The Basics In Recording A Demo

So you have a band and somebody in your band wrote a fantastic song. You rehearsed it, stitching all the parts together – drums, bass, guitars, keyboards, maybe a little bit of saxophone on the solo part. After a few weeks of collaboration, you know that it’s time to book a schedule in the studio and record a demo. Great! All of a sudden your band doesn’t have the slightest idea how it’s done. I hope this article can help you and your band in getting the tracks right.

• Rehearse your song until you can play it with your eyes closed. Although digital recording are now cheaper than 10 years back and unless you have your own home recording studio, studio hours can still be expensive if you end up spending more time there cramming and figuring out the notes for the song. Lay out the details as best as you can.

• Get a producer to help you out. I noticed that local bands still don’t understand the role of record producers and usually they do the demos on their own. Some of the demos I heard have either loud guitars, out-of-tune vocals, and sometimes the phrasing of the words is not in sync. It really helps to have a producer by your side. They maximize the artist’s talent and properly direct the song to good quality.

Apart from these two items I mentioned above, there are also three important tools or equipment in the studio that you need to check before recording your demo. These are (1) good room (very low reverb response); (2) good microphones (sensitive to specific frequencies); and (3) good monitor speakers (flat response).

Low Reverb Response

Recording studios have padded walls of acoustic insulation. This is to practically kill the reverb in the room. You will understand later on that if a recorded track captures natural reverb, it can be very difficult to remove it. Lay in the tracks as bare sounding as possible. You don’t want to have unwanted reverb coming in to your raw tracks.

Microphones

Recording isn’t just about putting a song together. It’s about capturing the right sound and this concept alone can be very challenging if you ask me. The microphone is your best friend in the studio as it can do the task for you.

Science will tell you that there are specific areas in a room that sound waves theoretically cannot penetrate. This means that if you place your ears in that space of the room, you cannot hear a thing (as sound waves naturally are blocked off and I’m not kidding).

On the other hand, there are spaces in the same room where the sound waves are most clear and receptive. Knowing this principle, you will know where to place the microphones, how to place them, and why. It’s also important to know which microphones to use for which instrument.

Flat Speakers

Commercial speakers (those that are used in car stereos, home entertainment sound system, headphones, and PC monitor speakers to name a few) are pre-mixed. Never use these types when recording a song even in your home studio. Flat response speakers have zero equalization and that means all the frequencies coming from it are at neutral state.

Notice that the common denominator of all 3 items above is to capture a “flat” sound. The general rule of thumb is to record the barest sound. It is better to add effects or manipulate the frequencies later than to attempt in reducing unwanted frequencies as it is almost impossible to do that.