The Music Production Process

There are three main stages in the process of producing a recording of an Artist/Band, and 2 main groups of people involved, and i am gonna talk about them in this post, they are all extremely vital in making sure that the final product is something to be proud of.

First of all..


The Writer/Artist
The writer is the person that believe it or not, writes the music and/or lyrics, the artist is the person who performs the song and effectively takes all the credit for doing so. Though nowadays, the artist is often also the songwriter, these are often referred to as singer/songwriters, which generally tends to be a solo artist with an acoustic guitar or piano and vocals. Some music is just instrumental, and this sort of music tends to be written by the artists themselves as that is their main area.


If you are a talented song writer you could potentially even be hired by a record company to write music for their artists, or alternatively, you could pitch your songs to the labels and if they like it then they may consider working with you.

The way i see it, the songwriter can make a good living out of composing music, without having to deal with all the issues of being an artist and having to deal with all of the press and media as this can be extremely stressful.

In contracts, if needs be, the music and the lyrics can be copyrighted as two separate items because they could have been written by two different people, it is quite common for the writer to compose the music, but for the artist to then write their own lyrics for the songs, which i think is a good way of doing it because it makes them more genuine as an artist as they are actually singing about something close to them, not just something written by someone they may not even know!

The second part of the process..

Pre-Production
Pre-production is where the band is basically preparing for recording their proper CD, usually to do this the band will get a rehearsal studio and practice, practice then practice again, then it is usually recommended that they record a demo CD in a cheaper studio, this way they can figure out exactly what each member plays, and any extra parts they want to put in the songs, this enables them to save time when it comes to recording in the proper studio. This CD is referred to as the pre-production demo.

The pre-production demo is also handy because they can post songs online or give out free CDs at gigs so they can get peoples opinion, it is always important to find out who your target audience is and what they would like to see in your music. I suppose in a way pre-production is like market research, in the sense that you can find out what the consumer wants, for example; it is a bit like giving out free tasters of a new food a business might be launching, but in the form of music. You would then refer to the pre-production demo when in the proper recording session to enable you to remember exactly what you played.

Pre-production does not really apply so much to say a Dance artist, as they would often program the music straight onto a computer, so it can be chopped and changed as they go along, although they may still want to release a pre-production demo to research and find out what people think should be changed in their music.

I think that to be successful in the music industry, you need to be extremely passionate about it!

The people who make the magic happen..

The Engineer/Producer
This is a vital role in the production of an artist/band. The engineer is the person who actually sets up the microphones and actually mixes and records the track and puts the track together, the engineers also know ALOT about gear, and are very intelligent and talented people. The producer is the person who sits in on the recording session and puts forward any ideas they may have to improve the performance and music in the song, i like to think of it as being like the director of a film, the film director suggests ways to improve the actors performance, and it is very much the same with the recording process, the producer will be honest with the artist and will tell them if they think they have played something wrong, they may also suggest things like tempo changes and key changes, you name it. The producer will not necessarily be the brightest of people when it comes to technical things like gear, however they are very clever and know what they are talking about when it comes to the actual music itself.

It is not a rarity nowadays for the Producer and the Engineer to actually be the same person, especially in a lot of privately owned/run studios, the engineer is often also a musician so will know what sounds good and what doesn't, in terms of the performance and in terms of the actual recording itself.

Ok, now on to..

The Recording Process
In this section, just to keep it fairly basic, i will talk about how to record a solo artist. In this example, let's say the solo artist plays acoustic guitar and sings. 


There are two options to take when recording somebody of this particular style, both of which have their advantages and disadvantages.

Option 1
The first option would be to do the whole thing as what we would call a 'live recording'. This would mean setting the artist up in the room, with their guitar mic'd up, as well as a vocal mic, and you would record the whole thing 'live' hence the name.

The advantage of taking this option are that the performer would almost definitely be more comfortable and feel more natural as they would be used to performing this way. This can cause many issues when it comes to mixing though, spill will be a major issue as the microphones would both pick up the voice and the guitar, which makes it hard to mix the music properly, and it also makes it virtually impossible to make any edits if there were a mistake in one of the guitar parts for example.

There is another option though..

Option 2
The second option is one that most producers/engineers would prefer to take, which would be to multitrack the performance, which would mean recording the acoustic guitar first, and possibly even using techniques such as double tracking to thicken the sound. You can then do the same with the vocals, and by recording with a metronome it will enable you to add extra parts in to top off the sound of the recording.

The advantage of taking this option is that for mixing it is a lot easier and will enable the engineer to get a better overall sound. They will also be able to apply any edits a lot easier than they would if they had recorded it live.

Recording
When recording an instrument of any form of sound really, the mics should generally always be pointing at whatever the initial sound is coming from, otherwise it could pick up unwanted reflections, and the mics are specifically designed to be pointed at the source of sound.

To start with, i would recommend you record a guide track, this will give the artist something nice to play along to when they record the guitar, even if its just a very simple drum beat, it is much nicer than just hearing CLICK CLICK CLICK over and over again.

To achieve a high quality vocal recording, you will need a high quality large diaphragm condenser microphone. This will enable you to gain top clarity from the performers voice. You should also use a 'Pop Shield' to avoid any plosives (P's and B's) as these can make a very loud windy sort of sound into a microphone and will almost definitely ruin your vocal recording. It is also highly advised to use a reflection filter around the mic to avoid the risk of any unwanted clashy/resonant frequencies to be picked up by the mic, this could also possibly be done by just recording in a dead room.

A high quality mixing desk with some lovely preamps will top off the sound of your vocal recording, and many high quality valve processors will do the trick. It's all about the warmth of valve in a vocal recording in my opinion!

A De-esser is also vital to eliminate any strong sibilance in the recording as this sounds nasty in a vocal recording and will stick out like a sore thumb in a full mix.



And now for what you think may be obvious..
Make sure the vocalist is wearing headphones so that they can hear the backing track clearly, this will help them to achieve a high quality vocal performance, and will keep their confidence up. A lot of vocalists tend to have the headphones only on one ear so they can hear exactly what their voice is doing, this runs the risk of more spill as the backing track or even worse.. metronome could be picked up by the mic, this could be potentially destroying to a recording. Even if the artist is wearing headphones on both ears it is still advised to make sure the track isn't being played to loud.

It is always wise to double check that there is no unwanted background noise by turning down the track in the control room and listen to just what the vocalist is recording at that time. If the vocalist needs lyrics, make sure the music stand is placed away from the mic stand as you do not want any dodgy frequencies to resonate on the music stand, just make sure the performer doesn't hold the papers in their hands as the last thing you want in your vocal recording is the sound of paper rustling about.


Finally.. Mastering
Mastering is basically polishing off the final recording, and cutting out any overpowering frequencies, this will then allow headroom to make the recording louder. Although mastering is s'posed to be about just polishing the overall mix and making it sound as high standard as possible, it is almost becoming a bit of a battle of the loudest, with most commercial artists nowadays, people seem to be pushing the boundaries and getting the recordings as loud as physically possible before they clip or distort, this enables their recordings to stand out more when they come on, and could make the track more effective.

People often pay extremely large amounts of money to have their tracks professionally mastered, and it is debatable, some people believe a high quality job can be done using software, but others will stick to their guns and say that the track needs to be mastered properly using hardware and other extremely expensive gear.


I hope this has been useful in explaining about the music production process, and i will be using many of these techniques on the EP we are currently working on. 

28/09/2011 Recording the EP

Me and Matt Male are currently recording a 4 track EP to release as well as launching a Facebook page and doing lots of online promotion.

In the next blog i will talk about the production process and how it all works.

We are thinking of a name for our project at the moment, then we will start to think about what we will do for artwork and will also begin writing down some ideas for the music video.

I hope to have the EP finished in the next 2 weeks, i am going to create the Facebook page as soon as we have thought of a name, we will then release a small sample from each track on the EP, before releasing the actual thing.

Metal Project

In the mini project we have to produce a short video for a track we've created, We also have to use other marketing skills to turn it into a product. I have chosen to create a video for a metal track i produced over the summer, it's quite a dark song inspired heavily by bands like Bring Me The Horizon and Asking Alexandria, so the video needs to fit nicely with this genre of music. I'm thinking of ideas at the moment...

We are going to print of about 200 questionnaires to take around to find out our target audiences, so we can put up posters around areas that our target audience will spend a lot of time and are likely to see the posters.

I am also thinking of ideas at the moment for the 30 second video clip to go with the song. I'm thinking that it needs to be quite dark and atmospheric to appeal to the right people, it needs to be very animated and interesting.

Here is the first example of the sort of music/video that i am hoping to go for in my project.