Being Prepared For A Studio Session

For all amateur Recording Artists, your largest expenditure of money will be in the sector of the nature of your job. Recording. The literal only way you can create music for distribution with your vocals on it, is to have your vocals captured through a microphone. Although most Recording Artists can recall days in the homie’s basement on the USB Yeti or even as dressed down as recording through the speakers in their apple headphones, eventually the time will arrive where your ability to record is hindered by a non professional set up. This typically happens when Recording Artists realize their ROIs on self recorded music are vastly lower than what they assume they could be with professionally recorded music. This is why you go to the studio. For the clean performer (that means trapping doesn’t count), they don’t usually make enough money from their craft yet to reinvest revenue, and as such these financial resource to pay for studio time are broken off from their main source of income, their day job. That means paying for studio time can be a sacrifice. Recording excessively can hinder your income in exchange for the increase in sonic quality so it’s incredibly important to BE PREPARED. As a Recording Artist, I can tell you honestly that you’re consistently swept away by the vibe and energy of the event. Going to the studio, as HipHop becomes more mainstream, has become more fun and less business. But when you can’t consistently afford business or fun it should be considered an investment, and like all investments squandering them is a full proof plan for never succeeding. 

Step one: Identify The Tracks You’ll Be Recording On and Prepare them

When you’re working on a time constraint, you don’t want to be spending it doing things you should’ve already had done. If your verse is 30 seconds, the 10 minutes it would take to run the pre-studio checklist on studio time is 20 takes of your verse and anywhere from six to ten dollars. When you’re budgeting you can’t be paying someone else to do something you could’ve done for free. 

Don’t leave it up to mystery what tracks you want to work on. Don’t wait until you get into the studio to feel out the vibe of some randomly played instrumentals. The inherent organic nature of music is always better suited for those with the advantage of money. That is to say, when you’re broke, you can’t always afford to bop to a playlist of beats for 40 minutes. Then you’re spending a third of your time listening to music instead of recording. If you have a project you’re working on, an EP or LP, order them for completion by what you want to see finished first. If you’re recording off of YouTube download your MP3s ahead of time to a flash drive or to your email for easy distribution to the Engineer.  You shouldn’t ever really need to YouTube – MP3 Converter though, as the more professional you become the more you’ll purchase leases at the very least. No, we can’t just poof the tag out of the beat so purchase it so you can make money off your track without getting sued. Try your best to have .WAV files on Hard drives for any component that’s going to the Engineer. 

Step Two: Memorize your verses/Practice your freestyles:

This saves infinite time on your takes. The more you mess up on your takes, the more money you’re spending. If you’re an artist who prefers one taking their entire verse but you don’t have it committed to memory, you’re rolling the dice on not stumbling, not getting tongue tied, and not missing a word.  Every time the engineer has to run you back, you’re moving backwards in tracking.  And that’s not to say that this isn’t a part of Tracking in general. In fact, most Industry Recording Artists spend hours on tracking, if not multiple sessions. However, since the amateur can’t always be in the studio, when you’re there you’ll want to leave with as much content completed as possible. 

When it comes to reciting lyrics nothing is more superior than memorization. If you’re using your cellphone, you’re like most other Artists.  It’s easy to keep written verses in Google Docs or the Notes app on your iPhone, but what a lot of beginner Recording Artists don’t understand is that giving a vocal take is a skill that has to be developed like any other skill. How many times have you heard “I went to the studio but it just didn’t come out like it sounded in my head”?  Manifestation of concept takes time to develop. Memorization is a boundary-less way to perform a take.  Using a phone creates a projection issue. Ideally, the sonic cone of your voice is fired directly through the net area of the pop filter. When Recoding Artists use their phones they often hold them to the side or below them, turning their head to read the lyrics and as a result project their voice in non-forward direction. This can lead to Tracking issues for the engineer and it’s never the cleanest take.  The remedy for this, if you insist on using your phone, to recite lyrics is to hold it outstretched at face height and parallel to the microphone. This forces you to project directly into the microphone thus erasing the issue but doesn’t solve the other, more problematic problem. That problem is tone related which all Engineers can hear immediately. We classify it as “sounding like you’re reading off your phone.” Vocal takes dependent on reading lyrics off a phone mean you are actually reading, I.E. you’re doing two things at once. Many phone users, in pursuit of ensuring they get the lyrics right, sacrifice attention to the quality of the take they’re giving. It can sound emotionless, low in dynamics, unrehearsed, and just overall bland. With memorization you can focus on rich intonations, vocal quality, voice timbre, and giving your take character, while still projecting properly. 

If you’re freestyling, you don’t get a pass to not practice. At the very least map out some concepts and vocal and rhythmic patterns on which to chart the vibe of the track. Letting the first time you hear the beat and spit on it be at the studio can be a brick wall if you find you can’t hit the beat in that instance, or maybe you’re lacking in free styling ability at that moment. Now you’re off track scrambling to find a better suiting instrumental and make up for lost time. What often happens with non preparation freestyle tracks is they end up one dimensional. They’re littered with one-bar punch ins because the Recording Artist had to think of every line on the spot. They’re lacking in complexity and diversity and voicing because the Recording Artist is more focused on conveying lyrics than conveying emotion. They lack structure, reprieves, strong hooks and choruses, background vocals.  If you have even a general idea of how you’ll attack something with a strategy, you’ll save infinite amounts of time. Do not misunderstand, there are absolutely artists who have no plan, walk into the studio, say “gimme a beat,” rip it to high quality completion off the dome, and leave with a Record.  And those Recording Artists are extremely fucking TALENTED. Freestyling isn’t easy, especially in the booth on a live mic.  Don’t rely on an undeveloped talent for your studio investment. A touch of preparation can be the difference between one draft song and three completed tracks. 

Step Three: Assemble Your Peoples

It takes a village. There are often many people involved in the music making process and all of them should be present while you record. These include your Producer, your Feature, your Executive Producer, your Representation, and nobody else. Having a couple buddies in the booth can be fun, but it’s a slippery slope for throwing off the ratio of friends to Professionals and create an incentive to view the recording process as fun. Don’t derail your professional attitude. You can still be buddies, but having individuals around that have no stake in the process can hinder it. Furthermore, if it’s not taken seriously by the people in the room, you’ll be less likely to take it seriously. 

If you worked with a specific Producer, especially in local circuits, try to have them present in the room.  If you were in the room when they made the beat or it’s an exclusive or custom, there’s a cohesion in creativity between you, the Recording Artist, and the Producer. The Producer is the sonic concrete in the foundation of the track. The Producer should have the .WAV file stems to your beat, which Recording Artists don’t always see the necessity of when one track .WAVs are so much easier to carry around, but often the Engineer will see a use. If the one track has gain imperfections, things need to be lowered or readjusted in terms of mix volume, or the fact that having those beats stems allows for a more solid and congruent total mix, having the Producer around can expedite this process. He also gets from 3 – 25% of your Royalties so he should have some say in how the track is developing.  Work together.

Your feature and you should have already met, if not corresponded. Because of DM culture it’s easy to set an arrival point, send the payment, and meet the day of without any other interaction.  But you want chemistry with the person you’re sharing your track with, especially if it’s on your studio time.  Meet ahead of time, roll one, and talk about your vision for the song. Trade energies, examine each others styles, and draft some concepts before you get into the studio. The best and most memorable features are cohesive with the rest of the song and this is nearly impossible if you haven’t spent time nurturing cohesive concepts. Send some voice notes back and forth for how you’ll attack the instrumental or videos of freestyles and lyrics as the date approaches. When you arrive in the studio it won’t feel cold and business like interacting with someone who should be a collaborator and you’ll be ready to deliver. 

Your Executive Producer and your Representation should always be present at the studio.  In large Industry studio sessions contracts are signed prior to entrance to the work camp.  Meaning an understanding of the distribution of Royalties, participation credit, and rights and ownership is in every participants head. As you progress, your A&R or Talent Manager will play the roll of coaching you from outside the booth as your Executive Producer, the individual who oversees the entirety of the production of the sonics of the record. Traditionally Executive Producers schedule studio hours, create LP budgets, and assist with merchandising and other revenue streams for their artists.  In the studio however, they’ll oversee the content and give pointers and direction. It’s important for someone to say this roll as you’ll want someone to talk to you straight in the studio. In an Industry filled with yes-men, you don’t want to go through the entire release process for a track nobody told you was bad.  Don’t be too cocky to take constructive criticism. Another party’s ideas can be just as beneficial to your track as your own concepts as everyones ear for music is different. 

Nobody enjoys throwing money away.  When you’re struggling as a beginner musician, trying to make rent while also spending weekly time in the studio, working a day job, and paying your own bills, two hours of studio time can be groceries for two weeks. If you’re going to take that financial cost on the chest in order to further your craft, make sure you’re doing the bare minimum to provide you the most amount of time. That’s just preparation. To quote Big Sean recently “Proper Preparation Prevents Pour Performance.”  Ain’t that the truth?