A few recording Q's

[placidblue]

A couple of noob questions.  Can someone give me a general idea of the workflow when recording a tune. Do you lay out the song structure on a piece of paper, record a rough rhythm guide track or maybe program the drum track first ?

Is there a way to lock the rhythm track tempo to a song on the BR-800 ? I must have nudged the tap tempo button and it took a lot of tweakng to get the drum track back to the right speed ( note to self : write it down next time ).

The only criticism I have of the BR-800 so far is the lack of any tactile feedback on the buttons and my strat sounds a bit "dark" as though the input impedance is a bit lower than the stated 1 Meg.

thanks

[64Guitars]

A couple of noob questions.  Can someone give me a general idea of the workflow when recording a tune. Do you lay out the song structure on a piece of paper, record a rough rhythm guide track or maybe program the drum track first ?

Is there a way to lock the rhythm track tempo to a song on the BR-800 ? I must have nudged the tap tempo button and it took a lot of tweakng to get the drum track back to the right speed ( note to self : write it down next time ).

If your song is going to have drums, then it's important to record all of your tracks to a reference tempo so that the tempo of the audio tracks will precisely match the tempo of the drum track. So, the first thing you should do when you start a new song is to turn on the metronome and set it to the desired tempo. However, it's just as easy to select a drum pattern instead of the metronome, and that's what most of us do. You also need to make sure that the BR saves the tempo with the song so you don't have to keep resetting it. You do this by creating a drum arrangement.

So, my recommendation for the first thing to do in every song is create a drum arrangement. Now, you may be thinking that you often don't have any idea of what you want in your arrangement until you've recorded some tracks. That's not a problem. Your arrangement can start off very simple. It might just be one repeating pattern, for example. Its purpose at this stage is mainly to provide a reference tempo to record to. Later, after you've recorded some tracks, you can improve the drum arrangement as much as you like, as long as you don't change the tempo. If your song will have tempo changes, then your starting arrangement will need at least one step for each tempo. For example, if your song is to have a tempo of 130 bpm but you want the middle 8 (starting at measure 63, let's say) to slow down to 86 bpm, then your starting arrangement might look like this:

Step	Start Meas.	Pattern	Tempo
1	1	P002: ROCK-1 V1	130
2	63	P002: ROCK-1 V1	86
3	71	P002: ROCK-1 V1	130
4	300	P327 BREAK	120

The last step determines which measure the drums should stop at. Since you often won't know where your song should stop until you've recorded some tracks, you can set the starting measure of the last step to an arbitrarily high number such as 300 so that the drums will play for at least the entire duration of your song. Later, when you've recorded some tracks, you can edit the starting measure of the last step to correspond with the actual end of your song. The tempo of the last step doesn't matter.

It's also a good idea to include one or two "Count-in" measures at the start of the song. You can use the metronome pattern for the count-in. But, for a much nicer count-in, try pattern P265:Cnty1. The first measure of this preset pattern is simply four hits on a closed hi-hat. If you want a 2-measure count-in, you need two separate steps so that it only plays the first measure of the pattern. For example, here's the previous example with a 2-measure count-in using P265:Cnty1.

Step	Start Meas.	Pattern	Tempo
1	1	P265:Cnty1	130
2	2	P265:Cnty1	130
3	3	P002: ROCK-1 V1	130
4	63	P002: ROCK-1 V1	86
5	71	P002: ROCK-1 V1	130
6	300	P327 BREAK	120

If you're doing a cover song, you might want to start by programming the entire arrangement. This is possible since you already know what the drums are supposed to sound like. A helpful tool when doing covers is the following web page which lets you determine the tempo by tapping a key on your computer's keyboard while listening to the song.

http://www.all8.com/tools/bpm.htm

[dasilvasings]

Noob question??? Not at all!

I usually select a drum pattern and have it playing. then record a master track with guitar and vox and lots of mistakes.
I then start recording all the tracks (including vox). I suffer from the "red <recording> light syndrome", so I always fail in a moment or the other; It is important for me to have the song tightly fit in the measures since it helps me a lot in the following copy/pastes.
One of the last things I do is to write down in a piece of paper the starting measures of different parts of the song to organize the drums (select patterns, fills, intros, etc.)

So far I've always failed when I want to record on top of the original song. Main reason is because tempo is not always steady in the original, there are often breaks etc., and you never get sync with the br drums.

Hope it helps.

[placidblue]

Wow, some great info there thanks. I've got a loan of the David Wills DVD at the weekend so things should be a bit clearer after seeing that  . I'm quite surprised at the steep learning curve.