Recording

I’d like to address a subject all new, present, and future original artists should be thinking about all the time. Recording.

Recording is the single most important task in an artist’s career. Your entire career will be made or broken by what you record. A great recording can provide a long and fruitful career. A bad recording will put you on the fast track to nowhere. Even if you make more money from touring and playing shows than selling your music, people only come to those shows because they liked the music you recorded.

A good recording is made up of three main things.

1. A good song.

I shouldn’t have to describe what a good song is. But, lately I’ve noticed more and more that local music in general is getting worse by the day. To keep it simple I’ll just give you two questions to ask yourself. Do complete strangers from the audience tell me how great this song is? Do other bands and musicians criticize this song for being to “poppy” or accuse me of “selling out” for writing it? If you can answer yes to both of these questions, I’d say you have a descent chance that it’s a good song. If you can’t answer yes to both questions, then I’d advise you to put it aside and get back to writing.

Remember, the opinions of other bands are worthless unless they are lashing out in jealousy. If that’s happening then you’re doing something very right.

2. A good performance.

If you can’t play your instruments in tune and in time, you’re not ready for recording. The single most important part of the performance is the vocals. I cannot stress enough that you must have a good singer with a good voice and every note must be in key. Everything, and I mean everything, should compliment the singers part. I’m not sorry if that hurts the other band member’s egos because it’s the truth.

High speed squealing guitar solos, jumping off of risers, and screaming like Emily Rose may impress a handful of teenagers with no money to buy your music but that’s where it stops.

3. Sound quality

If you don’t sound like a professional you aren’t going to be treated like one. If you are willing to sound like you recorded your music on a cassette player in your parent’s basement then you don’t take your music seriously enough to be wasting your time with it.

With that said, many of you are on a budget and I can sympathize with that. Save your money for as long as it takes. You can find a decent studio with a sound engineer for as low as 35-45 dollars an hour in most major cities. That’s way better than doing it yourself if you don’t have the right training. There is a lot that goes into engineering even a mediocre recording that takes a lot of time and experience to learn.  It takes more than expensive software and microphones. Recording is both a science and art. Get some help with it. Your music is too important to not.