Getting the Most Out of Your Studio Sessions and Music Production Projects

Tips and Advice from a Record Producer

Jason and Jay Benzon

Record Producer & Recording Engineer

SongTrack Studios, LLC™

ClientSupport@SongTrackStudios.com | www.SongTrackStudios.com

Copyright©2023JasonBenzon. All rights reserved.

A Tracking Session at SongTrack Studios

Come Prepared! Come Rehearsed! Come Prepared! It’s vital to step into the studio ready to

go! The more prepared and rehearsed you are, the less time you'll need focusing on your technique and the more time you’ll have experimenting and seeing where your muse takes you. This means focusing on expressing yourself emotionally above all else! If you are focused on hitting just the right notes, then your audience will be as well. But for now, let’s dive into the details of how to prepare yourself properly to ensure you actually do indeed arrive well-prepared and well-rehearsed to all your studio sessions!

The best way you can grow as an artist and prepare yourself for studio sessions, especially if you are a vocalist, is singing/performing live! If you’re not getting out and singing/performing in front of people - any people - we highly encourage you to do so! There’s a long list of successful singers/performers who grew up singing/performing several times a week at church!

Along with performing on a regular basis, it’s equally important to develop creative habits at home or on the road which will prepare and set you up for success as a recording artist. The subject of developing creative habits and developing your artistry is advanced and far beyond the scope of this article. But in a nutshell, we highly encourage you to always be creating, and always be working at your artistry, even when you don’t feel like it! In other words, don’t wait for inspiration to strike! Follow this advice full heartedly and you will have a high chance of ensuring that you’re prepared and rehearsed whether you are on stage in front of a live audience or in the studio. Because let’s face it, even when we are at our most prepared, Murphy’s law is no joke “anything that can go wrong, will go wrong!” This further illustrates the concept of how preparation is just as much a mindset as it is a check list. But let’s get back to some basics that are often overlooked. After all, even advanced preparation techniques must start with the bare basics, despite how boring and tedious they may appear in writing, and perhaps even in real life.

If you are eager to learn more about developing your artistry through creative habits, you can check out our list of recommended books at the end of this article.

To start off with, and while it may seem like a no-brainer, thinking about when you like to do your prescribed vocal warm-ups and/or instrumental exercises is important. Some artists prefer to warm-up and do their instrumental exercises before they arrive to the studio. Others like to wait until they are in front of a live mic. There is no right or wrong. Either way, making sure that you are warmed up for at least 20 minutes before you tackle your main performance is vital. Doing your prescribed Warm ups before rehearsing your main part is a vital creative habit to develop outside of the studio as well!

Along with warming up comes tuning, which is equally important. Tuning in the studio is standard procedure, but one that is often overlooked for its simplicity. We aren’t talking about regularly keeping your instrument tuned throughout the recording session. Even though tuning throughout recording sessions is important, tuning happens long before the session starts. We are really talking about preparing your instruments ahead of time to ensure they can be tuned regularly and maintain the right, consistent, tone for the length of the entire session. This concept especially rings true for drumkits as they tend to take on a little more abuse from their players than other instruments do.

To avoid problems with tuning, it’s important to be sure to replace any old drumheads and guitar strings with new ones. How often drumheads and strings should be replaced is the big question. Some techs recommend replacing drumheads prior to any tracking session. We strongly recommend this ourselves, or at the very least making sure the drumheads you bring have been changed recently and haven’t been worn in too much. Guitar strings should be changed before every session. “Breaking in” new strings a few days in advanced, depending on the tone you’re looking for, is often recommended as well. Of course, bringing a back-up set of drumsticks, batteries, guitar picks, drumheads, and strings is a great idea too, just in case.

It's also not a bad idea to bring multiple instruments of the same type with different configurations to the session, such as two different basses with different types of strings, or two different types of acoustic guitars. Flat wound strings verses round wound strings on an electric bass have a very different impact, emotionally and sonically, on the low end of a record for example! Pre-production is key to knowing which instrument and configuration is right for your song, as it often comes down to simply experimenting on a song-by-song basis.

Of course, beyond tuning, the quality and condition of instruments and gear you bring to a session is vital to the overall outcome of the production as well....which probably goes without saying, but well, we said it anyways! This includes, but not limited to, the following:

• Properly shielded guitar cables.

• Adjusted, tightened, or filled drum hardware, so as to prevent rattles and resonances.

• This includes any of the various supports, lugs, mounts, tension rods, and other mechanisms.

• Adjusted/verified guitar bridges, frets, and nuts.

• Replaced/verified tubes.

• Recapped electronic gear that is vintage or old.

• Replaced batteries in guitars/equipment.

But at the end of the day, those are just mere basic tasks to set you up for success. Below is a list of practices and decisions that’ll need to be made before your first session to ensure you nail the finer aspects of record production.

• Decide whether you’ll track with a click or have a beat map generated off your performance. This is an important factor to consider. But even if you are dead set on recording without a click, practicing to a click and figuring out the general tempo and BPM of your song is vital.

• Ensure every instrument has its proper space in the arrangement/mix. Mixing starts when the project begins and the whole band is present rehearsing, long before any mics are put up and anything has been recorded. One great way to prepare for a recording session is to record yourself/your band and listen to everybody’s parts and make as many adjustments to the arrangement as you are able. Some of the key factors to listen for are timing, proper chord structures (making sure everyone is playing a suspended chord at the same time for example) and spacing (ensuring no one is playing over the top of each other or riffing at the same time, for example). You can easily record via your phone or inexpensive audio interface. Even artists who don’t have a band can experiment with arrangement ideas via virtual instruments on a computer. If you have a mac, this can easily be done in garage band, and for free!

• Ensure your songs are finished and as strong as they can be in every aspect/element. While it’s true that a great arrangement and production can help strengthen a weak song, there’s no substitute for having a great song and a great arrangement and production to compliment it with.

• Figure out payment and royalties amongst your band ahead of time. Failing to Discuss with the band ahead of time how you plan on working out payment and royalties can cause lots of problems, if not in the studio, then certainly later on. Deciding now for example, what kind of compensation your drummer can expect if your music sells millions can be the start of a healthy, long-lasting relationship or a nasty feud. Start now by thinking about what each member of your band expects and hopes for if your music hits big! Do they require a one-time payment, credit, or maybe a massive favor?

• Study and Practice Vocal Mic technique! Mic technique for singers is a popular topic thrown around the studio as well as on stage in live sound reinforcement. When learned correctly it can help make for a great vocal, not just from a technical standpoint but an emotional one.

And finally, following the next steps below will not only set you up for success in the studio but will prepare you on your journey as a successful artist and getting the most out of your music.

Book Enough Time, and Set Aside Sessions, to Experiment, Explore, and Make Changes. It’s important to focus on what sounds right for your project, not what sounds good! There is no universal recording specification/requirement for the term “good”. Experimentation and proper planning are key as well as getting to know your likes, dislikes, and overall vision for your project.

Invest in yourself and Take Risks. If you are not willing to invest in your music, then why should your fans? Investing in yourself and taking risks can garner confidence, expand your creative horizons, and prove to everyone around you that you believe full heartedly that your music is worth pursuing. If you can walk into the studio and excite your whole team, you’ll never be disappointed with their results.

Keep in Mind that Mistakes are Part of the Process. Just as we mentioned before, “anything that can go wrong, will go wrong!” The trick is what you do when things go wrong. Do you give up, force it to go your way, or see it as an opportunity to try something different, unexpected, and perhaps even a little unorthodox? Embracing the moment is paramount to the art of producing and can bring about some of the most amazing results if you let it! Creativity and channeling your muse go hand in hand with experimenting, accepting limitations, and not being quick to judge yourself or your ideas.

Take Care of your Hearing! The range of human hearing extends from 20Hz to 20kHz. That’s 19,980 different frequencies that we humans can hear! The beautiful thing about music is that it’s an artform that encompasses the full entire range of human hearing, from deep, low, thunderous bass to the ear-piercing crash of a drum cymbal. Not only that, but the sound pressure level difference in dB that our ears can hear on average, between the softest sound and the loudest sound, is 120dB. That’s a ratio of one to one-million-million or 10^12, which is akin to a scale being sensitive enough to measure the difference between a feather and ten story building!

For you math wizards, here is the calculation:

The softest sound (.0002 dynes/cm^2 or Pascals) and the loudest (200 dynes/cm^2 or Pascals) is: dB=20log(200/.0002) =20log(1,000,000)=20(6)=120dB.

Here’s another way to look at it. The softest sound (10^-12 or 0.000000000001W/m^2 ) and the loudest (1W/m^2 ) is: dB=10log(1/10^-12)=10log(10^12)=10(12)=120dB

Our ears are indeed amazing, so it’s best to be mindful of them. When performing at loud concerts, and while in the studio, in-ear-monitors that offer strong ear protection is essential. It’s an investment you’ll be glad to have made! Most concerts exceed 100dBA, often reaching 110 –115 dBA. These SPL levels will damage your hearing permanently! For best care, adhering to NIOSH recommendations is strongly advised (see below). Those of you battling with tinnitus know how painful hearing damage can become as the years go by. Not only that, but it’s more than possible to cut the frequency range of your hearing by more than half. It’s not uncommon for musicians with hearing damage to only be able to hear up to 5kHz, or at the most 10kHz. Cymbals, tambourines, vocal sibilance, and so forth can no longer be heard, and music begins to lose its excitement and counter rhythms. Taking care of your hearing for long-term success as a professional music artist is vital! Don’t take it for granted.

Relax and have Fun! We think you'll love our record production process and recording in our studio, and we certainly want you to. Your comfort and satisfaction are our top priority. We have found that if our artists feel nervous and tense, the emotions they convey in their music will be likewise. In our opinion, there's nothing better than hearing a talented artist, powerfully convey the proper emotions for a song that they are recording. If you think we may be the right team for your project, don't hesitate to send us your music and find out.

We hope you’ve enjoyed our article and have found our advice helpful. If you’d like to learn more, any number of our recommended books are a great option. Feel free to browse our selection and take your pick!

Thank you.

All the best with your musical endeavors,

Jason Benzon

Recommended Reading:

• To Be An Artist: Musicians, Visual Artists, Writers, and Dancers Speak, by Camille Colatosti

• The Creative Habit, by Twyla Tharp

• The Music Lesson, by Victor Wooten

• Creative Intelligence: Harnessing the power to create, connect, and inspire, by Bruce Nussbaum

• What is Art, by Leo Tolstoy

• Poetics, by Aristotle