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How I learnt to record FASTER – Tips for faster production and Recording!
Introduction
If you have ever tried recording, you know how time-consuming it can be! It can take ages to record the simplest of tracks. Having to do everything from getting sounds, writing and the. Recording and editing. I like to think I have got recording guitar down to an art. I record a lot, due to doing reviews, demos etc. So I thought it would be worth sharing some of my tips on how to speed up the recording process and allow you to record faster.
So let’s go through a few tips, hacks and processes that I have in place to help record faster. Starting with my first tip “Writing vs Recording”.
Writing vs Recording
The first thing I learnt to do when wanting to record faster, is distinguishing the difference between writing and recording. Writing is when you just vomit your ideas on to a page, where you come up with a basic outline for the song you are recording, and then you go back through these ideas and re-record and perfect the tales. This is where you get good solid takes, ready to edit and mix.
I find that if I’m trying to write a song and also get a good recording of that song, what happens is one of them will suffer in that process. So I find it is always better to write first and then go back and record properly after.
Be Fully Rehearsed
The number one tip when recording, especially if it’s with a full band is to get into the studio fully rehearsed. When paying for a full studio you can be paying quite a lot of money per day, so you wanna make sure you make the most of it in the best and easiest way to speed up recording is to know your parts and know what you need to record.
Of course, I’m not saying that you can’t make some minor changes or adjustments while recording, like minor production tweaks. For example, adding a third guitar part on top or something like that, but don’t go into a recording session trying to write a chorus to a song. This is just gonna slow you up and will cost you a bit of money in the long run.
Record faster by Recording now, Edit later
What everyone seems to get caught up in is comping and editing! They will record two takes and then work on editing them together. I advise you not to do this! Focus on the recording! You might end up with 100 tracks of guitar tales but you can come back and edit them at the end.
Once you get familiar with recording and do it more you will be able to sense a good take and be able to move through them quickly. Meaning you will have less to edit! Lots of people try and do multiple takes to get the best take but what I will say is that the more takes you do the quality of the takes will down. The passion and performance you give within the take decrease with every take. So you wanna try and keep it within 2 to 3 tanks and then come back later after you finish recording and edit what you’ve got.
Doesn’t have to be perfect
Something to mention is that too many people focus on perfection when recording. You can get into the habit of doing take after take after take and then editing it until every imperfection has been removed. This might be the effect you want and might be the desired effect. Something like high-production pop music you might need to do it for. However, I think most music benefits from having imperfections and slight mistakes in the recording.
So as we said above, do a couple of takes maybe three and then move on to what you might find, is there any mistakes in the recording added to the song so string noise, vocal chatter, or anything like that can stay in? However, be careful because there is a fine line between enhancing a song with imperfections and just being plain sloppy when recording. And I’m afraid that comes with trial and error.
Conclusion
So there you go, a few tips on how you can speed up any recording you are doing. Do you record a lot and have your tips? Post them here and let us know, we would love to hear what tips you all have and might even do a part two with some extra tips. Recording is a fun process that can take a while if you have a lot to do, but above are some things to help speed that process up.
We have loads of articles on our blog page, so whatever you are after I am sure we have an article for it. We also have a load of reviews that you can check out, reviews which contain demo songs, in which we put what we mentioned above into practice!
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