In this constant battle of gear for our recordings, let us remember, that it is truly about the song, not the bit depth. Of course, you want as high a quality recording as possible. But if I hear one more conversation in the studio this week about technology over what music is actually going to be played, I think I'll lose my natural mind.

Which brings me to my point: The groove is more important. Many times we try to get segments done in our home studios, tracking piece by piece. This is a very efficient manner in which to record, because often as we know, getting everyone in one place, can be a drag, and then also, are you set up for recording five or six people? Do you have all of the mics, space, a nice console with enough inputs to handle say, sixteen to twenty inputs at once?

If so, very cool, good for you, but read on anyway. If not, well then, here we go.
When tracking a couple of tracks at a time, it's easy to play against the pre-existing drums, or rhythm section that's already there. Whether it's drum loops from Garage Band, MIDI drums, a sequencer track, a drum program, etc. The groove is there to play against. While being nice, let me suggest an alternate method.

With the proliferation of home recording systems available today, recording studios in your town, are having a harder time existing in the marketplace. Some have a built-in business from labels, ad agencies, radio stations, etc. But there are many good rooms that are willing to make deals on tracking time. They have to pay rent too. I've been doing more projects where we track the entire rhythm section live in the studio (YEAH, just like the good ole days!!!) then take the computer files back home for edits, and adding tracks. It's so funny to see a bunch of musicians in the studio, and we're all saying to each other "I remember when we used to do this all of the time!" If you don't have a band, hire musicians. There are plenty of us out there that will play for a fair amount of compensation, or if they're your buds, pay them, or see if you can just buy them a big dinner! The difference is the studio can track to Pro Tools or Logic Audio, instead of tape. And this is the part that helps you out.

When I started in the studio years ago, it was someone's job to bring in all of the 2" reels of session tapes. Usually the assistant engineer, or intern, but often a band member as well. Now, what should we bring? Our own hard drives. Get a good, fast 250 GB hard drive, and let the studio use that drive to record to. A freshly formatted drive would be better than one you have other material on. Bringing in your own drives can be very helpful. This way there's no transfers that need to happen, no studio billing time for making back-ups, things like this.

The idea is to call the studio ahead of time, when you're booking the room, to see what software they're using. It's OK if it's not what you use at home. Most software programs have OMF tools built in so that files can transfer from one program to another. You can record all of your songs into their system, and after the session, they can make an OMF file to get from Pro Tools or Logic back into your software. If you have songs that already have material on them (rough tracks to the right tempos, etc), you can save the song as an OMF file, take it to the studio, and import it into their system.

People have had some difficulty with this method of transferring files this way, for reasons beyond me, but if the OMF method doesn't work for you, then you can always take the individual tracks of each song, and have the engineer either glue, or bounce each track by itself contiguously from start to finish. Then you'll at least have individual audio tracks that will line up perfectly if you line them all up at measure one in any audio software program. The cool part in all of this is that everyone is playing together! We all know that there's no groove like a live groove, and it's one of the things that many home recordings are lacking.

Also, in the studio, you have an engineer there. You can concentrate on playing. They have the great gear like mic's and mic pre's. They handle all of the mic'ing, and cable pulling. All of the connections and headphone mixes. They handle all of the files, and lining up punch-ins, cleaning up sections, loading songs, burning rough CD's of the session dates for you to listen to at the end of the day. You are totally free to stay with the band to go over last minute details, tune your instruments, get comfortable with the room, etc.

At this point, all of the material should be VERY REHEARSED! I wouldn't advise wasting time in the studio not sure about parts to be played unless you've incorporated this into your budget. Sometimes that's the point: to walk in with rough ideas and track everything as the ideas flow. This is fun, but can chew up hours of time. If money is no object, have a blast. If money IS an issue, be as prepared as possible.

Tracking the material will be a lot of fun, and you'll get all of your rhythm section stuff recorded. Then, at the end of the session, you can thank the studio folks, pay your tab, grab your hard drive with the OMF or contiguous files on there, and go home to your home studio with some very amazing grooves to play or sing to. Now you can do your vocals, or guitar solos, arrangements, etc on your time, but those tracks will have that absolute live feel.

Try this out. I think you'll be pleased. Your local studios are still a great resource for you to make better recordings. Utilize all tools available to you to make your music.

Have Fun,
Phil Gates

makintrax@philgates.com
http://www.philgates.com