10 Things Every Band Should Know Before Recording

1. Have a budget. This is one of the biggest mistakes first timers make. Recording isn’t cheap, and hours can add up really fast. The worst thing you can do is be in the middle of a project and realize you don’t have enough money to finish. Tell the engineer all about your project beforehand, and find out what his best guess is at how much it will cost. But it is a guess. One of the smartest things you can do is plan in your budget for mistakes, because there will be mistakes! Best case scenario, you come in under budget.
2. Have a time frame. If you are recording a CD or demo, have a completion date set. Some space between recordings is good. A lot of space can be wasteful and hard to get back into. It can be really easy to lose momentum and focus. Having a time frame can keep you motivated and on task.
3. Have an idea of what you want. Bring in CD’s or songs that show what you’re trying to sound like. A good engineer can likely tell what made a song sound a certain way, and use the tools he has to make you sound as close as possible to that. But be reasonable. Unless you’re using the same acoustic guitar, in the same room, with the same mics, the same distance away, and into the same preamps, as the recording you’re trying to match, don’t be disappointed if it doesn’t sound exactly the same.
4. Be prepared. This is for everybody’s sake. Know who is playing what, and when, and be beyond rehearsed. If you come in with a song you just wrote and you don’t know the lyrics, the melody, the guitar part, etc., you’re wasting your money and the engineer’s time. I know of the legends of the Beatles doing 300 takes and writing a ton of songs in the studio. They also had a record company paying for it. Do you have a record company willing to throw a stupid amount of money around for you to do 300 takes and write all your songs in the studio? Doing a little bit of preparation can go a long way with saving you money.
5. Be appreciative. It’s a bad economy. What an engineer’s services are worth and what he makes, well the numbers are pretty far apart. I’m not asking you to pity them, but please’s and thank you’s still go a long way. If it’s going to be a long session, bring him a coffee. If you’re going to break to eat, offer to buy him his meal. Yeah, he’s getting paid. But sometimes no amount of money is worth the tedious amount of hours lining up sloppy drum playing, or piecing together 15 different vocal takes. Trust me, a thank you and a coffee will go a long way.
6. Trust your engineer. Hey, if you can do it yourself, more power to you! But if you’re at someone else’s studio, respect that. If it’s a creative decision, that’s a different story. But if you’re arguing over the level of the guitar part 5 minutes into the mixing session, relax. Let the engineer say “Okay, now it’s done” before you give it a scrutinizing listen. Trust that your engineer has been doing this for a while, and knows what sounds good and how to get it. There have been a few occasions where I have been barraged with emails from everyone in the band picking apart the mix before it was finished. I end up having to write back asking them to wait until I’m finished mixing, and if they still have a problem we’ll fix it then. 9 times out of 10, any of their complaints had been fixed already.
7. Clean up your mess. You’re paying for my services as a sound engineer, not as a janitor. Making sure the studio is nice and clean before a client arrives is something every engineer should do. Leaving it in the same condition is something every client should do. Throw away your coffee cups, Subway wrappers, empty packs of cigarettes. Take your lyric sheets, guitar picks, and drum sticks home with you. Unless your big time record label is picking up the tab, pick up after yourself.
8. Be reasonable. Nit-picking everything to death will drive everyone crazy, and I can almost guarantee no one will notice the little things you’re harping on. There are lists miles long of famous songs that have major performance mistakes you’ve never even noticed. In fact, you can see not only performance mistakes, but engineering mistakes, here. Is that an excuse to get lazy? Absolutely not. BUT! Be realistic. 99% of the people listening to your music are listening to content, performance, lyrics, message, the feel, orchestration, emotional response, etc. The last thing they’re listening for is technical perfection. The only people who might be listening with that level of scrutiny are potential record execs, and trust me; they’ll be destroying the quality of your records way more than the engineers will.
9. You’re being charged to hang out. Personally, I’ve designed my studio to encourage ease and relaxation…for the sake of a stress-free performance. But if you’re going to spend the time shooting the breeze and talking about how great the latest Justin Bieber album is, you’ll pay for it. It’s your project; I don’t care if we do 5 hours of work or 5 hours of talking. You’re still using up 5 hours of my time, so I suggest we be productive!
10. Dammit Captain, I’m an Engineer, not a miracle worker! Ha! Seriously though, it’s not an engineer’s job to have an opinion about your music. We may dig it, we may hate it, but it’s not our job to like it. We take whatever you play and make it sound pristine. If you play good, you’ll have a great recording. If you play bad, you’ll have a great recording of you playing bad. Just be realistic with your performance. If you think you can do better, don’t wait until the song is almost done being mixed to say you want to do it over. If it has mistakes, but you know that’s as good as you could have done it, try not to let the mistake distract you from our job. Think of sound engineering like car detailers; we can buff, shine, and wax all day, but if you don’t like the color of your pink Hyundai Accent, there’s nothing we can do about that!