Workflow when recording?

[grolschie]

You're welcome!!

I mean welcome grol !! to the forum !!

Hope that workflow will work alright and that we will hear a song of yours soon !!

Thanks Geir !! 

[Ted]

My work flow is a little different.  I spend more time on the drum arrangement near the front end of the process.

1. I figure out the tempo(s) I want--preferably before I ever listen to any drum patterns or clicks, because that can cause me to forget the gut tempo I was feeling before I started.

2. I pick a pattern that I can use as a click track to get me through the whole song (if possible).

3. I record a mono "scratch" take with just voice and guitar.  If the song is particularly bass-driven, I may record a scratch bass part too--not worrying too much about sound quality or mistakes.

Here's where my process may be a little weird:

4. I arrange the drums against the scratch tracks I've recorded, with intro clicks (and other clicks to help me keep time through sections that will be drumless in the final mix).  This has two benefits:

• I can record a more natural sounding guitar and bass part if I have a real drum arrangement with which to play along.
• I can create the drum arrangement at night, when everyone else in the house is sleeping.

5. I record the guitar, bass, and vocal parts--with great care this time.  (See Greeny's steps 2-5).  Bounce, tweak, repeat if necessary.

6. I tweak the drum arrangement if necessary--and I can remove any intro clicks or other placeholder patterns where the drums are meant to drop out.

7. Then I master.

[Ted]

I'm under the impression, at the moment, that you can change tempo during a song...

Someone might be able to confirm this or not...

Yep.  Each part in the drum arrangement can have its own tempo.  I've done some extreme drum tweaking in order to create pauses of odd lengths (e.g. five beats--listen to Dechromium Cob at 0:14 for an example), or to use patterns that sound more interesiting at 1/4 the normal tempo of the song.  So far, I haven't actually used it to speed up or slow down a song.

[Oldrottenhead]

i have bin drinking so, admin will hopefully delete my advice in the morning.

just go for it........................

4 words 11 letters

thats 15

1 and 5 is 6

half a dozen

is 6

ave lost the thread

whit wiz a goonae say

pish


pish

och aye the noo

[Ted]

i have bin drinking so, admin will hopefully delete my advice in the morning.

just go for it........................

4 words 11 letters

thats 15

1 and 5 is 6

half a dozen

is 6

ave lost the thread

whit wiz a goonae say

pish


pish

och aye the noo

And that, my friends, is how you become a "Hero Member" of this forum!

[AndyR]

an inspiration to us all - and actually, it's advice that's helping me become "more immediate" (don't delete it admin!!)

I have to admit I do the same as Ted when I'm working on most things.

(This is when I've already written the song before starting the recording - my usual way of working - all bets are off if I'm using the recording to write the song! I'm just starting to experiment with using the MBR this second way)

I want an "almost finished" drum arrangement to record real parts against. Because the patterns themselves aren't editable, I especially want the bass drum in place before I attempt to write a bass part.

To create the drum arrangement:

I want want a scratch/guide performance of some sort. When creating the guide, I definitely want a reasonable vocal that demonstrates where not to create too many drum fills etc. To do that vocal I will create a drum arrangement with a single pattern that is like the rhythm I'm after - this pattern may or may not end up in the final arrangement. As well as this, I'll need some sort of chord backing - usually a first guide guitar, I don't worry too much about the playing.

When I've got the guide vocal, I look at the song and decide whether I need any more than the single guide guitar to help me build the drums. I'm looking for the "feel" and some of the dynamics I think I'm aiming at. This usually means that I use this stage to rehearse guitar parts and to work out what I think the harmonic arrangement might be. The current one I'm working on ended up with three guitars to produce this arrangement. I haven't done it yet, but if the song required it, I might use keyboards instead.

Then I do the drums.

When the drums are in place against the guides, I've then got enough to pick up a bass and start trying to figure out what to do with it (bass is somewhat harder, and far more important than most of us guitarists think it is  )

My reasoning is, once I've got a decent rhythm section down, we're almost home and dry apart from the (enjoyable) slog of recording all the other parts as well as I can. I can hear already whether we're going to get something approaching what I imagined.

I like to get the finished bass done at this stage - but if it needs more rehearsal, I'll leave a decent one to record guitars etc against and plan on replacing it when I can play it better.

For bouncing and mixing - I bounce guitars into a stereo pair with all their effects/reverb. I bounce keyboards into a stereo pair in the same way. I bounce these two into a stereo pair to get the balance between them, but rarely effect anything else. If I haven't done so already, I then record the final bass, and hopefully a "final" lead vocal (if poss).

The bass is so that I can bounce it with the guitars/keys, the vocal is so I can balance the bass properly during the bounce.

Then it's "vocals time". This means doing the backing vox and bouncing them to a stereo pair -this might mean at least two bounces. For example the last one I did had verse and chorus backing, which needed to be treated differently, so I bounced them to seperate stereo pairs and then bounced the two together. I'll copy and paste where possible (eg do the chorus once, then copy it) - I do it with the stereo pair rather than individual voices usually.

When the final lead vocal is ready (I sometimes like to sing it with the back vox in place), it's then a lot of run throughs to balance against the rest of the band. I use the volume control on the side to listen very quiet, medium, loud - doesn't affect the bounce levels - I also do all these run-throughs in "Bounce" mode, continually checking master levels. It takes a bit of juggling because I'm trying to combine 5 or 6 tracks (2 for the band, 2 for the backing vox, 1 or 2 for the lead). It needs at least two bounces, and I do rough bounces quite happily, ready to erase them if they're no good.

It's all a bit time-consuming, but I try to organise it so that I'm imitating the rehearsal and arrangement time I used to get when I was rehearsing a real band years ago. The parts feed off each other, not quite the same as they would with 3-4 musicians in a room together, but enough to get a vibe going...

However, during ALL of this, I do try to keep the following words of wisdom in mind:

just go for it........................

[Bluesberry]

Great thread here...Andy, you always put so much useful info down