| There's a lot of difference
between a professional production that could be a national hit and a basement demo.
The average studio production time for national release is 30 hours per tune. About
the cheapest professional studio that can do the job is about $65 an hour. To do a
professional presentation of 4 tunes to a major label for possible national release
therefore costs about $7800 in studio time. |
| You're probably wondering why you
can't just cut this in your basement and get a deal. The reason is that record
companies today want final productions that they can release. That's what they get
in today's world and that's what they expect to hear before they offer you a recording
contract. The professional studio has equipment that a home studio can only dream
about. The $3000 Lexicon effects processor may be out of reach for a home studio and
the pro studio may have two or three of them available. This difference becomes
critical in the final mixing stages. |
| Why does a tune take 30 hours of production
time? It is primarily caused by making sure each and every track and each and every
part is recorded and performed the best. The final mix, for instance, usually takes
3-5 hours for even a simple production. |
| Is There Any Way? |
| If there wasn't any way, I wouldn't be
writing this article. To illustrate the method you could use I will be giving
an example of doing a four-tune 24 track rock production in your home studio with one MDM
(like an Alesis ADAT or Tascam DA-38) and a clean 8 buss home console. The
production has drums, bass, two rhythm guitars, a lead guitar, 3-part doubled background
vocals and doubled lead vocal with two additional, unspecified, parts. |
| I will assume that you have sufficient
high-quality microphones at your disposal and that you have the talent and ability to
perform the music. The production is going to cost $1265, plus a lot of work at
home, as follows: |
$199 |
A subscription to Alexander Magazine (so you
know what you're doing) |
$40 |
Four tapes for your MDM |
$60 |
Transfer time at some other home studio that
has another MDM |
$1040 |
For 16 hours of final mixing time at a pro
studio |
$25 |
For a "sync" cable for your MDM |
|
| The procedure involves using the professional studio, with its hundreds
of thousands of dollars worth of equipment for the final mixdown. If the tape being
mixed was recorded well, the results should be as professional as if you did all the
tracking at the large studio. |
| Another key to the project is use of another 8 track studio with an MDM
(like an ADAT). You take your MDM into the studio along with a synch cord and
synchronize the two machines running together (yours and the other project studio's).
You record a mix of your 8 tracks onto 2 or so tracks on a new tape. You take
the new tape home and you have open tracks to do overdubs on. There are many small 8
track MDM basement studios that rent out time between $10 and $15 an hour. Although
the studio may not have a lot of capabilities, you really only need to use the MDM and
perhaps have some kind of mix made. If you invested in a small digital console that
can store "scenes" (or "snapshots") and has internal effects (Like a
Tascam DM-1000 or Yamaha 01V), then I would suggest taking your console and your MDM into
the other studio. You can get exactly the mix you want at home and just use the
other studio's MDM. |
| Step By Step Procedure: |
| The layout of tracks is in the illustration
at the bottom of the page. The steps are as follows: |
Step 1 |
You get a subscription and study how to record
with Alexander
Magazine. |
Step 2 |
You cut your "basic session" using
all of your 8 available tracks. You use 5 tracks for the drums and do a rhythm
guitar, a bass and a "guide" vocal on the other 3 tracks. |
Step 3 |
You take your tape (and maybe your MDM) to
another basement studio that charges $15 an hour. You mix the drums and bass
to tracks 1 & 2 and also transfer the guitar and guide vocal track. This gives
you a tape 2. [CLICK HERE TO SEE TRACK SHEET] |
Step 4 |
On tape 2 at home you record onto the 4 open
tracks a stereo rhythm guitar and a stereo lead guitar. The existence of two rhythm
guitars on your production (one of which is stereo) and a stereo lead guitar starts to
simulate the kind of production work that is done in large professional studios.
These track-intensive techniques are not usually done in project studios. |
Step 5 |
Back at your transfer studio you make a tape 3
that has one track with a mix of all the music and you use a second track to transfer the
guide vocal. [CLICK HERE TO SEE TRACK SHEET] |
Step 6 |
Back at home you record the voices for
three-part harmony separately onto different tracks on tape 3. You also record a
double of each of the voices that make up the harmony. Recording the parts on
individual tracks allows each part to be precise and to let the final blend happen at the
final mix. Doing 3-part harmony using 6 tracks is usually only possible in larger
studios with their higher-track capabilities - again making your production
"equal" to a large-budget production. |
Step 7 |
At the transfer studio again, you make a tape
4 transferring the music mix track and the guide vocal track, as well as mixing the
background parts onto one track. [CLICK HERE TO
SEE TRACK SHEET] |
Step 8 |
At home you record your final vocal, a double
of that vocal and any extra music you want to add onto 2 more tracks (like say a
percussion track). |
Step 9 |
If you can't use all four tapes at the pro
studio (because let's say they charge more per hour), you can transfer some of the final
tracks you recorded on tape 4 to tracks that are no longer needed on Tape 2. You
walk into your mixing session with three tapes that, when played together, is a
professional-sounding 24 track production. |
|
Figure
1 - Track Guide For Production |
|
BLUE SHOWS TEMPORARY TRACKS MIXED FROM PREVIOUS TAPES
RED SHOWS FINAL
TRACKS RECORDED OVER TEMPORARY TRACKS |
|
