Studio Cameleon - mobile and studio recording - Guide - The recording process...explained

Studio Cameleon

The recording process.... explained !

guidlines on how to prepare for a studio recording_

Before entering the recording studio :

Preparation is the most important part of a successful recording session. You can have a look at this little remider first: What not to forget in the studio .

Here`s a basic outline of the main steps for a typical modern studio project.

First off let's talk about pre-production: it consists in recording the album a first time in order to compose the arrangements, verify the structure of the songs and make sure everybody knows it`s part. Quality doesn`t matter , it can be done with a portable recorder in the jam room for example or at Studio Cameleon for a lot less than regular studio time. There is only minimal sound check and we just let the tape rolling since all the tracks will be re-recorded with a better sound. It only serves as a demo, to give an idea of what`s coming to the musicians engineers. It also helps the band in finalizing the songs and composing arrangements, solo, lead guitars or keyboard tracks.

For budgetary reasons, it`s not possible for everybody to do an actual pre-prod. It`s important that you jam the pices as much as possible and make sure you know who is doing what back vocals, how many bars is the solo, etc. Download and print this useful checklist to make sure everything is ready for D-day!

In the studio:

Basic Tracks

Everybody plays in the same room or in isolation booths depending on the setup. We start by sound-checking drums and bass. It is the rhythmic center of the song. The drum and bass will be kept for the final cut but pretty much any other instrument will be re-recorded at the overdubs.

When we have a perfect drums and bass, we move to the next step.

Overdubs

Overdubs consist in recording the melodic instruments: guitars, lead guits, solos, voices, brass, percussions, etc. With the drums playing in the control room`s monitors and the guitar amp isolated in a booth, the guitarist nails its tracks for all songs on the album. Depending on the musical style, we might double all guitars.

Then we move on to all other instruments, usually finishing with voice, keys and percussions.

Mixing

We start by soloing each track of the mix, we remove any annoying drumstick, breathing, chair noises or phase problems. We clean and trim each track to prepare for the actual mix.

Then, we work on the dynamic range and eq to position all the elements. Stereo imaging is also very important in achieving a well balanced, clear mix where you hear all the instruments in the right spot. This is where your sheets with indications for the final mix come in handy. You can come in the studio or just give us all the track names with ideas for production (up-front vocals, clear drum, no fx on the snare, etc.)

delay problems.

Now the fun part, we work on effects, stereo balance, levels and the overall sound of the final mix.

This is where budget matters, mixing for a whole album can take anywhere from days to months! When all is done, the multitrack mix is sent to a stereo track for the next step...

Mastering

Mastering may be a little foggy for people who are not very acquainted with audio recording. A couple decades ago, it still consisted in engraving the live music directly to a vinyl it was the mastering engineer's job to ensured all the levels were good and that there were no erros on the master copy.

It changed a lot since then but the goal is still the same. We take the final mix and make sure that it sounds loud enough, that the tone is good (bass, mids and treble) and that the mix will translate well in other systems (car radio, Ipods, home systems, etc.)

To achieve that, we compress, limit EQ and tweak the stereo image of each song, making them equally loud. In order to work on the master, you need to have really high-end equipment to avoid conversion problems.

We then do the pacing of the album, fade-in/fade-outs and cd text and burn the master copy at slow speed with error correction. For archiving, we also use DAT (digital audio tape) as it is a more stable long-term archive than cdr.

And you got a record !

Fabrice Lewis-Fournier and Mathieu Déziel-Parent

Sound engineers at Studio Caméléon

info@studiocameleon.com