Ashland Studios

Over the years I've collected a nice patch of equipment and experience doing recordings - quick, easy, good recordings.

The trick is always quality - how can you get the best quality for the right amount of effort.

That I've figured out now.

Here's the very simple stuff:

a) artists - know your stuff - no matter how good a studio you enter, if you don't know your material or can't perform it, it's gonna take forever to get it recorded. This takes WORK - that's the difference between musicians and everybody else, they practice until they do it right.

b) artists - like your sounds - if you don't like your voice or your guitar tone or your percussion sounds or your horns, etc., you're not gonna like them recorded either. It's one of the harder things to do to be objective about the tones you're getting. Sometimes another ear is in order, sometimes you have to go with your guts. Don't be overconfident either, seek constructive criticism and be prepared to go fix things that are wrong.

c) engineers - talk about the vibe and the tone and the instrumentation and how they're supposed to be related. Jug music is not punk rock (unless it's jug punk!), country is not hip hop, the same kinds of mixes and recording methods don't apply to all kinds of music.

d) engineers - have good equipment. It's definitely possible to make a cheap recording on a tascam portastudio with an sm58 in your bathroom. It will definitely not sound as good as a high quality digital recording with correct microphones and pre-amps and eq and compression in the right rooms with the right reverbs.

e) engineers/musicians - go for a live sound. It has the energy. Yes, click-tracks are great and overdubbing can be useful for cleaning up messes, but that tends to be expensive and also tends to lose the vibe. This means a cooperative effort between engineer and musician - musicians all need to be able to finish their songs with the energy they're looking for. Engineers need to understand best how to capture that energy.

f) engineers/musicians - remember that this is ART - it's fun, you're supposed to play with it, the more you play, the more ideas you get, the more good ideas you get, the more good ideas you capture, etc. This goes at every stage of the process from writing to mic placement to mastering.

g) musicians - have a plan for marketing your music - GIG, Be Cool, Internet!, Social Network!, just keep it out there. This will take TIME. Without a product to sell though, it will take longer. Better to be prepared because you'll just have to do it again with the product if you do it without product.

That's post 1, next we'll talk about the studio.


Aloha!

Robbie L