drums

So, The Fireworks Nights are back in our native land, with a couple of hard-drives crammed with gigabytes of audio, tummies full of food we didn’t have to cook, and the some damned good songs rattling round our brains whenever we wake up in the night.  Personally, I’m absolutely exhausted, as I’ve been working for about 14 hours a day for the last 10 days, in about 3 different roles; if you’re looking for quiet holiday time, may I recommend not producing and playing on an 11-song record in 10 days? So, now that I’ve had a little more experience of being in charge of the whole recording process, I thought perhaps I’d offer a few thoughts on a few things I’ve learnt.  None of these are earth-shattering revelations, but they’re all good general principles that I’ll be bearing in mind the next time I’m doing something similar.  Next month, for example…

1. There’s no such thing as a magic bullet   The more I do…well, pretty much anything- printing, playing an instrument, engineering, mixing, the list goes on…the more I realise that there is never any one factor that determines whether something is ‘good’ or not.  It’s all the hundreds of tiny, tiny things that add up to give you a great result.  In the case of engineering, for example, having a great mic is no use at all if you’re not putting it in the right place.  Having a great mic in the right position is no use if your guitar is rattling and out of tune.  Having a great instrument is no use if your player doesn’t know the part.  A player who knows the part, but is just playing it mechanically, is going to make a mechanical record.  And so on.  Your recording chain is only going to be as strong as its weakest link.
2. ‘Engineer’ and ‘producer’ are very different roles    Over the last 10 days, I’ve straddled both roles and, I hope, done a reasonable job at it; it helps, of course, having a group of people that you know very well.  I’m not sure how well it would have gone, had I had anything at all to worry about on top of these roles.  ’Producing’, in the hands-on, people-interaction sense wasn’t something that I’d had a lot of experience with.  In my moments in the role, I had to make sure everyone was comfortable with the recording space, tell them not to worry about making things easy for to record and just to play their part well, get them coffee and water, find less squeaky chairs, diplomatically tell them what went wrong in the last take and how to get a better one this time round, and give ideas for the feeling we needed from the performance.  It surprised me how much time and energy this role took up- musicians often just don’t know how they’ve played: often the take that they think was the killer was actually sub-par, and vice-versa.  People need to be kept happy and able to perform, otherwise the whole exercise is pointless.
3. It’s nearly always quicker to try something out than to argue someone out of their position.    If someone has an idea they want to try out, it may be bloody awful.  It may be obvious to you, as an engineer/producer, that it’s a bloody awful idea.  It may be that the only person who may be convinced it’s a great idea is the person pushing to try it.  The thing about arguing, though, is that it’s pretty damned rare to change someone’s mind: by ‘winning’ an argument, the other person may well back down but, most of the time, they’ll still believe they’re right.  And then you have a slightly pissed-off musician, as well as having wasted time.  Normally it’s quicker to throw up a mic and try something- people will hear pretty quickly if it’s terrible.  If it’s sounding like there’s some mileage in the idea, then maybe alter your mics and positioning and get a proper take of it.  Maybe something wonderful will come of it.  Maybe it’ll be terrible.  In any case, you tried it out.
4. The goal is to make a great record.   Right from the start, this was pretty-much my only concern.  I wanted to make a great record much much more than I wanted to be right, or to be in charge.  I tried to be very open with everyone about this- if we got to the mix of the record (or even the first rough recordings) and we didn’t think that I’d be able to do the job, I would step aside, and we should scrape some money together and go into a pro studio.  As it turned out, it looks like I might have done alright, but the pursuit of recording a great record meant that some ideals had to be dropped.  One song, for example (more than one, in fact…) has some pretty damned hard, double-stopped string parts and, after a hard day of getting the best takes we could, we realised that we just didn’t have it.  It just didn’t sound good.  So, picking them apart, we went back and recording each note of the string parts separately, getting the articulation, tuning and rhythm spot on for each of them, before combining them again.  And it sounded great, like the song always sounded in our head.  One of our goals at the beginning was to have an ‘authentic’ recording process, playing live as much as we could, and we stuck to that pretty well.  There’s no way that I’d let the goal of a great sounding record be compromised by ideals that we occasionally couldn’t live up to.  God knows I’ll be comping a few of my guitar parts in the final mix.  Which leads me on to…
5. Computers can correct technical errors, but they can’t create musical feel.    I’m recording to digital recording software.  I’m going to use the facilities that this software offers.  If we’ve just got a great drum take, but Ed’s dropped a stick halfway through and missed two beats, I’ll comp something in there.  I’d like to be a purist about everything, but the practicalities of recording to any form of time limit mean that compromises have to be made.  Get your musicians to perform as well as they can, with all the right sort of energy the song needs, and any ‘errors’ may well be part of the feel of the take.  If they’re not, then we do have the power to make changes; like all powers, it must only be used for the forces of good.
6. Have a regular backup schedule.    I can’t emphasise this enough.  Everyone says it.  Everyone is right.  Few people do it enough.
7. If it sounds good, it is good.   Enough said.

So now, we’re on to the mixing stage.   Hopefully I’ll be able to start posting about that process in the coming weeks, and talk you through the evolution of a recording.  Thanks for reading, as ever…