The Studio (Part 1)

The studio has been an interesting experience so far. In the past I’ve gone in with a full band. We would set up the drums in the main studio and spend anywhere from three hours to a full day getting our sounds. After that, the other musicians would do a quick set-up in the control room and I would listen to them (raw) in the headphone mix, along with a click track and drum mix.

This time there was no band. Only me, and I needed to do it all myself. 

For the record, drums are almost always recorded first. If you’re wondering about the reason for this, it’s because they act as a foundation for the other instruments.

Here’s a little side note: It took months before I realized that a drummer should never have the others guys loud in the headphone mix. Know why? Because - generally speaking - the other players have terrible timing, and if they’re too loud they’ll pull the drummer off the click. Don’t believe me? Think about it: a great drummer has great timing, but a talented guitar player probably has an amazing sense of melody, or a nice tone, or some tasty licks, or knows how to shred, or whatever. Timing is usually average, at best. Especially if the player is hanging out in the control room, acting like a goof-ball while you’re trying to lay down a keeper.    

Anyways, this time it was different. The drums couldn’t go first because I needed to hear the song in my headphone mix while I was laying down the drums tracks. If I didn’t have it, I wouldn’t know where I was in the song. 

I guess I should point out that I know how to read and write music, so I could have written the drum tracks down on a sheet of paper - I do that sometimes. But in this case it wouldn’t have been the same. I’d be playing drums mechanically instead of instinctively, which is always better. Drummers don’t like to read and think while they play - insert drummer joke here - they like to react. 

So, how did I get around this? 

I needed to lay down a guitar/vocal scratch track (A scratch track is a track you throw away once the recording is completed). After the scratch track was recorded I listened to it inside my headphone mix.

But laying down a scratch track wasn’t as easy as you may think. It came with its own set of problems.  

More to come in Part 2...