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We are putting together a demo of 5 tracks in my melodic death metal and Slaying of the Beast.

So I need to know vocally, how should I handle this? 2 days of recording or shoot through it in 1? I dont wanna sacrifice tone quality for money. But I dont wanna sacrifice money if I dont need to. I pay by the hour and set up tear down counts.

My voice goes through a lot during each song, but we usually go through a set of 10 or 12 for a practice so it can take it, plus I use hunny to give me that extra edge.

OH, also, I play and vocalize on stage, should i do that during recording too or record voice seperatally?

Always record vocals separately. Regardless of what you're playing, you don't want your vocal mic picking up any excess noise other than your voice. Post-production can help to get rid of extra sounds by expansion/gating, but it's far better not to have the noise in the first place.

As far as your voice itself is concerned, do whatever makes you feel most comfortable. If you feel like you're going to strain yourself, don't push it. Keep in mind that you'll likely be doing multiple takes of vocal tracks for each of the five songs you're recording. Really it's up to you whether you want the demos to sound high-quality, or if you'd rather have it be more cost-effective.

repressthecadence wrote:Always record vocals separately. Regardless of what you're playing, you don't want your vocal mic picking up any excess noise other than your voice. Post-production can help to get rid of extra sounds by expansion/gating, but it's far better not to have the noise in the first place.

As far as your voice itself is concerned, do whatever makes you feel most comfortable. If you feel like you're going to strain yourself, don't push it. Keep in mind that you'll likely be doing multiple takes of vocal tracks for each of the five songs you're recording. Really it's up to you whether you want the demos to sound high-quality, or if you'd rather have it be more cost-effective.

I actually plan on doing what i do musically as my career, and as Spinefarm records says: "One well done bad quality song is better then 100 normal or bad songs recorded well." Im trying to strike a balance since I am rather young and new to the music industry.
Thanks for the advise though! Every bit helps this newbie.

Then it's definitely better to do what I said if that's the case. If you want to do it for a career, it's definitely best that you do your vocals separately, because that will increase the quality of the recording, and there really isn't much additional cost to that if you manage your time well. I can understand wanting to save cash, but like you said, balance is key. Don't sacrifice quality too much, or you may not find yourself with many listeners outside of fellow musicians who happen to like that very niche-y genre.

That quote is debatable, too. Especially to the casual listener, there needs to be some semblance of quality for the end user to be able to enjoy it. If the audio is super-compressed and sounds terrible, despite the musicality of the song, no one's going to want to listen to it.

And don't worry, I'm younger than you are haha, I just have quite a bit of studio time under my belt, on both ends.

Oh, and on a side note, make sure you and your band have visited the studio where you're recording BEFORE the day you're set to record. Get to know your engineer and his/her gear beforehand. You're going to be spending a certain length of time with whoever it is, so make sure you all get along, and have a clear idea of what you want from post-production/mastering if you're having them do that, too. Because it definitely sucks when either you don't bring the right equipment, or worse, they mix the song and give the song a sound you weren't going for.

Thanks for the tips too.
for that quote I gave you, since Ill be sending a copy to spinefarm, im gonna have a little of that on my mind.

For metal bands its wierd who makes it and who doesnt, and it also seems like they all know each other. The metal world just kinda seems like a big unrelated family. ill be sure to post a song or 2 once they are recorded.