the process, show and tell

[allyouneedisears]

As of late, I've been thinking a bit about work flow. Particularly when it comes to people who record their own music. Everybody has their own way of doing things, and for me I often find the process of recording my own music a very limiting experience.

I general start of with a song already written, open up my daw, set the tempo, and record a quick scratch guitar/vocal track to work off of. Then I overdub parts as needed, usually starting with whichever instrument is holding down the rhythm of the song. Usually a fair bit of the mixing happens along the way. Anyways, that's how I've been doing it for awhile, and I'm not very happy with the results. I often have a lot of arrangement idea's before i hit record, but usually end up bored of frustrated with the project.

So... deep breath... that brings me to my question. How do you guys do it? I would love to hear how people get things done, from the birth of a melody the final mix.

[nordberg]

TELL: lately i've been going totally unscripted. i find that i have no creativity when i think about it too hard.
i start with drums and just drum for as long as i think a song might be (anywhere from 2 -5 minutes.) then i get on the bass and play with the drums until we seem to lock. then it's something else... usually guitar or piano, but sometimes synth, flute, tambourine, shakers, organ, glock...
i rarely end up singing on stuff because 1) i can't write a melody to save my life and 2) i always write music first and can't stand to be asked what a song is "about". if i do write words they're usually nonsensical and dumb.
SHOW: here's something i did last week with this process.http://www.divshare.com/download/6837808-540

[Kindly Killer]

I haven't done this in a while, but I used to use a foot controller with ableton live to quickly put down songwriting ideas. I was using a guitar with a midi pickup, so I could switch between several different instruments.

Great things about this workflow:

• groove never stops - you stay in the idea of the song during that all-important first few moments when it hits you
• you can try different versions of song sections while you are jamming/recording, then...
• ...try different song arrangements afterward (easier in live)
• you can cherry pick well performed sections and export them to DAW of choice

I found this workflow to be paradoxically liberating and confining. Liberating because my hands never left my instrument - you can just stay in the song, but confining because when it feels like you have to come up with something good, it was easy for me to fall into formulas and play it safe.

Anyway, thinking about it now makes me want to set up something like that again. It was a good setup.

[mscottweber]

Although I am starting to stray away from this, I usually start with a good guitar riff and form the song around that. I might come up with melody/vocals, but I often don't and just leave the verses/choruses instrumental.

After I have all of that stuff written, including a good song structure, I pick up my passport and cross over into DAW land. First I program drums for the entire song, stopping and playing along with them as I go to make sure I am not missing any sections or putting in too many/few bars. Then I go through and track my guitar part. At this point I am hearing the guitar and drums interact for the first time outside of my imagination, and it will often spark a lot of new ideas for drum parts, guitar licks, and possibly entire changes to the structure. Once I fix those I go through and add more guitar parts, such as doubled rhythms, leads, etc. Next I do bass, and then some keyboards to fill out the song (since I am primarily a guitar player and not a keyboard player, the keys usually just act as filler to the rest of the song). Next I mute the robot drums and go and track real drums. Once those are tracked, I add aux. percussion.

After I have the instrumental bed laid out I start coming up with vocal melodies (if I haven't yet) and lyrics. Once these are written I record the main vox and then the backing vox.

If you care to listen, here is an album that I wrote and recorded entirely in a week as part of this contest/event that my roommate started called Record Time. In this
album I put a little more effort into coming up with lyrics and melodies beforehand than I usually do. Parts of it are rushed, sloppy, and sub-par, but when you have a week to do it all, you can't expect perfection...

http://msweber.iweb.bsu.edu/darkness.zip

[MoreSpaceEcho]

for me these days it's been the following:
part 1:

scroll through presets on korg electribe drum machine. find a nice one.
set up line 6 looper. improvise spacey guitar stuff along with drum machine. record to separate tracks for a a half hour or until i get bored.
edit the good bits together into something a little more reasonable time-wise, like say less than 10 minutes.

part 2:

the endless cycle of moving mics, tuning drums, writing parts, recording and listening back that is known as 'recording the drum tracks'. this is all i did for the past two days. i love it but at the same time, please kill me now.

once i've got a few good takes to work with i'll edit the good parts together. i pretty much refuse to move kick and snare hits around but i don't mind cutting verses and choruses together at all. one day i hope to play a perfect take front to back but until then it's chop chop chop.

part 3:

sit there with the bass and play the song over and over about 90 bazillion times. again, one day i'll just pick the thing up and kick out a great line off the top of my head, but for now i am stuck doing it the slow way. it just takes me a really long time to piece together a line i'm happy with. usually i won't bother recording anything until i have a pretty solid idea for the whole song. and unlike the drums, i almost never comp the bass track, there's always one take that will have the right balance of concrete ideas and improv, and even though it won't be perfect it'll have the charm and i'll just roll with it.

part 4:

all other overdubs. keys, percussion, more guitar, whatever. this part goes a lot quicker. i mostly just improvise and do as many takes as i have enthusiasm for. lots of times they all end up under the hammer of the mute button, but sometimes, yunno, the 6 takes of volume pedal rhodes all sound good together, so it's nice to have the option. at this point i'm totally ruthless about editing so i don't get bogged down by lots of tracks. just cut cut cut and move on.

part 5:

start mixing, get sidetracked or busy with actual paying work, and the mixes go unfinished forever. i gotta work on this part.

[Corey Y]

I don't have a typical method anymore. Here's what the last thing I did was though.

1. Had a friend who plays drums come over and recorded him "jamming" on a medium tempo for 5 or 10 minutes to my Akai 24 track. I gave a few suggestions, had him play variations on the same types of beats, such as ending with different fills, with open or closed hihats, cymbal crashes at the beginning of the part, etc.

2. Spent the better part of an evening picking through the drum beats and cutting certain segments into loops. Then exporting them as .wav files to my PC, making sure all the tracks were labeled appropriately and organized them into folders and sub folders for later use.

Ex:

"Groove1"
> Open HH > Straight - Start With Crash - End With Fill (>Fill1 - Fill2)
> Closed HH > Straight - Start With Crash - End With Fill (>Fill1 - Fill2)

3. Wrote a few riffs on bass, composed the majority of a song that way.

4. Found the corresponding types of beats I wanted to use for each part, import them to my Akai 24 track and pasted them together into the basic format of the song I wrote. There was a little trial and error there, figuring out where I wanted accents with crash cymbal or what fills fit with a transition or whatnot. A little time stretching to adjust to the appropriate tempo.

5. Recorded a bass track via SansAmp Bass Driver DI over the drum parts I've put together.

6. Go back and edit format, refine song structure and revise the drum parts accordingly.

7. Tracked guitar and bass together live with a friend playing guitar. Then organ parts. Lots of takes on organ, working out melodies, harmonies and such.

8. Mix the drums. This included eliminating some tracks and duplicating others to process differently, in order to get the overall feel I wanted for the song. In this case I excised the OHs and spot mic on the hihats and stuck with the room mic, kick and snare. I ended up duplicating the front of kick track, limiting one and using light compression on the other with some radically different eq to get the big kick sound I wanted out of it. Then went on to mix the rest of the song, no vocals on this particular track.




I've actually never done anything with that process before. It was just something interesting to try. I went back and showed the track to another drummer friend, jammed with him a bit, worked on the song a little more and recorded a new version of it with live drums and bass in one take. Still going to go back and redo the guitar and organ parts and maybe add vocals this time. I've used a lot of different methods when constructing songs on my own in the past. Done plenty of playing to a click or drum machine and then going back and recording drums under everything else later. I don't play drums myself though, so I need some sort of outside assistance there. I have been playing around with recording the kick/snare/tom parts in one session to a click and overdubbing cymbals with the kit I have. Sounds ok sound quality wise, but my drumming sucks even when I cheat, heh.

[rawktron]

I'm always interested in process so I'll share a few points:

- Definitely first make sure that there isn't anything I can use as an excuse to not do something (ie. make sure everything is all hooked up and ready to go, easily accessible, etc.) - if you can get distracted, you will (at least I will...)

- I generally try to be able to play the song through from beginning to end on one instrument before I hit record... otherwise, I find you will just get lost in DAW land and end up abandoning it

- I will usually do an acoustic guitar scratch track and possibly vocal to lay the foundation of where it's going - sometimes to a click, sometimes not - depends on the song, whatever gives a better result really

- I don't use headphones anymore and just deal with leakage from monitors as I found especially when working alone that they just slow you down and are annoying and distracting so i'd rather deal with leakage than crappy performances

- I tend to do bass next - DI'd almost always

- Guitars are next - I find the sweet spot in my room where I can compare my amp sound to my monitors and get it right before I hit record, so that it sounds exactly how I'd like it first

- Drums afterwards - I program a lot of drums these days for noise reasons... but occasionally I mix in a real performance with the samples to give it a little life - at least on key kit pieces(snare, hats, kick)

- Vocals last - again no headphones... large print lyrics on a music stand (not handheld or you'll hear the paper rustle)

- Oh and then if it needs any sequencing, I do MIDI stuff last... Reason slaved to my DAW

That's about it... these days I've been trying to get it right before I hit record really and honestly - it saves time, yields better results - and actually yields results - as in actually finishing things.... so I think there's something to it!

[MoreSpaceEcho]

I've been trying to get it right before I hit record really and honestly - it saves time...

and how. it doesn't always seem like it, because it will take me hours to write a bass part...but then you just record it and it's done and you can move on. much better than recording a bunch of half baked shit and then spending hours editing it into something halfway coherent.

although i totally break this rule and do still record pretty much everything while i'm figuring out the drum parts...that magic drum take is so elusive, i figure why not be rolling...yeah you end up with a ton of crap to potentially sort through, but i know a good take when i'm playing it, and i know for sure when i'm listening back, so it's not too tough. a lot of times i'll record a billion takes all day, listen to them, throw them all out and just record 3 takes the next day and pick and choose from those.

[allyouneedisears]

Thanks for detailed responses folks! Some great insights. I would be interested what kind of music you guys are making. I'm sure somebody making electronic music works a lot different then somebody recording folk music.

[vvv]

I have a few ways of doing it, but on my solo stuff generally, lately, I start with the drums, whether loops or live.

I try to get a a drum arrangement down that I think will be interesting and either consistent with the direction I intend to go, or that inspires me in a direction based upon the drums themselves.

I often make decisions such as, "verse will be six lines and chorus 3 but repeat third, stop before bridge, chorus repeat out" at this point.

Bass; the progression comes from prior jams, or out of the air, or a conceptually interesting line, but is always ruled by the drums.

At this point I either write lyrics, or adapt previously written lines.

Guitar.

More guitar.

Keys?

More guitar.

Vox and BV's.

Leads and solos (usually guitar)

Sweetners.

I often mix as I go along; by the "sweetners" part the mix is mebbe 90%.

You can hear results at the link below; my solo stuff has the busted-tube icon - the other icons are band and/or collabs (I can telllya about that workflow if ya want ).

[JGriffin]

sit there with the bass and play the song over and over about 90 bazillion times. again, one day i'll just pick the thing up and kick out a great line off the top of my head, but for now i am stuck doing it the slow way. it just takes me a really long time to piece together a line i'm happy with.

Add cocaine to that and you've got White Album-era McCartney.

[rawktron]

although i totally break this rule and do still record pretty much everything while i'm figuring out the drum parts...

Yeah, I'm guilty of breaking my own rules too - for me it's guitar solos. Similar to the bass thing, I tend to play a bazillion takes of the solo while I figure out what works and what is just wanking... and sometimes it's gold to have that first take that you can never replicate...

But I guess in general - for anything foundational I have really been trying to know where it's going before I start...

[RefD]

for me, writing often starts with playing an unplugged electric guitar in a quiet room late at night and writing things down.

but then sometimes it will be with amp and a pedal or two, sometimes i will be on an acoustic guitar, sometimes i will be fiddling with hardware synths, sometimes piano or beats on the computer or my lap steel or making noises with drone oscillators and filters and effects and it will all lead different directions.

when recording, i occasionally fall into a certain way of doing things, but it never lasts and never really evolves into a formula...each tune comes from a slightly (or extremely) different circumstance and seems to demand different methodologies for completing a recording.

it just sort of happens?

[mhuxtable]

I write more sort of weird indie pop sort of stuff with LOTS of vocal harmonies and lots of sonic textures...

So usually a song starts for me on an acoustic guitar. Noel Gallagher from Oasis once said something to the effect of: Any good rock song should be able to sound good on an acoustic. I agree. So I usually try to find cool chord structures first, While this is happening, usually a general melody will form at the same time. If things fit well together, then hot damn I have a song.

I usually will write the song out totally, musical breaks and bridges and all, then program the drums in EZdrummer (I dont have a drummer or a kit or the room to track real drums, but damn ezdrummer sounds good). Then I will lay down basic rhythm guitar tracks, maybe 2 or 3 or 4. Different guitars or amps just for different flavors. I may use them all, may not.

Then usually I will lay down bass then vocals and all the harmonies. From there I know basically what the song is going to sound like, so I start adding musical melody and texture work using lots of delays and reverbs and modulations and whatnot, all recorded on the track, not with plugins.

Usually the only plugins I use are compression and reverb (for the vox & rhythm guitar to add some continuity to the tracks).

Then its just mixing and making everything fit into the mix!

[MoreSpaceEcho]

sit there with the bass and play the song over and over about 90 bazillion times. again, one day i'll just pick the thing up and kick out a great line off the top of my head, but for now i am stuck doing it the slow way. it just takes me a really long time to piece together a line i'm happy with.

Add cocaine to that and you've got White Album-era McCartney.

really? that makes me feel a little better.

sometimes it's gold to have that first take that you can never replicate...

especially for guitar solos. for me, the best stuff i ever do is almost invariably the very first take, where i'm not even sure of the changes yet. and sometimes with drums, i might not have the part totally together, but the feel on the first take will be so clearly superior to the feel of the later takes that i'll just accept the part being 'wrong' and go with it.

lemme ax you guys this: how do you go about changing up your normal shit?

like, i'm writing these drum parts for this batch of songs and i'm really conscious of "that's the same beat you always play" or "you always play that same pattern on the turnaround of an 8 bar phrase" or "you always swing everything too much" or whatever. and SOMETIMES the very best thing you can do is play your most standard shit, because it's obviously the best thing. but i'm recording stuff and listening back and thinking it's okay but it's not knocking my socks off. so i want to change what i'm doing. but at the same time, i'm not some super genius player who can kick out any beat under the sun....certain things come naturally to me and other things don't. so i kinda have to work within my limitations.

obviously the correct answer here is "practice and learn some new shit" but i don't have time for that, i'm in the middle of making a goddamn record.

so anyway, i have a plan, i know what i do in these situations, but i'm curious to hear what others do.