The Spot Studios

The Spot Studios: How to Prepare for the Studio!

Over the years we’ve seen some sessions go smooth as silk….. and then there were others where the train was trying to drive right off the tracks.  We’ve learned from all of them and we’ve compiled this list of ways to prepare for a  session to ensure your session is as productive as possible.  You may find that this is full of gems or you may find that you’re already a pro and none of them are useful.  Feel free to pick and pull what you find useful and we’re happy to help if questions arise.  Happy prepping and we’ll see you in the studio!

Best ways to Prepare for the Studio – Whole Band

1.  Practice with a Click – We will be utilizing a click for the recording and it’s important that you are comfortable playing with one.  There’s a ton of free apps as well as more advanced ones that you can customize with different sounds and patterns.  Practicing with a click will make your studio experience easier and more enjoyable and will also help to improve your live shows and overall musicality. 

2. Be able to start at any section of the song.  Much of the recording that we do is broken up into sections so that we can focus on getting the best performances possible.  As such it’s important that you can start at any section without having to play from the beginning. You should also be aware of how you transition between sections when you are playing songs start to finish as we will want to do the same things while recording so it sounds like it was played in one take. 

3. Master your Parts: You should have mastery of all parts that are already written prior to coming into the studio.  This means that you can play it very well (basically perfectly) with a click at least 8 times out of 10 if not more. There’s a big difference between ‘playing all the notes’ and playing with feel.  It’s easy to hit all the right frets, drums, etc but it takes practice to play with feel and conviction.  If you’d like more information about how to practice in an efficient and effective manner check out the section below on Practice techniques
4. Try to Lock Down the Gameplan for as much of the song as possible prior to coming into the studio –  There’s two ways that things can go in the studio, the first is that you’re unprepared and you spend the entire time just trying to get passable takes for the parts you’ve been playing for months or years already.  This leaves little time for studio magic and the extra icing that can set your song apart and is great way to not have a lot of fun in the studio.  The other option is to know the parts you know will be recorded like the back of your hand, you blast through them in minimal takes and now have extra time for adding the extra magic.  You want to make the best use of the time that you have in the studio so the more prepared you are prior to coming the better.  We suggest that you try to know as much as possible about what you want in the song and how you want it to sound prior to coming into the studio.  

Guitar/Uke/Bass Preparations

1.  Make Sure Your Guitar is Setup Well:   Like most things in life guitars require maintenance and upkeep, especially in dry environments such as Colorado’s.  One of the most important things you should do prior to coming into the studio is to make sure that your instrument is setup correctly.  If your guitar isn’t setup correctly you will likely run into some combination of intonation problems, fret buzz, electrical noise, etc which doesn’t work well in the recording studio.  Setups are relatively cheap and easy and you can get them done at most guitar/music stores.  A good way to check if you may need a setup is to tune your guitar and then to see if each individual fret is still in tune as you go higher up the neck.  If your guitar is not well intonated as you go up the neck you’ll find that certain notes are sharp or flat.  If they are all in tune as you go up you should be good to go.  It’s also a good idea to listen for fret buzz as you are checking the intonation as that’s an indication that you may need to have your string(s) raised.  

2. Alternate Tunings – Another consideration with setups involves alternate tunings.  If you are using alternate tunings a lot it’s ideal to have different guitars setup for the different tunings that you’ll be utilizing.  Although you may be able to get away with slightly different tunings without causing major intonation problems, if you are trying to play in drop tunings or you’re tuning the whole guitar well below where it’s been setup for you’re going to have problems.  String size also plays into this, the lower you’re tuning, the thicker you’ll want your strings so they sound powerful and not flabby and unfocused, which is what happens when you tune down smaller strings too far.  If your guitar tech knows his stuff he should be able to help guide you to string sizes that are appropriate for your style. 

3. Fresh Strings – This is another important one but will differ depending on the type of guitar you’re playing.  Generally speaking you can put strings on electric guitars/basses right up until the time of the session.  They will speak well and won’t cause problems.  If you’ve put them on recently and the guitar still sounds bright and shiny then that’s fine as well.  With acoustic guitars you’ll want to put them on a few days before and make sure that you’re playing the instrument a good bit before coming into the studio to break in the strings.  Brand new acoustic guitar strings tend to be ‘zingy’ and have more ‘fret talk’ so it’s important to break them in.  Ukes, classical guitars, and any other nylon string instruments generally don’t need to have their strings changed as often but it’s still important to do so on a fairly regular basis if you’re playing a lot.

Drum Preparations

1.  Practice with a Metronome – Yes, this is redundant as it’s in the Whole Band Considerations sections but it’s that important for a drummer.  For full band projects the drums are typically the first thing that we do and then we use the edited drums and the click for the rest of the instruments.  Although we can do wonders with editing we can only get to ‘great’ with really good performances so the drumming needs to be on point.

2. Practice with a Metronome WITH THE BAND – If bands have been playing together for a while we generally will have the whole band playing live with the drummer to get good takes.  This works great if everyone is comfortable with the click as the drummer can feed off the energy of the other members of the band…when bands are not practiced with the click this can be a disaster as even a drummer who has done a ton of work with the metronome will struggle if the rest of the band is rushing or dragging.  Getting a practice setup where you can have a click playing can be a bit of a trick to accomplish but it’s worth the time and effort.

3. Make sure you’re comfortable consistently hitting the Snare in the middle of the head – This is a huge one if you want your recordings to truly be competitive with the best of the best.  The snare drum is capable of making a wide variety of sounds depending on where you hit it, and you should be purposeful about where you hit it and what you are trying to achieve.  If you listen to jazz drummers they will use various different areas of the heads to get a certain tone out of the snare and when it’s done well it sounds great….the trick here is that they are doing it with purpose which means that when they hit the snare in a particular area they are doing it to achieve a particular sound and not just because the stick happened to land there that time.  Although that’s great for Jazz most other styles of music are best served with a consistent backbeat.  Fills can sound ok with variation in the sound but 9.9 times out of 10 having an inconsistent backbeat doesn’t sound good.  At the end of the table the important thing is that you have control and that you’re able to adjust on the fly if need be.

4. Practice Playing the Kit at Various Volumes and make sure you’re Comfortable playing LOUD – The tone of drums changes drastically depending on how hard you hit them.  More often than not when you’re in the studio we’ll ask you to play the kit loud in order to ensure that we’re getting the best tones possible.  Oftentimes drummers are unable to play loudly in practice or gig situations which then leads them to develop bad habits where they always play quietly.  When we ask drummers who are used to playing softly all the time to play loudly, their arms and legs tend to get out of sync and we end up with a lot of unintentional flamming that sounds sloppy.  As such it’s important that you are dedicating time to playing both loudly and softly so that you can do either on command.

5. Playing Firmly when playing soft – Although playing loudly is appropriate for many songs there are some that it’s not appropriate for.  If you are playing a song that needs to have lighter or softer drumming you should practice playing quietly but firmly where you are still getting good tones out of the drums.  This requires close listening to determine where the sweet spot is.  If you can find the sweet spot they will fill out the sound well and fit the vibe of your song.  

6. Be Aware of the Balance between your cymbals and the Kit – Another issue we run into from time to time is where people play cymbals way louder than the rest of the kit or vice versa.  When we’re recording a kit with two toms we’ll have around 15 mics on the kit that pick up everything.  If the volume of your playing is not well balanced it can be difficult for us to get the drums sounding their best in the mix.  There are things we can do but they ultimately don’t sound as good as when the player has a good balance between the different elements in his playing. 

7. Focus on not unintentionally flamming between instruments – At The Spot we talk a lot about intentional flams and unintentional flams.  ‘Intentional flams’ on a snare or toms sound great when used tastefully but unintentional flams just sound messy.  We see these most often between cymbals and the kick and snare in basic grooves.  This is something that can be easily fixed with practice (and don’t forget the metronome while you’re doing it).  Another area that we see unintentional flams a lot are in 4 on the floor grooves where the snare is playing on top of the kick on the 2 and 4.  They also sometimes show up in fills…usually this happens when drummers are keeping time with the kick underneath the fill.  Sometimes this sounds great but often the kicks underneath a fill are unnecessary and you should consider removing them if they’re unnecessary.  

8. Use our Kit – We’ve got a custom Thumper Maple shelled drum kit that we keep tuned to perfection with fresh heads and it sounds amazing.  It’s also already setup, mic’d up and ready to go upon your arrival and we don’t mind if you move pieces to where they’re comfortable for you.  We’re not opposed to using your kit but in the 9.5 years we’ve been in business we’ve never had someone bring in a kit that sounded better than ours.  We’re not trying to be cocky but that is the truth of the matter.  Although it’s fun to say you played on your kit for a recording….we think it’s even better when the drums sound unbelievably good on your recording. 

9. Last but not least….get comfy sitting quietly at the end of a take – This is a little thing but an important one.  Lots of drummers are used to dropping their sticks, shifting around in their chairs, and just basically fidgeting after finishing a song.  While that’s probably fine live or in practice it doesn’t sound great when someone’s rustling around or you hear their stick clicking or being dropped on a drum at the end of a take while the cymbals or other instruments are decaying.  When we’re recording we’ll give you the all clear when everything has faded away so why not get comfy sitting quietly before you arrive at the studio.

Vocal Preparations 

1.  Know Your Notes – Although there is a lot that goes into a great vocal performance one of the most important aspects is hitting the pitches.  This comes easily to some and can be more difficult for others.  Whether it’s easy or not (and specifically if it’s not) it can be helpful to figure out your melody on a piano or other melodic instrument and then practice singing the melody while you play the notes on your instrument.  This will give you a good pitch reference to make sure that you’re hitting all the notes well and will refine your sense of relative pitch.  
3. Be Well Hydrated before Coming into the Studio – As a vocalist you caught the short end of the stick in that your body is your instrument.  As such, what you are doing in your everyday life plays a role in how your instrument functions.  One of the most important things to do prior to singing in the studio is to be well hydrated and that’s a process that needs to start well in advance of your session.  Vocal chords take hours to hydrate so it’s important that you are drinking water hours in advance of your session.  If your vocal cords are not well hydrated your tone can become raspy and tight sounding and you will also have a lot more mouth noises going on which will ruin takes.  We suggest starting to regularly drink water the night before your session to make sure you are well hydrated.  If you are unable to do so for whatever reason then pectin, which is found in apples, apple juice and some gummies can help some but it’s not foolproof.   Throatcoat Tea can also be effective in a pinch.

4. Be Wary of Dive Bombing at the ends of words – Unless you want to sound like Bob Dylan you should try to not to fall off in pitch at the ends of words.  There are times that this is a stylistic choice and works well and in that case more power to you but many people do it unconsciously and it can sound like you don’t have control.  This is easily fixed with dedicated practice. 

5. Focus on your tone and consistency of tone – If you read through the drum notes then you’ll find that this is similar to the issue with the tone of the snare drum.  The human voice is capable of creating a huge variety of sounds but you want to do so with purpose.  If your tone is shifting you should be doing it because you want the new tone and not because it’s just happening.  There are certain times that tonal shifts sound great and other times that you need to be able to consistently deliver with one tone.  We recommend practicing singing in different tones so that you know what they feel like and can shift them as needed.  This is helpful if we need you to change something on the fly in the studio and will also expand your palette for future songs. 

6. Focus on consistency of dynamics – It’s very important that people are able to hear every word and inflection that you do vocally and that can be tricky if your dynamic is shifting constantly.  Although we don’t want a dynamicless performance we also don’t want a performance that is ricocheting from loud to soft within a single line.  That won’t sit well in the mix and generally sounds ‘surgey’ and unpleasant.  When you’re practicing it’s good to focus on keeping a relatively even dynamic through verse choruses etc.   If you do that, our compression and Rich’s mixing will do the rest of the work to make sure you sound amazing.  

7. Prepare Harmony ideas or map potential placement prior to the studio – We find that projects go best when people are well prepared on the parts they know they’ll be playing as that leaves more time for adding/writing additional parts, playing with tones, etc. This note goes hand in hand with all of that.  If you are good at writing harmonies and you’re planning on having them in the song then we suggest you map them out in advance.  If you’re not good at writing harmonies then we suggest thinking about where you would like them and then we can help you write them when you’re in the studio.  

Practice matching the lead vocalists’ phrasing for harmonies – We always want our harmonies to lock perfectly with the lead vocal and time can be saved if you’re already familiar with the intricacies of the lead singers delivery.