What's your favorite production approach?

SpencerMartin · Post by **SpencerMartin** » Thu Mar 12, 2015 7:17 pm

Alright, so there are some obvious tried-and-true methods such as having a great room and great musicians and capturing a great live performance, or the opposite end of the spectrum - programming everything yourself one at a time, but what about everything in between? Describe a time when an approach/methodology became a tool in itself, or a time you tried an unusual process that yielded interesting results. Better yet, post a recording that was created with a unique approach and tell us how it was done.

Notice that this is NOT a thread for debating the merits of "live" recording (musicians in a room together all at once) - we all know that it's great! Rather, outline one of your most interesting processes.

A.David.MacKinnon · Post by **A.David.MacKinnon** » Thu Mar 12, 2015 8:40 pm

I just wrapped up a record that started as an online collaboration with a guitarist who lives 4-5 hours away. I sent him a bunch of tape-loop based pieces I'd been working on. He added songs and sent them back. I chopped up his songs, shuffled them, added arrangements and sent them back. And so on and so on.We demoed on and off for about a year and a half.
When it came time to track the "real" record we kept the loops and ambient soundscape bits from the demos and even some of the direct to garageband guitar solos and replaced everything else with a band.
It was kind of the best of both worlds. I'll post a link once the record is out.

JGriffin · Post by **JGriffin** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 3:44 pm

The last few DWLB projects have been done entirely over the internet, since I live in Chicago and Chris lives in Austin. He will upload a demo with multis, I'll throw it into PT and add overdubs. I send a reference mix back to him, he adds to it. Repeat as needed. Eventually I start editing it all down and then mix it all. I think it's been three albums since we did anything in the same room, and the one before that had only one track where we worked in person.

vvv · Post by **vvv** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 6:28 pm

I do a lot of internet stuff, too.

One project involving a gentleman named Snarl hereon can be found 'round these parts as The Hungry Drunx. In that project, Snarl sends drums - or I steal them from him - and I write over them, often (lately) having the derrangment and multi-instrumental assistance of a gent called "Grankspoine", from London, in YeMerryOlde.

(See "THD", below.)

SpencerMartin · Post by **SpencerMartin** » Sat Mar 14, 2015 8:55 am

A.David.MacKinnon wrote:I just wrapped up a record that started as an online collaboration with a guitarist who lives 4-5 hours away. I sent him a bunch of tape-loop based pieces I'd been working on. He added songs and sent them back. I chopped up his songs, shuffled them, added arrangements and sent them back. And so on and so on.We demoed on and off for about a year and a half.
When it came time to track the "real" record we kept the loops and ambient soundscape bits from the demos and even some of the direct to garageband guitar solos and replaced everything else with a band.
It was kind of the best of both worlds. I'll post a link once the record is out.

Man, that must have been really difficult to say, "Alright let's do it for real now," and shift everything into a whole new direction. It's easy to get attached to sounds/parts/structure once they've been around for awhile (in this case over a year) and let it be a "it is what it is" type scenario. That takes balls! I'm pumped to hear it - definitely post it once the coast is clear.

Here's an unusual approach (for me anyways)... Normally I do things mostly one at a time to a click or track live with or without a click, or sometimes program a click to match tempo shifts or meter changes. However, I'm not sure what influenced me to do it this particular way because I'd never done it before (or since!), but I had the guitarist/singer track live with the drummer in the same room without a click. The drums were mic'd appropriately for a "final" sound, and I used whatever random mics for guitar and vocal as I treated those as scratch tracks. We did two takes and picked the better one or spliced them - can't remember. We then retracked guitar and vocals and I played bass and keyboard to it. We also layered electric guitars and a bunch of thoroughly arranged harmonies.

It was an unusual approach for me because normally the more overdub-based a song is, the more I see a click track as a necessity. This tune ended up with a full/tight/polished sound, but also has a very organic feel at the same time. An album reviewer pointed to it as a standout track, so I guess it worked! Check it out here.

SpencerMartin · Post by **SpencerMartin** » Mon Mar 16, 2015 7:04 am

C'mon, I want to hear about some more approaches! The main problem I see with recording forums is that everyone talks about the tools as opposed to the technique. Methodology and approach are the creators of sound, not microphones, pre amps, or converters. Let's hear about how you create! I guess it doesn't necessarily need to be a crazy, unusual approach or anything... Just share about a specific process and include an accompanying track if possible.

Here's another example of mine. I don't usually do hip-hop, but when I do I avoid MIDI and VST instruments. I asked the client what he wanted it to sound like, to which he replied, "dark and orchestral", so I told him to stop by the local library on his way over and pick up a few soundtracks. We skimmed through three of them and harvested a bunch of little bits and pieces of sound. It all consisted of unrelated pitches, chords, and tempos, so I went through and calculated the nearest common key everything could coexist in and did the appropriate pitch shifting and time compression/expansion. The only non-soundtrack samples were two kick and two snare samples. The farty, overdriven bass sound in the middle was created using a small slice of a kick sample, looping it, and running it through a pitch shifting pedal for the glissando effect. Voila! Homemade, organic sounding hip-hop with just a dash of musical movement and development throughout.

A.David.MacKinnon · Post by **A.David.MacKinnon** » Tue Mar 17, 2015 5:32 pm

SpencerMartin wrote:
A.David.MacKinnon wrote:I just wrapped up a record that started as an online collaboration with a guitarist who lives 4-5 hours away. I sent him a bunch of tape-loop based pieces I'd been working on. He added songs and sent them back. I chopped up his songs, shuffled them, added arrangements and sent them back. And so on and so on.We demoed on and off for about a year and a half.
When it came time to track the "real" record we kept the loops and ambient soundscape bits from the demos and even some of the direct to garageband guitar solos and replaced everything else with a band.
It was kind of the best of both worlds. I'll post a link once the record is out.
Man, that must have been really difficult to say, "Alright let's do it for real now," and shift everything into a whole new direction. It's easy to get attached to sounds/parts/structure once they've been around for awhile (in this case over a year) and let it be a "it is what it is" type scenario. That takes balls! I'm pumped to hear it - definitely post it once the coast is clear.

It wasn't too bad actually, The demos where really detailed and good in some aspects but were used more for working out parts than sonics. That is to say that the real instrument parts of the demos were all done pretty quick and dirty. Drums were garageband loops or drum machines and were intended as place holders (and sounded like it). Electric guitars were recorded direct and processed with garageband effects (and frequently sounded like ass).
Anything that sounded great or seemed like we couldn't recreate stayed in the final versions (tape loops, some keys and a few solos). The crappy sounding stuff got replaced.
This was one of those rare occasions where instead of saying "The demo was so much cooler" we were saying "thank god we replaced that crappy sounding stuff". Real players also added a massive amount of dynamics that just weren't happening in the demos.

Gregg Juke · Post by **Gregg Juke** » Fri Mar 20, 2015 5:54 am

Unintentional multi-post removed.

GJ

Gregg Juke · Post by **Gregg Juke** » Fri Mar 20, 2015 5:55 am

Unintentional multi-post removed.

GJ

Gregg Juke · Post by **Gregg Juke** » Fri Mar 20, 2015 5:55 am

Well, I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for, but most all of my stuff turns out to be multi-approach, in a hybrid/multi-tool/ana-digi environment.

Most songs are demoed "cheap and dirty," to get an idea if a feel and basic instrumentation are going to work. Then the demo is replaced with a "real" version, either by a re-cut, or piece-by-piece as it's made into the actual version with successive overdubs. This has been true whether doing album songs or commercial jingles, unless I'm working with an artist that wants to do the "live off the floor" thing and (most importantly) _they are very well rehearsed_. Until recently, that is...

I'm working on a solo electronic project that is basically "jams" that could have been accomplished with a bigger group or a couple of DJ's, but since there was only me, I had to lay down tracks one at a time. But the "rule" I set for myself was "one take" as much as possible, to preserve as closely as possible a "live" and "loose" feel as there can be in that kind of music. So once the basic drum and percussion tracks were down, I kind of improvised parts, and did as many one-takes as I could-- analog bass lines tweaked live, synth solos live (mostly done on units like the Korg Kaosillator), sample manipulation, etc., etc. It's a pretty cool approach, but I'm not sure it would be anything but messy if tried with traditional instrumentation.

GJ

ott0bot · Post by **ott0bot** » Fri Mar 20, 2015 8:03 am

Keep it simple. Work closely in pre-production to establish what the vision of the artist is, and create a plan & timeline on how to accomplish it along the way. meet weekly to resolve any pending conflicts or challenges, and stay true to the music. Also, being open to wild experiments with recording techniques and locations.

ideally, with preparation, good music will produce itself. Stay out of the way of something good, don't be over-concerned with imprinting your "sonic brand."

honkyjonk · Post by **honkyjonk** » Fri Mar 20, 2015 9:36 am

This is sort of a funny one.

I did this song recently where my friend and I tracked drums/guitar and vocals at the same time. I hate using headphones so I had a vocal monitor (too close to the drums)
In my enthusiasm and faux confidence I remember saying something like, "it doesn't matter 'cause I'm gonna nail the vocals anyway." Not.

So, there's a bad vocal in the drum mics. In addition to that the song is keyed a step and a half too high (another bad decision.)

It was tracked digitally then put on tape. I actually finished a whole mix w/ the ghost vocals in the drums, keyed too high. But then decided to digitally lower the pitch a step and a half so I could sing it better (this made the guitars sound awesome!) So back to the digital version. And I had my friend re record the drums to get rid of the ghost vocals. None of this being done to a click track by the way.

The only keeper thing from the original is the guitar. I sort of wish I had retracked that too because it doesn't lock up the whole way though. But hell, as long as the bass and drums are okay, it's not THAT noticeable. Fucking bitch of a song to finish. But it had the right feel.

vvv · Post by **vvv** » Fri Mar 20, 2015 4:16 pm

A couple of times I've had another guitarist/vocalist over and set up the rig so that we had drums and bass (pre-recorded) in the cans, and played guitars together, then vocals together.

That was a lot of fun in that we were able to trade off on leads, vocals and guitar.

A.David.MacKinnon · Post by **A.David.MacKinnon** » Sat Mar 21, 2015 9:18 am

I should mention that on the project I was talking about earlier the demos turned into the final product. We just replaced the stuff that sucked. Strangely, because of scheduling issues with the rhythm section we did most of the guitars, keys and some of the vocals before the bass and drums were added. It's a pretty amazing thing to have real bass and drums added to stuff you've been working on forever and ever. It changes your perspective on everything.

Also, on this record we tried just about every crazy idea I've ever had. One song has two different string scores panned hard left and right. Another song started with the band playing a one chord grove for about 8 minutes and had the rest of the song dropped in over top. You can mute the rhythm section or the overdubs and it sounds like two totally different things. Another song was recorded with 6 or 7 different arrangements and instrumentations (rock band, blue grass band, all synth & drum machines etc) and was then edited together. The backing track changes to a different arrangement every verse.

roscoenyc · Post by **roscoenyc** » Mon Mar 23, 2015 5:37 am

I usually try to record as many people as posible on the basic track.
That being said,

If I am making an "overdub record" the one trick that seems to impart the
biggest bang for the buck in having it sound "live" is to overdub the bass and the drums at the same time.

You can tell it's working by how easy it is for the 2 players. It seems to take away the math/counting aspect and they can just 'play together'

The yield leans very hard on the 'natural side'

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