Preparing for a recording (2)

...continued from front page

Here is the list again:

1. "My favorite band recorded at Great Big Studios – let's go there!"

2. "We'll finish the song/arrangement in the studio."

3. "Sounds pretty good to me – we're ready."

4. "The engineer can fix it in the mix."

5. "We've got this really great recording – now what do we do with it?"

In this final part of our two-part series, we'll look at the latter three mistakes.

3. Rehearsal for recording

I have never yet come across a band that was over-rehearsed for recording. I have worked with a very few individuals who could walk in cold and do an excellent recording without preparing the material beforehand. Almost without exception, these were seasoned professional session players, tertiary-trained in their instrument, with a high level of skill and much recording experience.

Most people unused to studio recording come to sessions under-rehearsed: underprepared both in personal performance and as a group. All too often, they haven't taken a really critical look at their own work before the session.

What you are doing with your band may sound great to you in the room as you are playing, but there are some key factors that influence this. The most important of these is that it is hard to assess the quality of your work while you are actually playing – your attention is split between "What do we sound like" and "What note do I play next", and usually, for psychological or acoustic reasons, you won't be hearing the instruments and vocals in balance.

Also, you are used to the way you sound. You have accomodated your hearing to your "usual" performance.

Both of these factors mean that, in assessing your own rehearsal performance, you are likely to miss things that will adversely affect your recording later on.

There are a couple of ways to get around this problem. One is to have an objective person with a critical ear, good judgement and (preferably) recording experience listen to your performance and make notes. Such useful people can be difficult to find or expensive, however!

Another, better solution is to make recordings of your rehearsal. This solution has become increasingly possible with the advent of very cheap computer-based recording gear. Companies such as Behringer have made good-quality entry-level gear available at prices that would have been unthinkable ten years ago.

There is no excuse for not having a go at recording yourself at least for demo purposes.

If you already have a reasonable Windows XP or Mac computer, you can get a good one- or two-mic recording setup, including software, for much less than the cost of a decent musical instrument. Depending on your gear, you can do anything from simply recording the rehearsal with one mic in the room, through to producing your own reasonable-quality demo. The latter is possible only if you have the knowledge to make good recordings, and a certain flair.

Recently I heard a recording made by first-time amateurs, through a single cheap, knock-off dynamic mic in the middle of the room, recorded onto a laptop with a noisy fan. Given all these disadvantages, the recording was excellent, giving a very clear idea of what was going on in the arrangement, balance and tonal qualities of the piece.

Contrast this with a vocal recording I was given, again by an amateur, which was made through a very good condenser mic onto good quality digital gear. It sounded terrible - it suffered frequent bursts of digital distorion because the artist had the gain too high. Also, because the artist had recorded with the speakers on, instead of using headphones, the click track and keyboard accompaniment spilled onto this track, causing us problems later in the demo process.

As I said before, the skill of the sound engineer is crucial. That being said, it is fairly easy to learn how to produce recordings good enough for scrutinising your performance and honing it for recording.

When you have made your rehearsal recording, listen to it, note all the problems of performance or arrangement any of you can detect, decide what changes you want to make, carefully and thoroughly work through and rehearse these changes, then record again and follow the same process. This can be a tedious process, but will almost certainly bring your playing and arrangements up a notch. To do it really well, at least one of the people involved in the process must be skilled at listening analytically.

There are two halves to analytical listening. The first half is hearing that something is wrong. Anyone can learn to do this, and many good musicians can do it without training, given a bit of experience. The second half is proposing a solution. Some gifted people can visualise arrangements and performance solutions instinctively, but most musicians will benefit from a teritary level music course. This helps by training the musician's ears, widening their ideas about possible musical solutions, and giving them guided experience in implementing those solutions. Such course may involve some expense, but for a budding professional musician, it is almost always money well-spent.

The process outlined above is very similar to the demo process top-level professionals go through. A demo proves the concept of the arrangement and, for musicians starting out, the quality of the performance. It can save a lot of time in the commercial studio because most of the key arrangement decisions have been tested, and the performance level has been raised as high as possible. A further benefit for beginners is that you become used to the recording process. There is always a bit of tension when recording. If you have defused this to some extent by having done some home recording already, you may perform better in the studio.

As a performer, I've sometimes found it personally helpful to rehearse hard for a recording over a period of week or even months, then allow a few days off with maybe a last light rehearsal before the actual session. That way, I come to the session fresher, while still being able to nail the technical aspects of the performance. This may or may not work for you – play around with it and find out. (By the way, you can test to see whether this works for you without spending studio time – have a go with your cheap recording gear!)

The short version

Using cheaply-available gear, record your rehearsals and any overdubs. Listen to the result critically, noting performance and arrangement problems. Fix the problems as best you can. Record again and go through the process again, until you are happy with the result (at least in terms of performance and arrangement.)

4. "Fixing it in the mix"

Picture the following scenario:
You are a studio engineer. Your top-level artist (Kylie, Britney or Madonna) has just left the studio, having done a three-hour vocal stint for her next album. She is now unavailable till July, and her album is due to be mastered in June. In her last takes, she didn't ever quite nail that top note, but she had to leave to go to a function. What do you do?
Well, you drag out the Auto-tune and, with technology and skill, fix that top note so it sounds pure, natural and dead in tune.
This makes sense – the studio time is worth a fraction of Kylie's (or Britney's or Madonna's). But it doesn't make sense at the entry level.

Firstly, even at the top level,transforming a bad performance into a good one can be tricky. It works best in highly-processed and manufactured pop, and can be very difficult in ambiently-recorded jazz or classical music. Excessive processing to correct performance errors can suck the life out of a recording, and should only be done as a last resort. It is much better to record enough takes so that the player or singer gets it right (preferably without comp'ing multiple takes together by cutting and pasting all the best phrases, although that is another popular repair technique). It is best if the player or singer is rehearsed to the point where they can get their best performance in two or three takes – see point 3 above! For singers, this also preserves their vocal freshness.

Being able to perform well in a small number of takes is positive for everyone. You save time in the studio, get a great sense of acheivement, get kudos from the recording engineer and, most importantly, end up with a good, spontaneous-sounding recording.

5. We've got this recording – now what do we do with it?

I've saved till last the question you really need to think of first – why do you want to do a recording at all? What is its intended purpose?
We all get caught up in the romantic idea of recording. Our heros have done it – we have their CDs to prove it! We get a sense of heriosm by association if we do it too.
But if you want to move beyond vanity recording, you need to consider what you want to acheive. Are you making a demo to show to an agent in the hope of getting live work? Are you doing a promotional recording in the hope of getting airplay or record company interest? Are you creating an EP or album to be sold at gigs and maybe through other media such as the internet?
For live work:
Your recording will be short and show the range of the band. It will contain a small number (five or less) of short song excerpts – agents don't have time to listen to the whole thing. If you want, you can put the full versions after the short excerpts.
For promotion:
Your record might have your most "commercial" song on it in full, and may be mastered in a way that is optimised for radio play.
For sales at gigs etc:
This kind of recording gives you much more freedom to move. Generally, it is wise to plan early releases to be short – only a few songs. Many bands improve and change dramatically over the span of their first few EPs – it can be a waste of money to attempt a full album from scratch, no matter how cool it might seem. If you are selling over the internet, you may just record one song at a time, to be encapsulated in MP3 format or similar. By the way, be very wary about giving away songs over the internet – it may almost impossible to enforce your copyright once a song has been offered for free. You may find it more effective to provide exerpts of songs, to give people a taste of what you do. Or you might want to distribute your songs on a pay-per-download basis on sites such as iTunes, using TuneCore or similar (see our article in this issue).

A final thought – recording final tracks at home

A further possiblity is becoming more and more possible at all levels of the industry as digital audio technology becomes cheaper and better: you might consider recording some or all of your tracks in a home studio, then mixing them in a better-equipped commercial studio.
This gives you the advantage of low-cost tracking, done in your own time, with as much honing for perfection as you care to do. If you have low-cost compatible software (such as ProTools LE) you may be able to transfer entire projects to the mixing studio on a data CDR or DVD-R. You also get the "finish" of mixing in a commercial studio with an excellent engineer, very good monitors and an acoustically-designed space, not to mention bags of outboard equipment to put a fine finish on your work.

If you go down this path, however, you will face some challenges:

Firstly, you have to know, or learn, how to record music well. This is not a simple or by-the-numbers process – it is still just as much art and intuition as science. Most good audio engineers have years of experience and/or training. If you have little interest in putting in the hours learing the techniques and technology of recording, this option is probably not for you – at least not at the moment. This option is easiest for bands using mostly electronic sources (for example, MIDI keyboards, turntables, electric guitars, electronic drums) and hardest for bands using mostly acoustic sources (acoustic guitar, vocals, traditional instruments).

Secondly, you have to record music while you are performing it, or train an assistant, partner, friend or pet to press the right buttons at the right time. The split mental process that occurs when recording and performing at the same time is not condusive either to the best performances or the best recordings, though some people do manage to make very good recordings this way. Like anything, with time and experience you can get better at this, but it may not be your best option for an early recording for release.

Thirdly, although skill is infintely more important than equipment, the sort of gear good enough to record "product" is going to cost a lot more than the entry level gear I mentioned earlier. You do need at least one good mic costing (at least) hundreds of dollars. You also need good monitors, headphones and a recording interface at similar minimum cost per item, not to mention software and a pretty decent computer with a fast hard disk. Expect to spend several thousands at this level for a good basic setup. If you are not likely to do a lot of recording, you may find it cheaper and more satisfactory to go to a small studio to do your tracking. This may be essential for tracking some parts anyway; many home studios do have the facilities to record live drums, for example, because of the many mics and input channels usually required for a modern drum sound.

Fourthly, you have to have a suitable home environment. If you live next to a railway line, airport or major road, or just have a noisy dog or family, you'll have difficulty in getting quiet vocal takes, and you may get low frequency rumble out of the range of your headphones or monitors. This is not fatal but it can be annoying, and involve extra cost to deal with at mix time. Acoustic instruments can be quite difficult to record in a home environment because it is hard to get a good "room" sound in a small basement or bedroom, and mics set for low instrument levels are especially sensitive to noise from outside. Sound-proofing and other forms of acoustic treatment are possible, but inevitably very expensive. Other instruments have their own recording problems. If you are using real drums, for example, you may not have the space or microphones required to get a good recording – it may be preferable to record these in a commercial studio.

Noise from your home studio to the outside world may be a problem too. If you have to crank the Marshall up to 11 too often to get just that feedback you want, or are still yelling out vocal takes after midnight, your popularity with housemates and neighbors might dwindle.

One way around all these problems is to set up cooperative relationships with other musicians, so no one person has to buy all the gear. It can be difficult to make such relationships work, but it is certainly a cheaper option.

Good luck, and may your mistakes (we all make 'em) be inexpensive and instructive!

For more information and suggestions, email The Songsmith.

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Getting your recordings online

What is Tunecore?

Tunecore is a service for placing recordings at legal internet download sites such as iTunes. Many of these sites make it difficult for the average Joe to place recordings. Services such as Tunecore may be a part of the solution.
Tunecore works on the basis of “songs” and “albums”. A song can be any single piece of music up to 74 minutes long (the capacity of a normal CD). An album is one or more “songs” whose total playing time is no longer than 74 minutes. All songs must be in an album; if you wanted to upload only one song then the one song would also constitute an album. Keep this arrangement in mind, as it can affect the price which Tunecore charges you.

What does it cost?

Tunecore asks a one-time-only charge of US$0.99 per song (about A$1.30, depending on the exchange rate). They will place your album on the first site for free, but will charge for additional sites at the rate of US$0.99 per site per album, again as a one-time-only charge. Tunecore also charge an annual “maintenance and storage fee” of US$7.98 per album. There is a US$20.00 fee if you want to remove an album during the initial six month term.

What does it pay?

Tunecore collects whatever standard payments the sites make for each download. For some sites it collects a streaming fee. For example, standard payments for iTunes Australia are AUD$0.99 per song and AUD$9.99 per album of eleven or more songs. Albums of less than eleven songs are paid at the per song rate. Tunecore distance themselves from the payments and claim that they act merely as a conduit, taking no percentage themselves. Any money received is placed in an account for each customer and the money can be withdrawn at any time, either by cheque or through the “Paypal” online payment system. Tunecore’s charges (see above) also appear to be deducted from this account periodically.

What format must the music be in?

Tunecore accepts several different formats for uploading by the customer. You can also send them an audio CD; they will convert the recording to the necessary format.

Tunecore also provide unique bar codes and ISRC (International Standard Recording Code) numbers at no extra cost. Both of these are essential for accessing the service and the customer can also use them freely, anywhere else, forever, at no cost. (This provides an economical solution to the demand of retailers for a unique bar code on physical CDs!)

How long will I be tied to a contract?

The initial contract period is six months, after that a customer can leave at any time. If you do not leave, non-refundable fees as outlined above are automatically charged on an annual basis.

What about copyright?

In keeping with their “hands off” approach, Tunecore demands that you guarantee that you have a legal entitlement to all of the rights to the recordings you submit. If anyone else owns a copyright in your recording, you must obtain a clearance. Tunecore will accept your recordings of covers as long you have obtained clearance for them. Composers who are members of APRA should clarify with that organisation whether the sites selected are licensed by them or by a body with a reciprocal deal with them. Apparently some sites withhold a percentage of payments to cover the costs of various licenses. Tunecore will, in certain circumstances, also withhold amounts to cover licensing fees.

APRA members could also investigate APRA’s “opt-out” and “license-back” schemes whereby certain of APRA’s royalty-collecting responsibilities can be assumed by the composer. You may not have to use these schemes, however, and you should make sure you understand the full implications of them before participating.

Tunecore states that their contract does not give them any copyright ownership in songs or recordings. You are giving them a non-exclusive license to sell, copy and distribute the recordings through internet stores for the period of the agreement. The fact that the licence is "non-exclusive" means that you can, if you wish, also sell your recordings through your own or any other website. Since Tunecore is based in the USA, most of its asssumptions about copyright relate to the laws of that country. There may be issues regarding the provisions of Australian copyright law.

What if anything goes wrong?

The agreement seems to place all responsibility back on the customer. If there is any action by a copyright holder against Tunecore over a recording that you have submitted, you are liable for all legal costs incurred by Tunecore in defending the action. Tunecore also seems to have the complete right to decide how they will defend any action. Actions against Tunecore by customers are also substantially limited by the agreement. The designated jurisdiction is New York, USA.

Can I make any money out of this?

Simply placing a recording on a site such as iTunes does not guarantee you any sales; such sites provide distribution, not promotion. The sites are enormous and hold hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of recordings. The chance that anyone will find your work without knowing who you are is extremely slight. On the other hand, if you are actively promoting your work (at gigs, for example) the sites can offer a simple and familiar way for punters to access and purchase your music and this may create a modest income stream.
You can find more information on the Tunecore site (www.tunecore.com) especially the FAQ (www.tunecore.com/index/faq). Despite the prominent claim on the site that there are “no contracts”, the terms and conditions to which you must agree look very much like a contract. They can be viewed here.

The writer of this article is not a qualified legal practitioner and the article should not be considered as legal advice but is for information purposes only.