Solo Artist Recording Workflow - my experience to date
Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2011 8:33 pmWhat a topic - so you're at home, a "one man show" trying to write and record a song - everything from lyrics, vocals, bass, drums to guitar. Talk about a time-consuming process. Thought I would share my experiences to date.
My hours are confined to about a 3-4 hour time block at home after everyone goes to bed. That's when the monotonous work-flow happens.
My personal creativit is at its height from morning when i wake up til about noon, so song-writing and recording pretty much have to take place at two different times of day. Unfortunately, I have a day job, so song writing can be rather tricky - to date, I've had to come up with song ideas and lyrics while at work or on the road. So I keep a handy recorder and note pad nearby at all times.
The song I have up right now (poorly mixed - I haven't gotten around to finishing the mix yet
began when I was at work and thinking what it must be like to spend your youth locked up, then be ejected into society after you reach your mid-life crisis. A mid-life crisis is bad enough when you've had your youth to at least delve into something you enjoy that you can build on later in life.
I hummed a simple "25 years ago, I was just out of school trying to make my way" and the tune and lyrics just stuck in my head. So how do I build on that theme? During lunch breaks, I would take my handy notepad and start fleshing out a story line to support that line. I think it took me about a week's worth of lunch breaks and other carved out moments to get the bulk of the story written in a poetic fashion. The main challenge, was setting the story line so it made sense - how did "I" get into jail in the first place, and not have that the centerpiece of the story? How do I invest the reader in the person's experience? I like to tie the ending back into the beginning when I write - I think I did a decent job of doing that lyrically.
I found that as I wrote the lyrics / story line, I needed to keep in mind the tune so that the lines and rhymes weren't forced into odd timings - that required that after I wrote the storyline, I had to go back and sing to the story line, and then come up with new words that fit while maintaining the tunes' flow and structure. Then I grabbed my guitar and strummed a few chords to back the tune I had envisioned.
This was a little challenging - when I sung the tune, I wasn't able to envision a backing to it. Everything changes when you take a tune and put a progression under it, instead of starting with a progression and then making a tune to sit on top of it. I also had to take into account my low voice. I can't sing really high, so I had to make sure the progression didn't force me to sing high - transposing isn't so hard when you have the progression, but I did have to take the time to do it.
Now to lay down a scratch track. Well, I don't have drum kit. I use all MIDI instruments, in this case "EZ Drummer". I know from previous experience that you need a click track of some sort to meter your singing with so that when you do add drums, you're not having fudge the rythem section every 4 bars. Singing a tune to a click track forces you into a tighter box than free-form strumming, so I had to adjust my tune and chord progression to fit that box. I settled on a 130 BPM, but now I'm thinking it might be better at 140 - I may re-record to see how it goes. In any case, I laid down 6 minutes of 130 BPM click trackes, then sang the song in my mind while recording the main guitar piece through the first verse, and chorus. Then I punched in the bridge guitar work, then punched into remainder of the song.
It was rough, but made a decent scratch backing track for the vocals. Then I recorded the vocals and I had my scratch track down so that I could listen to it and determine what changes I needed to make. Should I go longer? Shorter? Change the chord progression? Did the lyrics fit snuggly in the progression?
I made some changes, and this time because of the punching in and punching out, I had rehearsed the parts enough to play the song with the changes I made, from start to finish, so I retracked the guitars on two channels so I could pan them left and right to give them a full sound.
At that point, I began "programming" the drums. Beginning with a single drum loop, I edited the highlight and changes with bass kicks and crash cymbals, to land on the changes. This really helped to set a mood and give a little more life to the track. It also served as a build-up leading indicators for changes and helped cue me in to chorus and bridge changes for singing.
Once the drums were set in place, I retracked the guitars again - yeah it was alot of re-tracking, but adding the drums hi-lights really helped the mood of playing - in a real band situation, you and the drummer feed off each other's energy - so the way I went about this kind of had the same effect, only I had to set an initial mood with a click track to build the guitars, then use the mood of the guitars to build the drums, then the new mood of the drums set a new mood for the guitars again. I could only do much mood building though, so it is what it is.
Next, I used MIDI to build a bass line to go with the chord progression. That was pretty straight forward, but requires a lot of quanitizing to get it lined up with the drums. Once set down, the bulk of the recording is done. Now for vocal. This I think was the easiest part of the entire process. Grab a mic, plug in, and sing. I had to have the lyrics printed out and set above the microphone because while I could remember the lyrics for the most part, there's always that one word that escapes me - was it "IS or Was", etc.
.
with everything recorded on its own track, now the Mixing - setting levels and making all those nasty decisions like 'reverb on the vocals?", how much compression for the drums to add "kick", and how much maximizing.
I wish I had enough knowledge and experience to share that part of my process with you, however I'm still learning the ropes myself.
For my song, I used Cubase 5SX as my recording environment. An MXL990 condensor Microphone. My Ibanez plugged into a BOSS ME70 foot pedal and fed directly into my computer using a Firestudio Mobile AI. For drums, I used the Toon Track EZ Drummer VST, and for Bass, I used my MIDI 20 key Keyboard employing a standard Accoustic Bass plugin. That's about it.
Anyways, I wanted to share my workflow with you because I know that when I first started recording, all this was a black box. TOns of questions and uncertainties about "what to record first - drums, bass then guitars, or guitars then bass, then vocals?" - standard workflow quesions that in the end really are a personal taste kind of thing, but we all need a little hand holding from time.
Hope it helps those of you starting out like me. And sorry for any typos - I'm typing as it comes to mind, and not really proofing.
Chris
edit: one last thing - the solos. Those came after I recorded the vocals, so the solos were actually the last thing I recorded. I still have to record the last solo on this song which will be an 8 bar solo following the bridge, and then likely an outtro solo of some sort.
peace.
My hours are confined to about a 3-4 hour time block at home after everyone goes to bed. That's when the monotonous work-flow happens.
My personal creativit is at its height from morning when i wake up til about noon, so song-writing and recording pretty much have to take place at two different times of day. Unfortunately, I have a day job, so song writing can be rather tricky - to date, I've had to come up with song ideas and lyrics while at work or on the road. So I keep a handy recorder and note pad nearby at all times.
The song I have up right now (poorly mixed - I haven't gotten around to finishing the mix yet
began when I was at work and thinking what it must be like to spend your youth locked up, then be ejected into society after you reach your mid-life crisis. A mid-life crisis is bad enough when you've had your youth to at least delve into something you enjoy that you can build on later in life.
I hummed a simple "25 years ago, I was just out of school trying to make my way" and the tune and lyrics just stuck in my head. So how do I build on that theme? During lunch breaks, I would take my handy notepad and start fleshing out a story line to support that line. I think it took me about a week's worth of lunch breaks and other carved out moments to get the bulk of the story written in a poetic fashion. The main challenge, was setting the story line so it made sense - how did "I" get into jail in the first place, and not have that the centerpiece of the story? How do I invest the reader in the person's experience? I like to tie the ending back into the beginning when I write - I think I did a decent job of doing that lyrically.
I found that as I wrote the lyrics / story line, I needed to keep in mind the tune so that the lines and rhymes weren't forced into odd timings - that required that after I wrote the storyline, I had to go back and sing to the story line, and then come up with new words that fit while maintaining the tunes' flow and structure. Then I grabbed my guitar and strummed a few chords to back the tune I had envisioned.
This was a little challenging - when I sung the tune, I wasn't able to envision a backing to it. Everything changes when you take a tune and put a progression under it, instead of starting with a progression and then making a tune to sit on top of it. I also had to take into account my low voice. I can't sing really high, so I had to make sure the progression didn't force me to sing high - transposing isn't so hard when you have the progression, but I did have to take the time to do it.
Now to lay down a scratch track. Well, I don't have drum kit. I use all MIDI instruments, in this case "EZ Drummer". I know from previous experience that you need a click track of some sort to meter your singing with so that when you do add drums, you're not having fudge the rythem section every 4 bars. Singing a tune to a click track forces you into a tighter box than free-form strumming, so I had to adjust my tune and chord progression to fit that box. I settled on a 130 BPM, but now I'm thinking it might be better at 140 - I may re-record to see how it goes. In any case, I laid down 6 minutes of 130 BPM click trackes, then sang the song in my mind while recording the main guitar piece through the first verse, and chorus. Then I punched in the bridge guitar work, then punched into remainder of the song.
It was rough, but made a decent scratch backing track for the vocals. Then I recorded the vocals and I had my scratch track down so that I could listen to it and determine what changes I needed to make. Should I go longer? Shorter? Change the chord progression? Did the lyrics fit snuggly in the progression?
I made some changes, and this time because of the punching in and punching out, I had rehearsed the parts enough to play the song with the changes I made, from start to finish, so I retracked the guitars on two channels so I could pan them left and right to give them a full sound.
At that point, I began "programming" the drums. Beginning with a single drum loop, I edited the highlight and changes with bass kicks and crash cymbals, to land on the changes. This really helped to set a mood and give a little more life to the track. It also served as a build-up leading indicators for changes and helped cue me in to chorus and bridge changes for singing.
Once the drums were set in place, I retracked the guitars again - yeah it was alot of re-tracking, but adding the drums hi-lights really helped the mood of playing - in a real band situation, you and the drummer feed off each other's energy - so the way I went about this kind of had the same effect, only I had to set an initial mood with a click track to build the guitars, then use the mood of the guitars to build the drums, then the new mood of the drums set a new mood for the guitars again. I could only do much mood building though, so it is what it is.
Next, I used MIDI to build a bass line to go with the chord progression. That was pretty straight forward, but requires a lot of quanitizing to get it lined up with the drums. Once set down, the bulk of the recording is done. Now for vocal. This I think was the easiest part of the entire process. Grab a mic, plug in, and sing. I had to have the lyrics printed out and set above the microphone because while I could remember the lyrics for the most part, there's always that one word that escapes me - was it "IS or Was", etc.
.
with everything recorded on its own track, now the Mixing - setting levels and making all those nasty decisions like 'reverb on the vocals?", how much compression for the drums to add "kick", and how much maximizing.
I wish I had enough knowledge and experience to share that part of my process with you, however I'm still learning the ropes myself.
For my song, I used Cubase 5SX as my recording environment. An MXL990 condensor Microphone. My Ibanez plugged into a BOSS ME70 foot pedal and fed directly into my computer using a Firestudio Mobile AI. For drums, I used the Toon Track EZ Drummer VST, and for Bass, I used my MIDI 20 key Keyboard employing a standard Accoustic Bass plugin. That's about it.
Anyways, I wanted to share my workflow with you because I know that when I first started recording, all this was a black box. TOns of questions and uncertainties about "what to record first - drums, bass then guitars, or guitars then bass, then vocals?" - standard workflow quesions that in the end really are a personal taste kind of thing, but we all need a little hand holding from time.
Hope it helps those of you starting out like me. And sorry for any typos - I'm typing as it comes to mind, and not really proofing.
Chris
edit: one last thing - the solos. Those came after I recorded the vocals, so the solos were actually the last thing I recorded. I still have to record the last solo on this song which will be an 8 bar solo following the bridge, and then likely an outtro solo of some sort.
peace.
