Good advice, Howard! Let’s see what we can get…
Absolutely! He probably saved our asses there a couple of times 
Haha, yeah, OK, once I retire and after having inherited from all my rich uncles and aunts who made it big in America… 
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Hmmm…so I guess it is different if you are being donated studio time vs. paying for it. We found the guy we used knowledge and experience to be priceless and he worked with us every step of the way to get our final product what we wanted it as. It was way better and faster than the song we recorded at our home setup and even cheaper. We home studio and sent to a mixer (a good one) and he charged more for mixing and mastering than our studio guy charged for recording, mixing and mastering. Splitting the costs 4 ways helped…he charged $40 an hour for his time. Well worth it.
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Yes, perhaps… to some extent. But… it’s complicated… even I got a bit upset at some point and thought the guitar player was too much “well, I could play it this way… or I could play it that way…” and the studio is not the right time and place for that. As mentioned, I might get into more details once we are all done and I can wrap my whole studio experience story.
That is pretty much the same rate we had (for beyond what we had gotten “donated”), but still: the more you come prepared, the more you get out of the knowledge and experience of the “producer”/sound engineer.
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Preparation for sure. We had all our songs written and practiced before going to studio. We did, however, make last minute in studio alterations to songs on the spot and those decisions were awesome. Whether doing an alteration of a riff, adding background vocals, or layering a new riff over something we hadn’t done live, those things added flavor to songs and we were very happy. BUT, if we didn’t have anything to add we still had a fully constructed song we were ok with. Agree that preparation is important. Have a full song you could perform live together at a minimum.
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That for me is how I personally would always write/compose/arrange a song - if we can’t play it live, what is the point of having multiple overdubs and stuff? We had four songs, fully practiced, at least for the way we always played them for rehearsal. The problem is, we are only three (drums, bass, guitar) but the guitar players always dreams of having a singer and a keyboard player as well. And so, in his head, he has these ideas of layered keyboard sounds and wailing guitar notes on top of the basic track, and vocals as well. Thing is, we never practiced that - how could we?! So, he thought he could “just” add those in the studio… and that is what caused a lot of unnecessary frustration and friction.
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Oh, I might have misread your statement, @Mike_NL … I did report about at least the first few days in the studio, but we are indeed not finished yet.
Anyway, if you want to read a long-ish report about how it went so far, here it is:
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Great stuff, @joergkutter! That was exactly what I was looking for, and I would have missed it because it’s in a different topic. Thanks for the link; I really enjoyed reading about your experiences!
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Yeah, that would be frustrating. Adding a layer is one thing. When we added instruments we practiced before studio, even if they put down another instrument. But band drama…we’ve had our share!
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It’s kind of funny because I am pretty much the opposite. All I care about is the finished product; I could not care less if it is ever performed live as played on the instruments while recording.
I come from an electronic music background though, where so much is programmed ahead of time and the live performance is only of subsets of it anyway.
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I totally respect that… and it is certainly not black or white for me either. After all, in this day and age, I might have to go the “studio” route myself if I ever want to realize some of my musical ideas.
Still, the “default setting” for me would be to compose/arrange music that can be played live. I guess it has to do with how I was formed in my musical tastes in my youth… I always preferred live recordings (as I felt this was closer to demonstrating skills, musicality (listening and reacting to each other) and the power of playing together). A lot of bands I liked had somewhat “disappointing” studio recordings, but super exciting live albums… Yes immediately comes to mind!
I guess I enjoy a well produced recording as much as the next guy, but I just don’t see the point of going to a live concert where most of the music I hear is canned (I am not intimately familiar with electronic music, so I am more referring to pop music here). That is probably also why I gravitate towards jazz (in the broadest sense)… even the most played standards can be arranged for (and performed by) solo instruments, a trio or a bigband, and they sound “new and different” every time they are played. There is just something magical about - in the very moment when you play - reacting to what others do and respond to that, which in turn gets picked up by the others, or even just nailing a tricky unison break perfectly together. Thinking about it now, this might be the single most fun aspect of playing music for me 
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Electronic music is an interesting extreme here in that there are a whole lot of people making amazing, complex music that actually cannot play the instruments at all - they literally have no real physical skills at keyboard playing. Deadmau5 famously can’t play piano and his music is incredible.
I’ve played keyboards live and yet I would say my own keyboard skills are at a very basic, fundamental level. And I’m probably ahead of the curve compared to a lot of current electronic music producers.
So the live shows take on different aspects. Our band was basically a mix of post-punk/electronica so we had a lot going on. But in no way were we playing live all the work that went in to tracking and programming the synths and drums - I would play the synth lead lines and/or pads live, depending on the song, with the rest sequenced. We were very typical in that regard. It wouldn’t have even occured to me that it should be different 
So now with music production tools being what they are, this extends past just the MIDI instruments and in to being able to arrange, punch in, fix up, mix and reorder live instrument playing. In short - it gives anyone with a DAW the ability to do what you used to need a studio for. This gives you an immense amount of creative freedom that a strict ethic of live playability would crush (not saying that’s what you are suggesting!)
It also lets you focus on the important parts. There is so much work that goes in to making music, making a song, making something that sounds good - all the help you can get from the tools is immensely valuable. Not having to waste time worring if something can be played through perfectly in a single long take is liberating - and you can worry about other things.
This is critical and is a big part of what has allowed so much excellent music to be produced by bedroom producers. There’s more good music being made now than there ever has been in history, and this is a big part of why.
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Absolutely, and I realize that my “views” are a bit outdated since so much has changed since my forming years, and it is both impressive and inspiring what people do in their bedrooms (no pun intended). Yet, that (spontaneous) interaction in the moment is just not possible that way, which is why, I guess, many jazz musicians still prefer to record “live” in the studio. (Needless to say, you have to be extremely good at what you do )
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Yeah, I totally get that too, and playing live with others is really fun. In addition to our gigs, my friend and I used to drag instruments to coffee shops, find electrical outlets, and jam there in kind of a reverse busking where we would pay to be there by buying drinks
He was just talking about how he misses that a lot. Tons of fun (and actually how I first played bass (badly!) a long time ago.)
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@joergkutter There is a wonderful connection with jazz musicians at times where they just know what the other is about to do or where they are going musically. It is nearly impossible to replicate it without having everyone in the same room feeding off of each other. Partially why I fell in love with jazz many years ago.
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This is pretty much the description of my personal musical nirvana
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When everyone clicks and the people playing together are a cohesive unit it is SOOOO amazing. There isn’t much I like better than an improvised jam that goes well!
Now…I’m risking going into murky waters here…electronic music! So…my opinion on it. People who do it are talented. I want to start there to not be misunderstood. There is a level of composition that I very much respect. Picking every melody, harmony and beat, layering them and progressing them together. It’s a skill, it’s cool. Here is my (probably unreasonable) issue with aspects of it…
I could take a program like ez drummer, and within a day or so (minutes for some) create a drum beat that would take me YEARS of practice and dedication to be able to actually play on the drums. Similarly with other digital versions of instruments. On top of it you can program the timing to be perfect. These are all things that can take YEARS of dedication to pull off. Learning the fretboard, building calluses, improving finger dexterity, mastering techniques to get sound, tone hunting etc… And that stuff is just at the click of a button now…kind of like the Deadmau5 not touching a keyboard.
Again, there is definite skill and ear involved. There is learning involved for sure. I couldn’t make a song on a digital platform and it be good at my current knowledge level! It’s just there is a…visceral? aspect missing. Hard to explain
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I think I know what you mean… and I feel the same way. Again, for electronic music, this is probably a bias, or even prejudice, on my part (as I don’t even know so much about electronic music). But, even our own experience in the studio - it is amazing what is possible these days. Being able to punch in saved my behind a couple of times and the ease with which parts from different takes are spliced together or how those little rectangular MIDI event bricks are aligned to the grid; or how even the pitch of the vocals is fixed… All this makes it possible to have a neat final product, but knowing this was done… gives it a “tainted” feel for me, I don’t know… it’s no longer “honest” or authentic…
Maybe I am just hopelessly romantic in that way and need to accept that this is how music is recorded and produced nowadays!?
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It typically takes me about 45 minutes to two hours to drum track a whole song, including fills and so on, yeah. (I’ve been doing it a long time though.)
And it comes out sounding pretty much as good as a real drummer. Not if you are going for absolute fidelity of course, but it’s close even then. Some software will even add impromptu fills for you.
As an example of one I am working on now, the whole song this snippet is from took me about an hour or two. It’s not done yet - I need to humanize it a bit (especially the ride cymbal) as it is too perfect at the moment, and no drummer plays like that.
Even as it is it sounds pretty good though, so yeah, your point is pretty spot on there 
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Not just these days. Music production has always been like this - it’s just that the tools are better now, so instead of a 24-track tape to punch in on, you can do it digitally.
Thinking of this as “tainted” or cheating is, IMO, misguided. It’s about producing the best finished product you can. The tools are improving so that you can worry less and less about the physical aspect of performance and more about the other parts of composition, creation, harmonization, and production. So, both the quantity and quality of available production increases.
Rick Beato had a video complaining about the good old days of “imperfect” music disappearing and I think I have never disagreed with him more. It’s just the wrong way to look at this, and the wrong ideal to pine after, IMO.
The tools are improving to allow more and more people to do this, and this democratization of music production is having amazing effects. I’m not exaggerating when I say that more excellent music is being made now, every day, than ever before, and this is why.
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