CDs to back up your files every day; you won’t do it. Also, retrieving your files from a CD is just a lot more work and can lead to confusion.

Processors and RAM

Don’t worry too much over this aspect. I use a Celeron 366 with 64 Mb of RAM and have had no problems whatsoever. I can honestly say that 95% of the time, this is quite fast enough. The other 5% of the time usually poses no major problems. I’d say upgrade only if you would be upgrading anyway.

Instruments

Guitars and basses should be brought into a shop for adjustments to bridges and necks. Strings must be brand new. If you normally change your strings every six weeks, go down to two or three weeks. As soon as you see a bit of wear on them, change them. Make sure all wiring is clean and dust free.

Drums should be tuned before recording. Pianos should also be properly tuned. Analog keyboards should be cleaned and dust free.

As for mics, I highly recommend that all voices be recorded in a professional studio. Your $200 microphone might sound great on stage but it just won’t cut it in the studio. Professional studios use mics that sell at about $2,000 each. Also, the rooms in which you record the voices will be properly built to absorb the sound of your voice rather than bounce it off the walls and create unnecessary echoes and feedbacks. They’re more expensive, but the results are so much better.

Preparation

The songs

It’s not all that important that lyrics be finalized before beginning the recording process. You still have time to finalize them as you record. I usually come up with a whole bunch of changes a few minutes before recording the vocals and sometimes during.

There are two ways to go about recording basic tracks. Remember that these tracks won’t be kept later on. If the song is one the whole band knows and plays regularly, then have the whole band play it and use that as your basic track. If not, then a melodic instrument (guitar or keyboard) should be the first instrument recorded. Make sure the person doing this knows the song ahead of time. All additional tracks will be reworked as you are recording anyway.

Make sure you know which songs you’ll be recording so you don’t spend endless hours recording songs that will be dropped. Most likely, you will drop and/or add songs as you go along, but try to limit the process as much as you can.

Sequence of musicians

You know the guys you’ll be working with. Make up a schedule. You can work on ten songs at a time. I even recommend it, as it keeps you from getting too involved in a song and losing sight of your objectives. Also, make sure people come in when it’s their time to do so. Some musicians don’t mind recording if there are other people in the room, others are uncomfortable with that. See how everybody feels.

Breaks

Schedule creative breaks: a few days where you’ll neither record nor listen to the material. Then listen to what you’ve done before recording again. This will work very well, inspiration-wise. There’s also the fact that immediately following a recording session you might feel you’ve done great work, but a few days later realize it’s not all that good. It’s hard to judge when you’re too much “into it.”

Patience

Recording is a long and arduous process. You will spend several hundred hours on each song. Things can and will go wrong. Arm yourself with patience and remember that you can’t predict the unpredictable.

Although there are other methods of recording, we’ll be looking at the track by track method, the most commonly used method of recording as it’s the one which produces the best results. Also, we’ll assume that you’re not rich, so you’ll be doing most of the work on a home computer.

The Track by Track Method

What’s great about this method is that the other musicians don’t even need to know the song beforehand. And that’s one of the main reason it’s so widespread. Generally, the guy who wrote the song goes into the studio first and does a quick recording. It won’t be kept, but it will serve as a guide.

In today’s world, you can do this, or at least most of it, in the comfort of your living room. Using a computer and a multi-track software such as Cakewalk or Cubase, you can achieve the same results as any studio (most studios today use these softwares). But it’s a lot of work…

Obviously, if you’re doing it yourself, you don’t have a large budget. Believe me, if you did, you’d be in someone else’s studio with a producer and a sound engineer letting them do all the work. I’ve recorded a lot of demos in my time, but this is my first experience at recording an album; it’s not the same thing at all. I never could have imagined this was so much work!

In an effort to help you avoid some of the mistakes I’ve made, here are a few helpful hints. This is by no means the end-all and be-all of album recording, perhaps you have had similar experiences and have come up with different solutions. If so, by all means, write in and share them with us.

A lot of this is psychological. So in order to avoid a psychosis, be well-prepared.

Sked-jule, or was it Shed-yule?

Make up a realistic schedule for recording your album. And stick to it. You shouldn’t spend more than three or four months on it. More than that and it starts to seem like a chore. And as you’re not seeing the end of it, you put less and less energy into it.

Three to four months is a comfortable maximum. If everybody in the band works full-time, well there go the weekends!

Of course, this is assuming that most of the people in the band have full-time jobs. If that’s not the case, you can easily cut this to three or four weeks.

Who’s Producing?

Production usually ends up being done by one person in the band, usually the person who knows the most about sounds, electronics, computers, etc. Or the guy who owns the computer. Or it could be the one who doesn’t have a full-time job. This poor sod’s life is going to be a miserable one for a while.

But you should decide in advance who will be the Producer. Better to choose one person rather than make it a band thing. Remember in school how it was with team assignments? Usually, one person ended up doing most of the work. The same goes here. A twosome can work, provided both people can work well together, but the best way to go is with one person only.

You’ll have to trust this person’s judgement. He’ll be sitting in on all the recording sessions. He’ll be pressing “stop” in the recording software if he doesn’t like what’s being played. He’s the one who will say “OK, this take is good”.

Of course, if you’re it, don’t be a tyrant. If the drummer says he doesn’t like his take, let him do it over. But make sure you like it too.

The Producer will also have to decide if more tracks are needed and will have to convince the others to record them. So he also has to be a diplomat…

And an administrator…

Clerical work

So the task has fallen on you. Great! How good is your memory? Figure that most recording software can take up to 256 tracks. Although you won’t be using that many, you’ll likely end up with anywhere between 16 an 40 tracks per song.

How will you remember every detail of every track? Suppose the rhythm guitar uses multiple effects at different times? Then you’ll use a different track for each effect (example: track one has the rhythm guitar with reverb, chorus and flange, track two has the rhythm guitar sections without the flanger). You’ll also want to double the rhythm guitar. Imagine the main rhythm guitar playing to the right, the second rhythm guitar should be less loud and to the left.

Also, anything with distortion on it should be recorded on a different track. Solos should also be on a different track (but all solos and leads on the same track). You will end up with five to eight guitar tracks (at least) per song.

Then there’s bass, drums, keyboards and whatever else you might decide to throw in. Have a good memory? Don’t count on it.

Suppose that in a certain song you wish to add a picking guitar using a different guitar. Can you be absolutely sure which guitar you used for the other tracks? I know it sounds obvious, your guitars don’t sound alike. But once you’ve added effects, it’s not always obvious.

The Notebook

Spend a few dollars on a spiral notebook. Preferably one with at least 200 pages in it. You’ll identify the cover page first of all (you’d be surprised how often one doesn’t think of doing this). Make sure you add contact information. Suppose you’re heading to another studio and you drop the notebook in the subway? You’ll be very happy if someone finds it and gives you a ring.

Page 1: Give your project a working title. This is like an album title, only it’s not definite (that’s why it’s called a “working” title). It doesn’t matter whether or not the album will end up with this title, it’s psychologically sound to say you’re working on “Voyage of Mercy” rather than working “on an album”. If, somewhere down the line you decide you’d rather call the album “Voyage of the Damned”, don’t change the working title. It should remain the same until the album is mixed.

Write down the name of the software you’re using, where you’re doing the recording, which software you’ll be using for effects, etc. Think of it as archival information. Something to refer to ten years from now. Could be useful if your second album happens only in five or six years. You just might not remember all the details and it’s good to have them.

Write down all relevant information: Song titles, production, engineering and mixing credits. Anything you can think of that might be useful. Leave yourself several blank pages for things to add on later down the road.

Split the rest of the book into as many equal sections as the number of songs you plan to record. For example, if you plan to record 10 songs, you should leave about 10 pages for the overall section at the beginning and leave 19 pages per song. Much better to have too many than not enough.

Use some method for separating the sections so they’re easy to find. Then, for each section, on the first page, write the title of the song, in big easily-readable letters. Then write the name of the songwriter(s).

Once you start recording, you should put in all pertinent information relative to the base track (the one that you’ll be deleting down the line). You should also note all tempo changes and time changes. If you’re starting at a tempo of 105, in 4/4, then switching, at measure 17, to a tempo of 110 in a 3/4, it’s important to note this. You can easily make a mistake somewhere down the line which will change the tempo and key settings. If you have them noted down already, it’s easy to set them back again to what they should be.

Once you start recording the actual tracks, start by the date (it gives you an easy method of seeing the changes the song may have gone through.

Then note anything of importance; settings used on the amp, on the guitar itself, on the pedal effects, etc. Take a note of everything. If, for some reason, you should accidentally delete a track at some point, you’ll have all the settings already to redo it.

Don’t bother with things like the amount of takes necessary. This could be embarrassing to the guy who got his part right on the fiftieth try. Some musicians are like that. I know I am. I can play the same part flawlessly twenty times in a row, but once you press “record”, I start making stupid mistakes. Many musicians are this way, don’t be too hard on them.

Every time you make changes, even if it’s just adjusting track volume or panning, make a note of it. This spiral notebook will be your bible during the project.

It Took How Long?

Another important thing to take note of is the time spent on the project. Write down your hours. You should reserve a page for each track just to write down your hours. As most freelancers will tell you, hours should be split in 30 minute segments. From 0 to 30 minutes becomes 30 and 31 minutes to 60 is rounded off to the hour. If you’ve worked on a track for 3 hours and 12 minutes, you should right down 3.5 and 2 hours and 47 minutes should be 3 hours. But don’t start making sure you work 2 minutes over the hour every time. Try to be fair.

Now, it is extremely important to know how much time you spent on the project. Software like Cakewalk will tell you (in the properties submenu), but these numbers are not accurate. They only count from the time you press record to the final save. There’s work to be done before you press record and after you save.

Why is it so important to have accurate timing? If you sell your album to a label, you need an advance. The advance will be set upon the amount it cost you (or should have cost you as you’re not charging for your time) to record the album.

Suppose you finish with a total of 836 hours spent on the project. You multiply this by a reasonable hourly rate, say $25. 836 x $25 = $20,900. To this you add actual costs: CD’s (for backups, etc), tapes if you use them. Actual studio costs if you’ve used the services of another studio. If your recording the album on a home PC, you’ll have a problem with drums and vocals if you’re living in an apartment. Let’s just say that the neighbours might not appreciate. And you won’t get good sound results anyway. Better to pay for time in an actual studio.

Let’s say you have spent 26 hours for vocals and 17 for drums and the studio cost you $30 an hour (with the services of an engineer). That’s (26 hour + 17 hours) x $30 = $1,290. So $20,900 + $1,290 = $22,190. Round it off at $23,000 for incidentals and that’s what you should be charging a label if they want to sign you. And that’s not excessive. Major label advances are usually of the order of $150,000 (they consider that you have to pay things like rent and food to live on while you’re making the album and before it gets released).

Producer’s Cut

If you’re producing the album, it’s only natural that you should get paid. This is where it gets a bit tricky with the other band members. The standard rate for a producer is 4% of the final sale price of an album (if the album is sold for $23.99, the producer gets $0.96 per copy sold). This is standard for any producer for any album. And the 4% comes out of the band’s cut. That’s also standard. Look at the amount of extra work you’re doing. You should get paid for it, it’s only fair. Try and get the point across to anyone in the band who is reluctant to yield. Offer them to produce the next one. Or tell them to get someone else. Although all producers make 4%, any producer you call will ask for an advance. Once the reluctant parties see that they can’t pay it, they should yield to the 4%.

Anyway, if you sign with a label, they’ll automatically make the checks out to the person who’s credited for producing the album.

Overall, producing is a tremendous amount of work. At times you’ll hate it. It will seem like the project’s going nowhere and that there’s no end in sight. But it’s also a lot of fun and a great learning experience.

Keep a written record of everything that happens. Don’t go overboard. It’s easy, when you have so many tracks to work with to start adding 40 guitar tracks, 3 solos at the same time, etc. My advice is keep it simple. Record the basic tracks first: Rhythm guitar, lead guitar, main keyboard track, bass, vocals and drums. Then add only what’s needed. If you end up with only 8 tracks on a song and it sounds great, then don’t touch it.

Always record drums last. It sounds backwards, but it the best way to go. You’ll get your timing from the software’s metronome. This way the drummer has a better idea of when to add his punches so that he doesn’t bury the voice, but instead supports it.

And have fun! Remember that if it’s not fun, might as well go work for the government…