recording next weekend.

[drummerfreak33]

My band begins recording our first cd next week. We are going to be doing a 5 song ep. My friend and I both have the mbox and are going to utilizing it for the recording. What we are going to be doing is laying the drum tracks down at a professional studio, and than recording everything else with the mbox. We are attempting to get as close to a professional sound as we can without dropping cash yet, that will come in time. I am wondering if anyone else has gone about this route? and if so how has it worked out for you?

[millicent frndly]

We're recording our first full length album as I type this. That's exactly what we did. 11 songs... we recorded bed tracks. (all instruments minus vox) in a pro studio, concentrating mainly on getting drums. We booked a full weekend but really only should have done one day... it was a waste of money for the second day because pretty much all we were doing was going over the drum tracks making sure we had everything we needed in the 3 takes that we did of each song. We thought we'd need both days but I guess we're better than we thought Get your pre-production stuff done. Weed out any fat in the songs and get them ready so you know exactly what you're doing when you start paying money.
It's really a good way to go, especially if you know a fair amount about recording and mixing and can get good bass and guitar sounds at your house. Make sure you get good drum takes. I would suggest recording to a click track (allowing protools to count the beats) and then do 3 takes of each song on separate playlists so you can edit to your hearts content. I would also suggest you get as many songs recorded (especially if you're just concentrating on drums) as possible.

We're actually going to have our album mixed by a good friend and ultra pro mixing technician once we're finished tracking. It'll be the difference between your record sounding professional and being professional. Also, have your drummer get new heads about 2 weeks before the session and practice on them so they break in. Make sure he knows how to tune his drums... this is really important. Good luck, have fun and make good music.

~rock
chris

[drummerfreak33]

awesome bro. Hey hit me up with some tracks once you guys are finished. Id be interested to see how everything turns out!