I’m sure you’ve seen pictures and videos of bands in the recording studio. Those Beatles clips that are coming out are pretty cool to watch, hey?
My recording process is a little different than those big bands. I’m recording in a tight, functional, purpose-built studio in East Vancouver. I’m not in Abbey Road or some glorious palace in the Caribbean. That’s fine with me, this studio has great sound and great gear. Everything else aside, however, it all comes down to the quality of the songs (primo!); the skill of the musicians (bangin’!); and the skills of the recording engineer, the mixing engineer, and of course, the producer. (Stellar!)
What Does The Producer Do?
The Producer oversees the entire project. On this, I’m Executive Producer, meaning I put up the money and pretend to be the boss! My producer Producer, Jackson, is in charge of everything else lol: he books the studio, plans the schedule, books the musicians and, as recording and mixing engineer, also makes sure we get the best performances out of everyone, that everything is mic’d and recorded cleanly, and that the final product is as tight and sweet as we can make it. I’m very grateful to have found Jackson. He immediately understood what I’m doing with my music, and his head is filled with great ideas on how to arrange and record the songs.
Many of you have heard some of these songs in performance, plus I recorded some demo versions and put them out a while back. You may be surprised when you hear how these new versions turn out!
What Is Tracking?
Tracking is when you record a track, for instance a lead guitar track or a vocal. We record multiple takes for a track, then a finished track is compiled from the best parts of the various takes. Are you with me so far?
Comping? What the…?
Compiling a track, known as comping for short, uses the power of professional recording software to copy and paste parts of different takes together. If you’ve done click, drag, copy, paste kinda things on your computer, it’s pretty much the same thing. Or, if you harken back to the days of analog tape it’s the same process we used when we cut the tape with a razor blade and literally taped the pieces back together. Only it’s easy, fast, and non-destructive, meaning you can always go back if you don’t like what you’ve done.Thank heaven for Undo!
Here’s a shot of a bunch of tracks in the DAW:
Recordings are often built up this way, one instrument at a time. It’s known as overdubbing. There is another widely-used recording process, called “live off the floor,” where you have all the musicians in the studio at the same time and everyone plays together. This works well for bands, when the members are there anyway throughout most of the sessions. I really wanted to go that way, the thing is, it’s costly when you’re hiring studio musicians and they are all on the clock for days and days and days. Plus it takes a lot of rehearsal before the fact, and all that adds to the cost.
So we track each instrument by itself. That way the player comes in for their tracking day(s) only. We start with scratch tracks with vocals and some simple guitar as a guide for the musicians, they listen to this as well as a click track, through headphones, so they have something to play along with. As we move through the process the later musicians are able to play along to the tracks that have gone before. Of course we have the music written on charts so the musicians can see the song structure, the lyrics, and the chord changes.
We Started With The Drums.
Ty Murray is drumming on the record. He’s an experienced and versatile player, equally adept at pounding out booming rock beats and laying down tidy country shuffles, and everything in between. Over a few days he put down 10 great drum tracks. I love where he’s taking my songs.
Here’s Ty laying down a drum track:
Maybe you’re thinking: 10 tracks? Several days? What the…? Right, in general a song is in the range of 2-3 minutes long, why can’t we record them all in one day? It doesn’t work like that. Ty had to come up with his parts, decide what feel he was laying down on each track. He listened to the demo versions and the scratch tracks to get a feel for the songs, then worked his magic!
As I said, we record several takes, then comp them together into a track. There’s also a bit of editing on the spot, doing cool computer things like nudging a drum hit into a better pocket timewise using the cut and paste power of the ProTools recording software (called a Digital Audio Workstation, or DAW). We’re doing the editing, comping and bits of cleanup as we go, rather than leaving all those tasks for the end. I’m sure you know how that goes – the job feels finished and then you have to do all that stuff at the end to truly finish, and it feels like such hard work. Clean as you go! So tracking takes time. We get 3-4 songs done in an 8-hour day. It’s a process!
What Is A Click Track?
I mentioned the click track. That’s an electronic metronome inside the DAW that keeps the beat and tempo so as we add tracks everyone plays in time together. Playing to a click track is an acquired skill as far as I can see/hear. I know I’m still acquiring proficiency with it. I tend to get robotic in my playing and singing with a click… I think too much about my timing rather than simply letting it swing with the music. I’m learning, it’s coming together for me! In general, thinking while playing often leads me astray…
Next send: What Is A Mixing Board?
Thanks for being my fan,
John