For my next few Studio Blog posts, I will describe how I made an eight-track recording. I will discuss the pre-production, studio recording, and mix processes that I went through.
My Preproduction Process
For preproduction, the first thing that I thought I should do was to reserve studio time, so I could invite musicians to play during certain set times. So I reserved Monday, February 5, from 7 PM to 11 PM, and Thursday, February 8, from 6 PM to 10 PM. Then I started to message musicians on Facebook Messenger. I purposely avoided asking other Recording Production II musicians because I knew that they had to put many hours into their own recording projects.
I contacted my friend Jonah, a keyboard player, and he said that Monday and Thursday were both good evenings for him to record. Next I invited a guitarist and a drummer who both said that they would not be able to record on either of those two nights. I had a list of musicians for each instrument I was thinking of using, because I knew not everyone would be able to make it. Then I talked to Tyler, a guitarist. He said that he couldn’t play Monday or Tuesday nights, but he said that he could definitely play Thursday evening. We talked about some possible songs to record. One of Tyler’s suggestions was Maroon 5’s “Tangled”. We listened to it together on YouTube. I thought it was a good idea, but I told him, “That will depend on what the other musicians think, too.” Tyler was down to play rhythm guitar and do the lead vocals to “Tangled”. It sounded like it might be a good choice for the musicians we both knew. Now I had to hope that they could make the time in their schedules to record on Thursday night, and possibly even a second night if needed.
So I changed my reservations with the studio. I dropped the Monday hours and expanded my Thursday hours to become 5 PM to midnight. Next, I got Austin S. to play bass guitar and do backup vocals. Then I got Austin G. for drums and Connor for lead guitar. Everyone liked the idea of “Tangled“.
Next, I made a track sheet, a take sheet, an input sheet, a floor plan, and three mix sound stage designs. I talked to Professor Testa about the track sheet and bounce ideas that I had. He asked me why I was recording the drums in mono, and not stereo. Originally, I thought I would have one track each for: drums, synth, bass, lead guitar, rhythm guitar, voice 1, voice 2, and a virtual instrument. That is eight tracks. After discussing it with Professor Testa, I decided to do the drums and the whole recording in stereo. So I changed my plan to do drums on track 1 and 2, synth, bass, lead guitar, and rhythm guitar on each their own track. That’s six tracks. Then I planned to overdub voice 1 and voice 2 on track 7, and later I would overdub a virtual instrument on track 8.
My next post will be about actually recording in the studio and how things don’t always go according to plan. So stay tuned!