This guide will show you how to get the best possible recordings from a limited budget, while helping you avoid the costly mistakes that many inexperienced bands and artists make when financing their own projects. Along the way, you'll also learn about the overall recording process, from tracking to mixing to mastering and duplication.
The first step towards maximizing your recording budget is to define your goals for the project:
Are you planning to send your project to record labels in hopes of landing a deal?
If all you want is a simple recording for friends and family to hear, then go for the cheapest studio that can get the job done, or use the money to buy some recording equipment and do it yourself. There are plenty of studios around that somehow manage to charge only ten to fifteen dollars per hour. If you are very careful in your selection process, you can probably get a recording that sounds at least a little better than putting a boom box in front of your band during rehearsal. However, if you are doing this simply for fun, why not spend the same amount of money and buy a four-track recorder and a few extra microphones, and learn to do it yourself. That way you can make all the recordings you want, and they might even sound better than what you might get at some of the cheaper studios.
If you want to make a demo for getting club gigs, you need a good quality recording of your best three or four songs. However, by recording a few more songs and getting your project professionally duplicated, you can sell the cassettes or CDs at shows to make some extra money. Booking agents will be more impressed with a band or artist that has produced a full length release on cassette or CD. If this is as far as you intend to take your project, then you should go for a medium priced studio that can give you good results for your money. These studios usually charge in the $25 to $60 per hour range. You may even be able to get rates in this range from the higher-end studios if you book during the late night hours with "second" engineers or interns.
If you intend to use your recording to shop to major or independent record labels, then it better be top-notch professional quality! These people are used to hearing professional quality finished masters. Anything less might not get the attention it deserves. In order to get the best possible recording quality, you should use a top-notch studio but only record two or three of your best songs. Most A&R people won't even listen past the first few songs anyway. Then, when you have more money, or if a label wants to hear more, you can go back to record more songs. If you record just a few songs at a time for shopping around to labels, you will have an album's worth of material after just three or four trips to the studio. In the end, you get a full length album of the highest quality recordings that you can sell on your own if you never get that major label deal. The high-end studios usually charge at least $60 per hour, and can sometimes be over $200 per hour. Unless you have a major label budget, you probably won't need to use the "world-class" studios that charge more than $150 per hour. Later on in this booklet, I'll show you how to get the same premium quality product using a combination of high-end facilities and smaller, specialized studios.
Selecting a studio
Now that you know what you want to accomplish with your project, and the type of studio you should be looking for, it is time to go through the selection process. Look through the phone book, local music publications, and weekly newspapers to compile a list of as many studios as possible. Then call each one and find out what their typical rates are and request that they send you any literature that they may have. Use the information they send you to narrow down the list to studios that fall within the price range you are looking for, based upon the goal you set for your project. Try to find other bands or artists that have done the type of recording you are trying to do and find out where they recorded and how they would rate the studio and recording experience.
The next step is to visit as many studios as you can to tour their facility and get a feel for the rooms and the people that work there. Be sure to listen to some of the projects that they have recorded in order to evaluate their technical skills. If you don't have a great ear for this kind of thing, bring someone along who does. Also, if you don't know much about recording equipment, you may want to bring along someone who is to check out the studio. Make sure that you talk to the engineer who will be working with you at the studio. If you don't feel comfortable with the engineer, your performance will suffer, and all the best equipment in the world can't make up for a bad performance. It's not the equipment that makes the studio, it's the people. It is very important to spend the time to find not only someone who is technically proficient, but someone who you feel comfortable working with.
An often overlooked possibility is that of an independent engineer. These are engineers that don't work for any one studio. You will mostly find these independents in large cities that have a large number of recording studios. If you find a good independent engineer who you are comfortable with and who wants to work with you on your project, he or she can probably suggest a suitable studio for your project since they have probably worked in many different studios in the area. Sometimes these independent engineers may even have their own small facility where they can do some or all of the work for your project, depending on your needs.
There are some studios that try to do it all, and then there are studios that specialize in certain aspects of the recording process. Don't think that you have to do your entire project at one studio. If you have a full band, you will need a big studio to do the tracking for your project. However, that studio may be too expensive or may simply not have the right equipment or atmosphere to do the overdubbing or mixing part of your project. There are many smaller studios that may not be equipped to track an entire band, but may be just perfect for doing the overdubs and mixing. In fact, there are many studios that are set up this way intentionally. Since they don't need as large of a space, their overhead is lower and they can pass on the savings to you. It is exactly these smaller, specialized studios that are the key to maximizing your recording budget! This is such a key point, that it gets its own heading.
The secret to saving money on any project!
Find a smaller, specialized studio to do your overdubs and mixing at. The key here is to find one with the right equipment and the right person to do the job. Again, make sure that you are comfortable with the person and that they have the technical skills and equipment to get the job done to your satisfaction. These studios are often run by people who have worked as engineers at larger facilities and then went independent and/or opened their own business. You need to find the right smaller studio first so that when you look for the larger studio to do the tracking at, you can make sure that you find one that has the same recording format as the smaller studio (to avoid costly transfers between different formats). In many cases, the engineer at the smaller studio will suggest the appropriate larger studio for you, and will probably even engineer the session for you at the larger studio. It's always good to try to work with the same engineer throughout your project, even if you utilize different studios.
Just because a studio is small, doesn't mean that it can't have professional equipment and people. Likewise, just because a studio is big, that doesn't mean that they have great equipment and great people. In both cases, you still need to search for the right people and the right equipment for the job. But, it doesn't make sense to pay for more studio than you need. If you have a three piece band, you certainly don't need to rent out a studio that can record an entire orchestra if there is a smaller studio that has the same quality equipment and charges less. If you use real drums in your band, you will need a big enough studio to handle doing the basic tracking. If you aren't using real drums, you may be able to get away with doing everything at the smaller studio. However, since most bands use real drums, we'll talk about basic tracking next.
Basic Tracking
When you are doing basic tracking, the most important thing is to lay a strong foundation. That means getting a great sounding drum track and anything else that can't be recorded at a smaller studio (such as a real grand piano). Everything else can easily be overdubbed later at just about any size studio. Of course, most drummers can't play the song all by themselves, and it wouldn't have the same feel if they did. So, you need a big enough studio, with a good sounding room, proper isolation between instruments, plenty of good microphones, and a big enough console to handle tracking your entire band at once. Record enough takes of each song until you get one that has the feel you want and has the best drum track you can get. Bass, guitars, keyboards, vocals, and most other instruments can always be fixed or replaced in overdubbing, but drum tracks are tough to punch-in and almost impossible to fix without resorting to digital editing in a computer. Once you get the killer sounding drum tracks you want, you can easily go back to the smaller studio to concentrate on getting the perfect guitars, bass, and vocals recorded.
Mixing
Once all the tracking and overdubbing is completed, the next step is mixing. Hopefully the smaller studio you found has a great console and the appropriate outboard gear for the mixdown job. If not, you may want to go back to a larger studio, or try to find a studio that specializes in mixing. Next to the quality of the songs themselves, the mixing process is the most important part to making your recordings sound professional. Again, the secret to saving money is finding a smaller studio with a great engineer that can handle all your overdubs and mixing. Mixing can be a time consuming process, and the amount of time you spend on mixing is directly proportional to how good the mix will sound (up to a point). Don't cheat yourself here.
Make sure you set aside enough time and money to do each song justice in the mixing stage. The biggest mistake that most bands make is not spending enough time mixing. The hardest part for them is done at this point (tracking and overdubs), and they usually want to rush through the mixing to save money and get the project over with. Depending on the complexity of the song, you should budget a minimum of two to four hours per song for mixing. You could easily spend an entire work day on just one song, and may even come back to make more changes after that. The important thing is not to force it. Spend as much time per song as needed to get it right. Also, don't try to do the mixing right after you just spent the whole day tracking. You need to give the engineer and yourself time for your ears to recover before starting the mixing process. Don't try to mix for more than eight hours in one day, or for more than a couple hours at a time without a break. The ears get fatigued just like any other part of your body, and you need to take frequent breaks to give them a rest. When your ears are tired, you don't hear things right, and what might sound good after an all night session probably won't sound as good in a day or two after your ears have returned to normal.
One of the key things to look for when choosing your mixing studio is automation. An automated mixing console is almost a requirement for getting a great mix. Of course you need a great engineer with great ears and good equipment, but trying to mix a song with more than a couple instruments can be quite difficult without automation. Automation allows the engineer to work on smaller sections of the song and concentrate on one instrument at a time. In it's most common form, automation can usually record any fader moves (volume adjustments) and channel status (on or off/muted). Every time the engineer turns a channel on or off, or adjusts the volume on that channel, it is recorded into the automation computer. The next time the song is played back, the computer recreates those events at the same exact time in the song. This frees up the engineer to concentrate on the next channel or the next part of the song. The engineer can also go back to fine tune or change any previous automation events that were recorded. This allows the engineer to "tweak" the mix until it is exactly how everyone wants it to be (as long as everyone agrees on how it should sound). Without automation, the engineer would have to make extensive notes on where to set each fader for each part of the song and when to turn parts on and off. For a complex song with many parts and instruments, the mixing process would require more than one person is capable of doing manually. Plus, if you make a mistake, you have to reset everything and try again. With automation, you work on the mix a little bit at a time until you get it exactly the way you want it, and then the computer does it all for you.
With many of the very high-priced mixing consoles, you also get "total recall" automation. With this type of automation, every aspect of the mixing console can be memorized by the computer and recalled at any time. This means that the settings of the equalization, pan, and effects sends for each channel is memorized along with the fader movements and channel on/off status. Most of the time only the initial settings are memorized and recalled since it is usually just the volume and channel on/off settings that change during the actual mix. With some console, especially the all digital consoles, you can even record real-time changes of effects sends, pan position, and equalization into the automation. With total recall consoles, you can work on a mix until you think you have it right. Then you can take a copy home with you and "live" with it for a few days. If you find you want to make changes to the mix, you can go back to the same studio, recall the mix that you have, make a few changes, and have your new mix done in no time at all. This is the way many big budget projects are done. It allows you time to check out your mix in the "real world" and to then recall the mix you had and make appropriate changes at any time after the initial mixing session.
It is now the end of the '90s, and advances in digital audio equipment and computer technology has brought this type of fully automated, total-recall mixing console into the reach of many smaller studios. Many pro-audio manufacturers have recently put out fully automated, digital consoles, that can interface directly with many of today's most popular digital multi-track recorders. These consoles still cost about as much as an economy car, but they are not out of the price range of many of the smaller professional studios. One of these consoles, in the hands of a good engineer, with a good complement of outboard signal processing, good speakers, and a decent room to mix in can turn out results that sound just as good as recordings mixed on the most expensive consoles around. The advantage to you is that you save money working at the smaller studio with this type of equipment since that studio is not trying to make payments on a half-million dollar console or a room that is big enough to put an orchestra in. Plus, with one of these all-digital consoles, you get the previously mentioned advantage of total recall, so you can come back and make changes at a later time if you find you are not happy with your mixes.
Sequencing and Mastering - Preparing for duplication
After the mixing is done, most inexperienced bands think that they are done. However, there is at least one more step to undertake before you can begin production of your cassettes or CDs. Your project needs to be sequenced and mastered. This is either a one or two-step process depending on your goals and your budget. Sequencing (not the MIDI type) is the process of getting your songs in the right order and adjusting the amount of space in between songs. If you mixed to analog reel-to-reel tape, this process involves a razor blade and tape. However, most of the time people mix to Digital Audio Tape (DAT) and do their sequencing in a computerized Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). In addition to ordering the songs and adjusting the spaces between the songs, it is also very easy to clean up noise before and after songs, and to add fade ins or fade outs or even crossfades between songs in the computer. If you are totally and completely satisfied with the way all your songs sound together, or if you simplydon't have the budget for mastering, then this is the final step before production. Another DAT is prepared of the now sequenced project, and this DAT becomes your Production Master to deliver to the duplicators to make the cassettes and/or CDs from.
Mastering is the process of adjusting equalization, compression, and volume for each song to polish up the sound, correct any problems that may have been missed in the mixing stage, and to make all of the songs on the album work together. The high-end mastering facilities can charge $200 per hour or more to master your project, but it is exactly this high-end mastering process that makes the major label releases stand out from the low budget independent releases. A great mastering engineer can work wonders with a finished mix. Through the use of specialized equalization and compression, along with other tools, they can make your mixes louder, punchier, smoother, warmer, crunchier, or whatever the song happens to call for. They can zone in on certain instruments to make them seem louder or softer without you having to go back to remix a project. They can correct for problems with the overall balance of tone of your mixes that might have been missed due to poor studio monitors or an unfamiliar mixing envionment. It is too hard to explain what a great mastering engineer can do, it is something that has to be heard. The best way to put it is that the mastering engineer makes the whole album sound right.
You don't necessarily have to spend $200 per hour to get a good mastering job. Most of those types of facilities usually deal with major label releases anyway. Many duplication facilities have in-house mastering studios, and there are also many smaller facilities that only do mastering. Some large studios have small mastering studios built into them. Many of the smaller studios that you do overdubs and mixing in may also do mastering. Here again, it is very important to check them out personally and to use your ears. Mastering is an art unto itself, just like mixing. However, a good mixing engineer may not necessarily be any good at mastering. They are different skills. In addition, sometimes you may want to use someone else for the mastering to get a different perspective on the sound of your project from an unbiased set of ears. Other times, you may want to stick with the person who has worked the most on the project since that person may be more in tune with the sound you are looking for. In any case, here are all different levels of mastering studios out there at many different price ranges. Follow the same guidelines as discussed for choosing the studio that you recorded at. The important thing is to remember to include this step in your budget when planning your project.
Duplication
The final step in your project is the duplication of your cassette or CDs. For this step you will need to find a dedicated duplication facility since the majority of recording studios are not set up for making more than a few reference copies of your project. After the sequencing and mastering stage you should have received a production master tape or CD plus a reference copy on cassette or CD that you can check out at home before you proceed with the duplication process. If the duplication house is making CDs from a production master tape (not CD), or if they are the ones doing the sequencing/mastering for you, they should provide you with a reference CD before actually starting the CD manufacturing process.
The majority of duplication houses are actually just brokers when it comes to making CDs, they do not actually manufacture the CDs for you. Most all of them will do cassette duplication for you, but the CD manufacturing equipment is very expensive and there are a relatively small number of manufacturing plants compared to duplication facilities. Since it is next to impossible to deal with the manufacturing plants directly, you have no choice but to go through a broker. Most duplication facilities make a "one-off" recordable CD (CD-R) of your project that is sent to the manufacturing plant. The manufacturing plant uses this CD-R to make a glass master of your CD, which is then used to manufacture however many CDs you ordered. It is important to note that most manufacturing plants do not make runs of less than 500 CDs. It's just not economical for them to set up their machines for smaller runs than that. However, some duplication houses will allow people to order quantities as low as 250 or 300 CDs, and they simply throw away the extras from the manufacturing plant. Ordering this small of a quantity just doesn't make sense economically, since they usually only charge an extra $100 or so to make 500. What costs the most money is the setup and the artwork for your CDs. The CDs come back from the plant on spindles, and the duplication facility only prints up enough inserts and uses as many jewel boxes as necessary to fill your order. So, the difference in cost between 300 and 500 CDs is usually only what it costs for the extra jewel boxes and inserts since the plants usually manufacture a minimum of 500 CDs per order. You will also notice that the cost for making 1000 CDs is usually only two or three hundred dollars more than making 500 CDs. Your best bet is to start out with 1000 CDs or more if you think you can sell or give them all away (promotions, etc.). With 1000 or more CDs, your cost per CD is much less than it is for 500 or less since it doesn't cost the duplication house that much more to make the extra CDs once all the setup costs are completed.
CD-R drives and CD-R media have now made it possible to produce smaller quantities of CD-Rs. The media is a little different, and you usually don't get printing directly on the CD-R, but if you just need a small quantity of CDs for promotional purposes, this might be the way to go. Most studios that do sequencing and mastering have CD-R burners, and can make you small quantities (usually in the 1-20 range). Some duplication facilities now have CD-R machines that can make four or more at a time, and are now offering to do quantities of up to 200. In addition, there are now low cost inkjet type printers that can print directly on these CD-Rs. The problem with CD-Rs though, is that most places are still going to charge you $10 to $15 or more per CD-R. So it usually doesn't make sense to make more that 10 or 20 CD-Rs.
Cassettes are another story. Most duplication facilities make their own cassettes in-house. There are many different processes and machines for making cassettes, and I won't attempt to cover this process here. As with CDs, it is the artwork and setup that costs the most money. How many colors and the size of your j-card play a big part in how much your cassettes cost. Also, the length of your project will affect the cost since it determines the length of the tapes. If your project fits neatly onto one of the "standard" cassette lengths, it will cost you less than if the duplicator has to order custom length cassettes from their suppliers. During the sequencing and mastering stage of your project you need to carefully plan out each side of your cassette, unless you are making just a three or four song demo in which case all the songs should be on one side. It is very rare that you can divide up the songs so that both sides are the same length. In most cases you will want to make the first side of the cassette the longer side. That way, there is no long period of silence when the first side is over (nice for people with autoreverse cassette decks) or you don't have to press rewind first after you flip to the second side. If you are making both cassettes and CDs, you will want to prepare a separate production master for each. On the production master for cassettes, you will want to have a long enough pause at the split point between the two sides to make it obvious to the duplicators where to make the split. Most good sequencing/mastering engineers will take care of this for you. Many times, a mastering engineer will do a little extra compression and add more high end to the master that will be used to produce cassettes since cassettes have a limited dynamic range and not very good high end response.
No matter if you are making cassettes or CDs, you need to figure out what type of artwork and packaging you want, and then shop around for the best deal. Duplication is a very competitive business and you find similar pricing at most of the duplication houses. You have to be very careful to find out exactly what is included in each package. One duplicator may look like a better deal than all the others until you find out all the hidden charges that they tack onto the price. The biggest difference in price is determined by how many pages and how many colors you want on your inserts. In order to truly compare prices, you need to find out exactly what you are getting in terms of printing and artwork for each package offered. Most facilities offer in house graphic design artists who will help you with your artwork and layout. When purchased as part of a complete package, the duplicator will take care of everything for you. However, if you want to save a little money, you can find an independent graphic atist to prepare your artwork for you. If you are really ambitious, you may even be able to find a printer who will make the film and do the actual printing of the inserts for you. For most people though, the convenience of having one place handle everything outweighs the little bit of money you will save.
As with recording studios, you need to shop around carefully for a duplicator. Price is not the sole factor to think about. Some of the really cheap duplicators may save you money, but their artwork or printing or quality control may not be up to the standards of the true professionals. Word of mouth is the best way to figure out who the good duplicators are in your area. Ask other musicians and bands about their experiences and if they have a place they would recommend. In addition, your engineer or other people at the recording studio should be able to steer you towards a good duplicator in your area. Engineers and studio owners want anything they worked on to sound as good as possible, so you can trust that they won't steer you to a second rate duplicator. If you are not in a large city, or even if you are, you may have to deal with an out of area duplicator to get the best deal. It might be a little bit harder to find a good duplicator that's out of your area, but you may be able to save a significant amount of money by using a duplicator located in one of the major music markets (such as L.A., Nashville, New York, or Chicago).
Preparing for your studio sessions
One of the biggest factors in saving money on your recording projects is to make sure that you are completely prepared before you go into the studio. This seems like a simple concept, but you wouldn't believe how many bands don't have their parts down, or haven't even written them yet when they get to the studio. I once worked with a band where the singer actually hadn't even written lyrics for the songs yet. He made them up about right before it was his turn to sing! Remember, when you are in the studio, the clock is running and you are paying for that time whether you are working or not. If you have never recorded in a big studio before, you may need to work with a producer to guide you through the process. I'll discuss the role of the producer a little bit later. For now, let's concentrate on things you can do before you get to the studio to make the most efficient use of your studio time and to maximize your recording budget.
Make a rough demo during practice or at show
Use a boom box or simple cassette recorder to make rough recordings of your songs. Try to listen to these songs objectively to find weak parts in your songs that need work, and then practice them until you can play them right. You want to make sure that you are tight as a group before going into an expensive studio to record. These tapes may also help you determine which are your best songs, or which songs may need some re-writing to make them better. In addition, when shopping around for studios, you can play these tapes for the engineers to give them an idea of the type of music you play. You want to find an engineer who likes your music and who wants to work on your project, so letting them hear rough recordings is a good way to narrow down your choices.
Work out all musical and vocal parts
Unless you are really good at ad-libbing parts on the spot, you should have every part worked out ahead of time. This includes solos, doubled parts, overdubbed percussion parts, background vocals, sound effects, etc. The studio is not the time to start getting creative and coming up with new parts. You need to know exactly what you are going to do for each song. If you think you are going to double your guitar parts for a bigger sound, plan out exactly which songs and where in each song you are going to double instead of just doubling everything and sorting it out later. Same thing with percussion or any other overdubbed parts. Don't just think that you want to put a shaker in a song. Figure out ahead of time what type of shaker, what rhythm, and where in the song you are going to play it. Any one of these things by themselves may not seem like they would make much difference, but when you add them all up, it could come out to several hours worth of studio time. If you have it all planned out ahead of time, it could save you several hundred dollars.
Prepare all computer or sequencer parts ahead of time
Spend the time to get your sequences sounding exactly the way you want them before you go into the studio. It's easier to see how the real instrument parts and the sequencer parts will sound together when you're in the studio if you have the sequences prepared ahead of time. To save even more time and money, you may want to use your smaller overdub/mixdown studio to synchronize your sequencer to tape and transfer the parts over to reference tracks on the tapes before you go into the bigger studio for tracking. This way you aren't wasting time trying to get you sequencer synchronized with the tape machine at the big studio where it is more expensive. Plus, there is less gear that you have to bring, set up, and tear down, which will save you even more time.
Practice with a click track before you go into the studio
If you are using any computer or sequencer parts in your song, you will have to play along with a click track at the studio. Even if you aren't using any sequenced parts, you will still probably want to use a click track for most songs to keep your timing solid and to make any overdubs or punch-ins easier. If you are not used to playing with a click track, make sure that you practice with one until you can do it comfortably. This is especially important for the drummer since he or she is the one that sets the tempo for each song. A good way to get "tight" is to practice to a very slow tempo click track. Playing tight at a slow tempo is much more difficult than at faster tempos. If your drummer can master this, then you are ready for just about any tempo song.
Prepare a few more songs than you plan to record
There are occasions when you get into the studio and for one reason or another you just can't get a song to work out. Rather than try to force the issue and get everyone frustrated, move on to a different song, or try a song that you didn't originally plan to record. You can always come back to the trouble song later once everyone calms down. In other situations, you may have booked a studio for an entire "block" to get the best deal, and then found out that with all your preparation, you still have time left over after recording all the songs you planned on recording. Since you have already paid for the entire block of studio time, you might as well use it. Put down some tracks for the other songs that you prepared. These may not be songs that you finish for this project, but at least you'll have a head start on your next project and won't have wasted the extra studio time. You may also find that some of the main songs that you worked on don't sound as strong on tape as you had hoped. In this case, you will need to have other songs ready to record.
Prepare yourself physically
Make sure you are well rested before you go into the studio, and schedule your studio time accordingly. It can be tough to try to do an eight or ten hour tracking session after you have been working all day long. Try to schedule the studio time on a weekend if you have a day job, or see if you can get a day off work. If you aren't well rested when you go into your session, it will take you more time than it normally would, and you may not get the quality of performance that you are looking for. Make sure that you eat well before and during your studio session. Don't forget about your ears either, give them plenty of rest and keep them clear.
About the Author
Stephen Sherrard is the owner of MusicTECH Productions and 1230 Records in the Seattle area. He has been producing and engineering projects since 1986, and has been playing music since 1972 (keyboards, trumpet, and guitar). He worked as a staff producer/engineer at one of the largest studios in the Seattle area, Triad Studios, for three years before his own business took off to the point that he had to quit his staff position and go full time on his own. He still does plenty of work at Triad Studios and other studios in the Seattle area, but does the majority of his work out of his own studio, MusicTECH. MusicTECH is a project studio optimized for overdubbing, mixing, digital editing, and mastering, although projects that don't require real drums or a large tracking facility can easily be done entirely at MusicTECH. Triad Studios remains Steve's studio of choice for tracking drums and large groups, but he prefers to do overdubs and mixing at his own facility where he has much more control through the use of the latest in digital audio technology.
For more information, or to discuss your next project and set up a tour/interview, call Steve Sherrard at MusicTECH at (206) 860-1230, or for equipment list details, client lists, services offered, and much more, visit the MusicTECH web site at: http://www.music-tech.com/reality
MusicTECH offers a wide variety of music & audio services for everything from simple singer/songwriter demos, to full album production services, to multimedia audio services, to jingles, to full film/video scoring & post services. If it has to do with music or audio, MusicTECH can do it!
