Re: Recording Tracking to Mastering?
Disclaimer ~ I produce "rock" music for a living & could very easily pontificate about the subject of recording for hours on end...
There are at least a thousand ways to make a record... a lot of it depends on what kind of record you want to make. At one end, go live in the studio like Van Halen I... at the other... Steely Dan or Alice In Chains... everything layered to the hilt with a dozen tracks of whack.
That's really the first question I ask ANY band when we start talking... what do they envision for the recording?
Gotta have it in your head before you can get it out!
the recording process can be very sterile and un-natural. recording stuff separately, using fake virtual amps, triggers on drums to use sampled drum sounds. it usually comes out in the end, but it's kind of a weird process. i always thought it odd that the best recorded guitar tone comes from putting a mic right up to the speaker, but who in the heck listens to their guitar like that? and then there's bass guitar...
Well, not all records are made like that! The only places I hear of and see using those methods of virtual amps & drums... getting the band to track each instrument seperatley are low-dollar demo studios and the "bubblegum" pop acts like a Mariah Carey or Ricky Martin where it's more "construction" based then "performance" based.
Everyone else, at least in the rock world is still using real amps, real drums and tracking with the band as a whole unit, even if 80% of the guitars and whatever else get replaced later. There's too much magic that happens when a band plays together... sometimes you even get lucky and end up with keeper tracks, a solo or vocal that's killer and doesn't need to be redone for performance reasons.
Besides, I never thought it was very fair for the drummer to have him going at it "for real" and everyone else just slogs though the songs, anticipating the "inevitable" redoing of their parts. At the minimum, bass & drums go down as a unit.
and when it's all said and done, it'll be played through a pair of $1.00 ipod headphones and some dude will complain that there's not enough midrange in the snare or some crap like that.
Yeah... hahahaha There's no accounting for taste!
Ask questions about the process and of the engineer, especially if you don't like something or aren't comfortable. Most people forget that recording is a "service" based thing, the artist should always be in control. The engineer is really just a catalyst for the idea...
Unless it's a minor EQ thing, make something a little brighter or a level adjustment... DO NOT fall for the old "fix it in the mix" line.
If you don't have time to get it right the first time, where are you going to find the time later on???
I'm not really going to touch on production vs. engineering unless someone wants me to... but they really ARE two vastly different roles... and someone needs to be picked as a "producer" for the project. The producer is the person who's responsible for the paperwork and "delivering" the record, basically making final decisions & seeing it to completion.
Generally speaking... "the process" breaks down like this;
Preproduction - This is where you figure out which songs are worthy of being recorded and make the plans for recording, including budget and timeline.
Basics session - Where all the baisc tracks for each song are recorded. Generally it's rhythm section; drums, bass, guitar, scratch (final?) vocal etc. It's common to do multiple takes to edit from... I don't keep dozens of takes, working with the artist we'll pick the best 2-4 and comp one "master" take for each song if we didn't get it in one.
Overdubs - Adding parts on top of the "master" take; solos, vocals & anything else from a cowbell to a string section. Again, I prefer to edit as we go and not put off decisions until later.
Mixing - Where all 40 tracks of whack are blended into a final 2-track master. At best, this process is simply balancing and sweetening the recorded tracks and moves quickly & easily, especially if good performances & tones were captured. The magic! Otherwise, it's sometimes common to "reinvent" the songs at mixing and spend days on one song trying different things.
Mastering - The final step of the creative process and the first step of manufacturing. The mastering engineer, usually with years of experience and $20k speakers sitting in a tuned room gives the individual mixes a final sweetening with minor EQ and other tools to turn them into a cohesive sounding record. Levels between songs are balanced out and spacing between tracks is adjusted. After all that is done & approved, they'll create an error-checked "PMCD" that goes to the plant, essentially a glass-master that thousands of CD's will be created from.
