Recording - December 2014 - 32

By Sean Shannon

Emerging bands need an EP to sell at gigs and/or to help get gigs,
and it's important for them to have a presence on iTunes, social media,
etc., with a professional sound. They might not have the budget for a
full length studio CD, but they still need a CD to hand out for promotion, or to sell at shows. Here's a way to make a few bucks helping
these bands get what they need while still staying within their budget.
This is a plan to do it all in one session to cut costs. The band
arrives with some well-rehearsed tunes and their gear, and they
leave the session with a mixed and mastered EP on CD-R. I have
been doing these single-session, 3-song band EPs (which I call the
"Zero To Hero" package) for years, and you can too. The process
works so well that I've had some bands do their full-length CDs this
way in just a few 3-song sessions.
The concept revolves around a 6-hour block session. It could be
noon to 6 PM on a Saturday afternoon, or 6 PM to midnight
Wednesday night; it just depends on the band and their schedules. The band shows up a bit early and loads in, and at the end
of the session, they load out with a finished, mastered CD. Done.
Once you get good at this, you'll be able to handle almost any
session. Your troubleshooting and session planning skills will
improve, and you'll be building your body of work. This is a great
way to use your studio to make a few extra bucks recording
bands, or to expand your list of services.
Set up for the band at hand
It's important to have a clear picture of what sound the band is going
for. Knowing the style, the member count, and instrument lineup helps
determine how you are going to go about getting the finished result in
their hands in the time allotted, and with their sound intact.
Knowing the style of the band is important because you want
them to get a representative sound, not a sound that they will
never achieve live. As an obvious example, layering overdubbed
guitar amps won't work for a 3-piece acoustic jazz band, but
works great for guitar rock bands. If they have any recordings at
all, listen to them beforehand if you can; maybe attend a
rehearsal to get a feel for their sound and limitations.
Armed with that knowledge, you can have mics, music stands,
headphone mixers, etc., designated and ready to go before the
band shows up. Once their gear is in place, you converge with
the mics, and final setup moves fairly quickly.
Always plan your routing. From microphone to headphones to
DAW to speakers, get all routing set and tested beforehand, and
you'll have fewer headaches once the band is ready.
Take notes. I used to use written track sheets for sessions when
I used analog tape, because tape tracks rarely move around and
session details would get lost without documentation. Today, with
a DAW, it is sufficient to just make an "input list," as most other
session details are saved with the session.
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RECORDING December 2014

Jot down everyone's name and instrument on the input list, and note
which channels you have them plugged into in the live room. This also
helps when you forgot someone's name! Special notes, like mic choice
and placement, can now go in the comments of each track in the DAW.
Also note which headphone send goes to each musician if you
are doing the headphone mixes with aux sends onscreen or on
the console. If you are using a headphone system with individual
mixers, just send a different instrument to each input channel of
each mixer, and they will adjust their headphone mixes themselves at the playing position.
If you have a vocal booth or closets for guitar speakers, have
mics ready to go in there, and a mic and headphone set up and
ready for the singer in the vocal booth.
It's a good idea to prepare a session template in the DAW with
tracks already set up for a band, labeled, assigned with I/O and sends
set up for headphone mixes to save time and avoid delays. (See my
Pro Tools band session template in Figure 1, and see Greg Ogan's article elsewhere in this issue for more ideas.) We have to keep moving
very quickly on these sessions, and a routing issue can eat up the clock.
You can make one DAW session for all three songs instead of
making a separate session for each song. Start with the first song at
time zero, then leave a minute of space after the end of the song,
then start the second song, and so on. It's like working with a reel
of tape where each song is further down the reel. The benefit is the
time savings, because once you put a plug-in on a track-say, a
compressor on the kick track, or a reverb send on a snare track-it
will already be on the same track of all three songs. You'll save time
during mixing by not having to open each session separately and
reset the mix parameters and plug-ins. The mix will be consistent
from song to song, and once you get one song sounding good, the
rest of the songs should already be pretty close.

Recording - December 2014

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