hi all,
just curious to know, if you have a band come in to record 4 or 5 songs do you tackle one song at a time or lay down the drums for all the songs 1st. I usualy lay down all the drums 1st but am curious to hear from others. I've been doing it that way so the drums remain the same for all the tracks but now I'm starting to think, hey. .why not do 1 song at a time, if the songs had different tones to them it may add to the feel and sound of the EP as a whole? Bit of contrast maybe?
anyway, just curious to know anyones 1st hand pro's and cons!
cheers,
Sammyg
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The only band I know of that does one song at a time was Steely
The only band I know of that does one song at a time was Steely Dan. It would take them about 4 to 6 weeks to finish a song from tracking to mixing. When you have engineers like Elliott Schiener and Roger Nichols tracking them and a virtually unlimited budget, I'm sure that it wouldn't be that tough to keep the basics pretty consistant.
I personally like the idea of treating each song as sort of its own entity. It would be a nice change from the predictable tracking/overdub/mix the entire project protocol everybody is so accustomed to.
However, none of the bands that I have worked with lately have a humongous budget so the basics (drums and bass at least) will usually be done in one or two sessions depending on the number of songs and how the band plays in a recording environment. Also, having the "template" that John spoke of will speed up mixing time since the budget is usually depleted at that point.
If I can get all the drums down without moving a thing, I tend t
If I can get all the drums down without moving a thing, I tend to go that route. Same with just about everything else for that matter.
The pros are easy - Consistency. Things tend to sound similar from song to song.
The cons - Consistency. Things tend to sound similar from song to song.
However, it certainly is nice at mixdown when you can use a similar "starting template" from song to song.