April

The Importance of Staying Organized in the Recording Studio

Posted In: Band Management, Career Building, Recording, Uncategorized by claybutlermusic

A while back, I wrote about my efforts to make my home studio more ergonomic and my workspace more organized. Today, I want to take that concept one step further and talk about informational organization.

Right now I’m teaching a recording class at a local college, and the students’ task is to produce a song demo for a songwriter. So far, I’ve noticed the old notion that musicians are the least organized people on the face of the planet. What’s worse, is that I find that I, myself, fall into that same category when it comes to producing a project. It seems that I have to force myself to do the small organizational tasks that ultimately help increase productivity in the end.

So, I’m going to share a few organizational necessities with you guys (and gals) to help you on your next recording session. I wrote about some of these in my book, Recording Basics: A Beginner’s Guide to Producing Music, but I feel it important to go into a little detail on the blog as well.

Recording Budget

The recording budget is perhaps the most important guide in a recording project. Even if it’s a small project, a budget helps you stay on track with how much you’re spending and where the money is going. Having a detailed budget form helps you to see certain expenses that you may not have thought of, like equipment cartage or album art.

Song Arrangement Matrix

When you’ve written a song, it’s a good idea to know what your arrangement will be for that particular song before you start recording. NEVER jump into recording a song without spending a decent amount of time fleshing out your arrangement. At the very least, decide when certain instruments play or drop out. Use a song arrangement matrix, which is essentially a grid that has blocks for each song section by instrument. Shade in each section (verse, chorus, bridge, etc.) which gets played by each instrument.

Track Sheets

Track sheets are vitally important to a recording session. We’re all tempted to think that we’ll remember every detail of a recording session, like which channel is Johnny’s guitar and which one is Bill’s, or that flub the bassist made in measure 149, but the truth is we simply forget those things. It may be weeks before a song gets edited after a session. Track sheets help you keep track of those important details.

Recording Session Checklist

It happens to us all. We drive an hour and a half to the studio only to realize that we’ve forgotten our [insert vitally important item here]. Use a checklist to make sure you have all the essentials and extras that you want to have handy. Include the even the littlest things like picks, sticks, strings, batteries, and a camera.

Equipment Inventory

Similar to the checklist, be sure to make an inventory of each piece of gear that you take to the studio. Not only will you see what you need (or what you may be missing) before you leave for the studio, it will ensure you keep track of what you must take with you from the studio. After an exhaustive eight-hour session, you might not be as alert, so check your equipment against your inventory to make sure you leave with everything.

Check this out!

After falling victim to a few of the aforementioned pitfalls, and after seeing my students do the same, I’ve created package of all these necessities called The Recording Session Toolkit. Now you can have easy access to budget forms, track sheets, song arrangement matrices, checklists, and inventories all in one place. I’ve done the work for you. Simply fill them out and put them in your project notebook. I’ve even included a handy studio prep guide to help you and your band get the most mileage out of your recording studio time. Try it out. Download it before your next recording session. I guarantee it will help you get the most out of your recording project!

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August

Making the Home Studio More Productive

Posted In: For Businesses, Recording, Uncategorized by claybutlermusic

I’m writing this after taking a break from re-organizing my studio. It’s been driving me nuts for months, and the cleaning/re-organizing part has been driving me nuts for weeks. Yeah, it was that bad.

Prior to about a month or so ago, the most strenuous work I’d been doing in the studio was doing voicovers, jingle sings, and midi-based music cues. Those jobs consisted of not much more than one channel at a time that I could leave in a ready-to-record state. Here lately, though, I’d been noticing myself not being as productive as I wanted to be. I had the desire to work, but every time I started a project, I’d get discouraged and frustrated. It then became clear to me that it was my lack of organization and poor ergonomics that killed my productivity.

My family always jokes with me, saying, “Your studio is never the way you want it,” or, “You’re never happy with it.” This is true not just because I’m a perfectionist, but there’s also another underlying cause. When I began building my home studio in 2006 (three years ago at the time of this writing), in my eagerness to get to work recording, I began to set myself up for my future frustration early on. As soon as the studio would get functional enough to do a little work, I would get focused on projects and put studio organization and ergonomics by the wayside. I was so fired up about being able to work in the studio that I became shortsighted and forgot about being ready for when bigger projects came along. Inevitably, when those bigger projects did come along, I would spend so much time and energy prepping the studio that I would lose my creative drive. I would then either not do as well on the project, or I would end up passing on the opportunity entirely–not what you want to happen when you record music for a living!

That brings me to my current juncture. The frustration has gotten too much to bear, so I’m overhauling it all. Here are some of the things that I’m doing to help improve my home studio:

Purging junk and organizing storage space
Re-wiring equipment and patch bays to make more logical sense
Labeling all cables and snakes
Making a notebook containing wiring diagrams, patch bay input/output lists, and midi routing
Pre-mic’ing guitar amps in the isolation booth to have instant access
Putting the most frequently used items, cables, modules, and processors at arm’s length
Networking computers for easier file transfer and printing
Creating a “workshop” area for guitar repairs and cable soldering
Improving the “office” area to more comfortably do the “business stuff”
Organize client information and contracts

All of these tasks help me to not only be more productive with recording and composing, but it also helps me to be able to readily accept more work without the preparation headaches. Hopefully, it will help me to gain more work, produce more output, and produce a higher quality product. All of these factors will help me “feel better” about working in the space, which, I’ve learned, tremendously impacts success with any business.

If you’re finding yourself frustrated and unproductive, try these little tweaks for yourself and see if they help. Comment with your ideas!

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