We know, you're an artist. You have feelings, you're deeply perceptive of emotions, you (hopefully) draw eloquent parallels between everyday life and lofty, meaningful sentiments. You’ve scraped together tips from your pizza gig, bitched and moaned to the other members of your band to cough up funds, begged, borrowed, and stolen to amass a collection of coin resembling a budget. After painstakingly perfecting your life’s latest magnum opus you have determined beyond a shadow of a doubt that you’re ready to jump into the magic of recording this monstrous work of art. Now take a deep breath and SLOW THE FUCK DOWN COWBOY!
YOU HAVE WAAAY TOO MANY SONGS
If your track listing looks more like a Chinese take out menu, you’ve got a problem. Having too much material on your release can be particularly problematic for one major reason. That is, unless you’re a bonafide, songwriting savant, at least half your music is pure trash. This is what we in the industry like to call filler. They’re the songs on your record that everyone but you skips right-the-fuck-over in a race to get to the end of your C+ album. In this post-apocalyptic, “singles-mingle”, music industry the last thing you want to do is put out a bunch of tracks that everyone skips over.
Luckily a few remedies can be taken to shed this disease. First, if you’re an artist it is your duty to write as much as you possibly can. Songwriting is like a muscle, the more you do it the easier the process will become. Obviously not every track will be a banger, but that’s exactly the point! By increasing your output you give yourself the opportunity to flush out the toxins and focus in on the good stuff. The second way to minimize the impact of the “All my songs are my best songs” delirium is to work with a fucking producer! Yep, I said it. A good producer can be your first line of defense when it comes to selecting which songs should and shouldn’t be on your record. This is particularly useful because a good producer will provide a fresh, unbiased opinion of your material and will make suggestions based on what they believe your intended market will resonate with.
YOU DON’T HAVE A PROPER BUDGET
Assuming you’ve gone through the process of whittling down your bloated symphony of ideas into an effective, potent, and marketable track list you should be ready to book studio time right? Fucking wrong again! The desperate and unfortunate truth is that most bands don’t have even the slightest idea of how much work goes into producing a unique, professional sounding album. Thus because of this severe lack of knowledge many bands also do not have a clue as to what an album costs to make.
Let’s say for instance you have settled on a conservative 5 song EP and have saved up $1,500 to do it. Your band has a drummer, bassist, 2 guitarists, and a lead singer who also wants to lay down backing vocals. Maybe a few FX swells with the pedal board, percussion shakey stuff, acoustic and lead guitars on a few tracks here and there, and oh yeah the singer’s girlfriend on a duet. Shouldn’t be too bad, just 5 tracks… ugh you suck. Let’s break this down a little further so you actually fucking get it.
Your drummer’s confident he can lay down his parts in a 10 hour day, great. If we’re gonna do the thing right though we’re gonna need more time than that to really dial in that kit, say 2 hours just to be safe. But wait, are we quantizing the drum performance? Add an extra day for editing if your drummer sucks. Onto the bass player, he’s probably half a day to a day, let’s say a day just to be safe, hopefully he can keep up! Rhythm guitars, let’s say 2-3 days if we’re doin it right, gonna try out some different set ups, sweep the cabs until we nail the shit out of the mic placement, notch all the “hissy” “fizzy” bullshit out on input, ya know actually do the damn thing. Now to lead vocals, hopefully your singer has their shit together, give em 2 days max for leads, if they can’t execute within that time frame god help us. Backing vocals, maybe another day? Are we experimenting with harmonies now yes or no? All the extra frilly dilly FX sauce, what are we lookin at? A day? Two days? Fine. To give ourselves a quick subtotal we’re looking at 5-8 days of tracking. Great! How much is studio time per 10 hr day? Let’s say the studio is on the “dirt cheap” end of the spectrum at $200/ day ($20/ HR). Your cost for tracking is now between $1,000 and $1,600, and you still want mixing AND mastering?! Hahaha fuck you!
Now this being said, I myself have agreed to take on a variety of projects over the years for far less than my posted rate because I, as a producer/engineer/mad scientist am personally stoked about the project. Additionally, some bands can kick out this amount of tracking in a far shorter period of time. But it should be noted that many bands completely underestimate the amount of time they actually need in the studio. This is why I am a huge advocate for sitting and having an honest conversation with your engineer/ producer BEFORE you book time. Typically speaking, whoever you are working with will be able to plot out a schedule that will suit the needs of the production.
You don’t actually know what you want
This one is painful. Having a clear sonic vision for your album is one of the most critical components to making a great record. It’s the vibe, the energy, the unique aural fingerprint that will make the cud chewing masses of social media jam your shit on repeat. Without it, your record will be one in an endless list of mediocre releases that continue to erode the art form of audio engineering. Once again, the unfortunate reality is that many artists go about this part of the process all wrong.
Throughout my journeys as an audio engineer and producer I have come to know two major hurdles that bands face when developing the sound of their album. The first of these two obstacles is that many bands fundamentally do not understand how to describe what they hear in their head. A classic example of this phenomenon is when a heavy band comes in looking for a “natural, organic, or live” sounding record. Over the years I have recorded literally hundreds of bands live, in just about every setting imaginable. Thus I have become somewhat well versed in the multitude of theories, practices, and outcomes of such style of recording. For many heavy bands the “au naturale” route, whether they know it or not, is not typically what they are looking for. This tends to come to the surface as the production of the record moves into the mix phase and the band comes to the realization that the definition, impact, and general “forwardness” that most heavy music so often requires, does not exist in the fashion they intended. This is a serious fucking problem. Reason being, a solid, pro engineer or producer begins developing the sound of a record before the artist even sets foot in a studio. Decisions such as drum head selection, guitar string selection, specialty instrument/ mic/pre/eq/ compressor rentals or borrows have been tailored to the vision of the artist. Additionally, if a band is working with a freelancer, the studio itself has been chosen to fit the needs of the project. The point here is that if these decisions are ill-advised because YOU, as the artist cannot effectively communicate your vision to a pro, you will be in for one hell of a cluster-fuck when it comes time to actually get the sound your looking for. The easiest way around this colossal pile of dog shit is to amass a solid collection of reference recordings that have similar sounds to the ones you envision for your record. This will allow your pro to cut through your misinformed babel and develop a recording strategy that will come much closer to your sound; saving you time, money, and a whole lot of ibuprofen.
The second, I would argue, more devastating challenge is when bands bail on their vision before it has been seen to fruition. A number of years ago I was working with an artist in a producer role who had expressed a need for assistance in creative direction. After listening through demos together and having many earnest talks with the artist about their career aspirations, we came to a consensus on which material we should focus on for release and the sonic direction of that material. The first single was to be tracked partially to tape and partially to digital in an effort to “bake-in” some vintage vibe on the track. After spending a few days perfecting the tones, parts, and performances of the recording we had an excellent foundation from which to finish the tracks. Much to my production team’s chagrin, the artist quickly took a turn in direction and decided to jump into recording some of the tracks we had previously agreed to put on the back burner. Obliging the artist, we went to work on the second grouping of songs which were eventually mixed, mastered, and released. Now, this may sound like everything worked out fine and in some ways it absolutely did. However, the reality is that the artist in the end racked up a somewhat hefty studio bill in the process. Ultimately, the artist abruptly let a few key backing members of their outfit go and still has yet to release some of their best work. In the end, the price the artist paid for this lack of conviction in their vision cost them both in capital and in relationships.