Chris Stamey's "A.I.R.: Always In Record" Mantra

[touched1]

Of all the things I've read in Tape Op over the years, this one keeps creeping into my head as really great advice. From Chris' series on tips for fixing it before the mix:

# 10. A.I.R: "Always In Record." Even if the wires aren't all plugged in, record those runthroughs - they are often golden. Reach over and hit the key command; you can always blow it away later.
http://www.chrisstamey.com/tips.html

In my mind I've transposed the Mantra to "Always Be Recording!!" which reminds me of Alec Baldwin in "Glengarry Glen Ross". That movie was simuiltaneously humorous, frightening, and a little too close to home for some people I know. Anyway, using the Baldwin filter has helped this mantra stick in my head. But I have not yet been able to make it part of my workflow.

I've missed so many good takes being frugal, or just lazy.

I've tried setting up "Random Recording" capture folders using different applications, (Metric Halo's MIO Console, Reaktor's built in recorder) but nothing is really sticking with me. I am an eternal tweaker. I can spend an hour or two making insane noises with a guitar or a Moog, but when I stop, it's gone, never to be heard again.

The same goes for my approach to composition and remixing. Endless variations and takes, but few committed to audio.

I'm sure there are users here who practice this. I'd like to here how they've worked this into their workflow. Do you keep your DAW recording? A DAT? A secondary machine? How do you manage the files that pile up? It seems like these kinds of recordings are easily forgotten and could quickly take over your hard drives.

The Sonic State tour of Peter Gabriel's private studio reveals a backup machine that records all the MIDI and sound that Peter produces while jamming. ALL OF IT.
That's a bit excessive for most of us. Or maybe not.

What's working or not working for you?

[MoreSpaceEcho]

if the band/singer/guitar player/whoever is out there working something out and i think they're getting somewhere i'll record all of it.

if it's me playing...i am not the greatest musician, i need a lot of takes. i record all of 'em and sort out the good bits later. the sorting out process is tedious for sure, but if you just sit down and get to it, it's not that bad. that said, if i'm still in the process of figuring out a part, i won't record until i have a pretty concrete idea of what i want to play. if i recorded everything in the ideas phase it would just be way too much to sort through.

on the other other hand, one thing i've been fond of for a long time is doing something 'ambient'...volume pedal guitar/rhodes/whatever into the space echo or a reverb or something....i just improvise and play really really sparsely and do like a half dozen takes. play them all back together. lots of times nice things happen.

[touched1]

Thanks for the reply MoreSpaceEcho.

For some perspective on my reason for posting this, I am mostly a one man operation. Writing original material, doing remixes for others, or adding overdubs to friends' tracks. But 99.9% of the time, it's just me, my machines, and whatever FX/Instruments/tracks I am playing with at the time....

I feel like I could be compiling more source and reference material, and that this could be useful. But at the same time, it could get out of hand so easily...

[;ivlunsdystf]

I catch your point. DVDs are cheap and it is reasonable to think that you could save everything. On the other hand those same two hands that just tweaked patches and played rad sounds on a keyboard yesterday could make new rad sounds today. Then, too, are you really ever going to go back and use all that old stuff you've saved? (Unanswerable question)

Two things come to mind:
1. Frank Zappa was a serial hoarder, and went back to old stuff constantly. His practice of saving old guitar solos to drop into new recordings years after the fact led to some quite amusing and interesting outcomes of an aleatory nature. [I wish Gail would put all his old weird recordings - EVERYTHING - on itunes, BTW]

2. It would be an interesting project to make a practice of saving everything for six months and then try to compile something coherent out of it at the end of the six months. Somebody do that!

A question: What is the Alec Baldwin line in that movie? That is one heck of a movie.

[touched1]

A question: What is the Alec Baldwin line in that movie? That is one heck of a movie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-AXTx4PcKI

The whole clip is worth watching if you haven't seen it in a while. But the actual line comes in at 3:20.

So funny, and so tragically accurate.

I used to record constantly onto DATs. And it was useful at the time, because I always had a catalog of material to mine from. Somehow things changed when I started recording to disc. You'd think it'd be different. But even though my track count is higher, and I have virtually unlimited storage. I am very non-committal when it comes to tracking in a DAW.

The most fun I have is when the computer is off or I'm not looking at it, and I am just making sounds and twisting knobs.

Perhaps this is a personal issue with me. But I thought I'd float this out there to see what others are doing.
Without the option of being Peter Gabriel and having an assistant invisibly archiving your every move in the background, I'll pose the best potential options as I see it;

-A secondary machine connected digitally capturing all the action.
-A secondary Application (configured via Jack OS X or Soundflower, or in my case the Record Pael in the Metric Halo Software)
-Gratuitous uncensored tracking while you are mixing/composing

All of these require a good deal of note taking and organization to stay on top of things.
I've started to get in the habit of taking notes in Circus Ponies' Notebook app on every song/track I work on. Much like a session notebook. This is working well for me.
And as Tatertot pointed out, archiving quickly to DVD would be wise and save on hard disk space.

Let's keep this thread going. I really want to hear some other perspectives on this.

[touched1]

And I like Tatertots idea of recoding everything for six months.
If I did that and nothing good came out of it, I'd know it was time to try a new creative medium....

[apropos of nothing]

Zoom H2 coming out of the mixer. 'Matter of fact, (since I'm doing a lot with sequencing and sampling, meaning the source files are samples and midi-loops), I've pretty much switched over entirely to using it over the multitrack interface. So in other words, the performance is the mixdown, and then butt-joint the best portions of takes. It has made recording super-enjoyable for me again. Also having a pocket box to stick in front of things that *might* be fun to sample later is great.

Edit: If Im recording for something specific, I'll go 44/24. If I'm capturing just for the hell of capturing, mp3 320. It doesn't sound as good as being there, but you can think about being there again and again and again.

Edit 2: As an example of this, here's the field recordings I made at bars in my hometown at about 12:45am, Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2008. mp3 320 source and delivery.
http://www.box.net/shared/il7yg5oyr7#election_night

[touched1]

A handheld 2 track recorder capturing passes is a great idea.
I had an M-Audio Microtrack II for a while, sold it when I was low on cash.

Maybe I should get another. The M-Audio had SPDIF in, that's why I went for it. I could just slap that on a digi-out and forget about it....

Of course, the organization of files is still a little daunting, but I guess if you just go through it at the end of every day, it may not be so bad..

[apropos of nothing]

A handheld 2 track recorder capturing passes is a great idea.
I had an M-Audio Microtrack II for a while, sold it when I was low on cash.

Maybe I should get another. The M-Audio had SPDIF in, that's why I went for it. I could just slap that on a digi-out and forget about it....

Of course, the organization of files is still a little daunting, but I guess if you just go through it at the end of every day, it may not be so bad..

I make a habit to offload, rename and organize at the end of every "session". I'm a pretty random person, so it was kind of a hard habit to get into, but I'm pretty good at picking up habits.

[;ivlunsdystf]

I forgot to mention my ongoing habit of hoarding sounds onto an H2. That really warrants a separate thread. I suggest that every TOMB regular get established at freesound too. You can put up all your discarded guitar solos there, along with your field recordings and snare samples (etc. etc.) and it is fun to see how many people download them. It's like a big compost heap for the entire music world to draw from.

[DrummerMan]

This is a little different, but might apply to your situation. I don't necessarily record everything I do, but the most musically productive times in my life (recording-wise) have been when I'm "always able/setup to record". I'm also mostly a one man operation these days, so what this means to me is that I have enough mics and DI's setup and in position so if I want to record something I can be doing it as quickly as possible. Nothing slows my momentum down like having to patch something in, find the right position and get sounds. For me, I (ideally) need to have a drum kit mic'd up and plugged into dedicated channels on my board, with whatever comps/processors/whatever in-line, so all I have to do is press record. Things usually need some tweaking depending on the song or day, but it gives me a baseline to start from that can be "pretty close" in case some magic is captured on the first run through. That's my main priority, obviously, but I also try to have a guitar amp set up as well as functioning DI's for bass and any keyboards that aren't MIDI. I've got one mic setup for acoustic guitars/banjo/mandolin type stuff, and I've also got the vibes mic'd and ready to go.

It's been about a year or so since I've been able to do this, since I moved out of my Brooklyn studio and have been working out of my apartment in LA, but I should be finished building out my new studio space in a month or so, and since, for the first time, I'm specifically making it a space primarily for me alone, I'm going to be setting it up so everything I need is within reach, including running an extension screen and 'puter keyboard over by the drums.

I also find that having some different project templates in my DAW helps. Like one that has all the drum mics labeled and the bass DI, etc., or a template that brings up a certain set of software instruments that I have a tendency to use often, like a certain "rhodes" sound, a grand piano, a synth bass, some mellotron strings, and one of my favorite electronic drum patches. Again, things can always be added/changed but I find this helps me get started quickly at times.

[touched1]

I totally agree.
having things patched and ready to go is the way.
I moved out my dying 32 channel board, got another 8 channel sound card, and leave everything connected and ready at all times.

It seems that I lack a certain fearlessness that some people have when it comes to laying down audio. If it's not as good as it can be, I am hesitant to commit a sound or mix to a new file. Perhaps that is another topic entirely. I've been working on a remix all day, tweaking the mix and arrangement. And I have yet to print a single pass. I always liked the idea comping from multiple takes. But I personally never do it.

I want to believe that having a 2 track recorder (which in this case would be fine) blindly capturing all the tweaking and passes I am doing would help things along. Maybe it would. Fact is I have the facilities to do the same thing already. I am currently running a digital signal into my laptop to run an RTA. I could easily just start capturing takes. Perhaps that is the way to go....

I could also just start capturing mix passes right into the DAW. This would make comping things later much easier.

I think I am making this much harder than it needs to be.....

[rwc]

i disagree.

say you're working on a complex session with someone who is good, but writing as they go.

Keeping everything while working fast undoubtedly leads to a 150+ track clusterfuck, even if you have good organizational skills.

I used to keep everything but now resort to making choices early on. It makes it easier for anyone else who has to work on the project. Not having to scour through someone else's mess for the "other steccato take on the chorus", when you have 25 tracks, no markers, and a bunch of shit labeled "violin 1, violin 2" ....

and it makes it easier for the artist and I because the choices we make now help influence the NEXT decision.

Especially if it's a four bar part.. then another eight bar part. Do I really want 70 tracks of different ways we could do the chorus's drums "just in case?"

FUCK!

NO!

If it's a 3-5 piece rock band that plays all live, I have NO PROBLEM hitting record in the beginning and not stopping it until they're all out of the live room. in this case, the only disadvantage to not recording all the way through is saving disk space, which is cheap. It's actually more work to stop and start it than it is for me to simply keep it going.

but for pop and music that is not crafted live, you beg for a mess working with the "always in record" thing.

there are enough clusterfuck sessions out there both in home studios and in professional situations to support this theory.

[JGriffin]

there's supposedly a famous tape out there of Billy Corgan tearing some engineer a new one because he wasn't rolling a DAT on some jamming the Pumpkins were doing in the studio. "Always be in record! ALWAYS!"

I roll a backup DAT if I've got a famous person in the booth, primarily because it's much harder and much more expensive (and infinitely more embarrassing) to get them back to re-do something you've lost than if it were a regular pro actor. And no matter who's in the booth I also try to roll on level reads/ run-throughs if i can.

I was doing a session once as a guitarist, and had been brought in to do some ambient/noisy/experimental guitar thing. Set up, the engineer rolled tape and I played along. the artist started jumping up and down in the control room, all excited, "that was GREAT! Just what I wanted! let's hear that back!" The engineer looked at him and said, oh, I wasn't recording, that pass was just for level. Now, often times the take you were really excited about at the time turns out to not be all that great when compare with what came later, but if it isn't there for comparison you'll romanticize it to the point where it becomes "the one that got away." We got a keeper take but even though there is no way to really prove it, the artist always felt the first, off-the-cuff take was the best.

[touched1]

Yeah, RWC, for what you are describing, I would not want to "always be recording" either.
But I'm posing something a little different from your worst case scenario.

As explained, I am a one man operation. And I am referring at the moment to 2 channel mix passes. But I'm also considering "riffing" sessions, cathartic jams, early demos, final mixes and everything in between.. But mainly from the perspective of a one man operation.

It's an open thread though, this could be taken in any of a thousand directions.

You are a wise man dwlb. The smartest engineers I've worked with have usually said "Yeah, we got that." after someone finishes a great sounding warm up pass, and we all look around going, "Damn, I wish that had been a real take."

Are they all real takes? How liberal should one get with the documenting process?
I ask these questions from the perspective of someone who lives, writes, records and mixes in a well equipped home studio. And wishes that his creative output was greater and moved along at a quicker pace.