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Spent most of this weekend in the studio with Douglass and Christine. They wanted a demo CD. The two of them were amazing, particularly for their first time out. They had never been in a studio before and were rather nervous about it. In getting ready, they rehearsed the hell out of their songs. As a result, they showed up and basically did every song in no more than two takes. Most of them were in one. Their scratch track was good enough that a number of bands that I know would have been happy to use that as a working demo. They then went back and redid some parts, punched in on others. Each time, they pretty much got it in one. If you've ever done studio recording before, you can probably appreciate just how uncommon that is.
Just speaking personally/selfishly here, things went pretty well from my point of view. Not the best work I have ever done, but not too bad either. 7 tracks in a little under three hours: 90 minutes doing scratch tracks with all the instrumentation and vocals, 90 more minutes of me listening to what I had played and then either punching in or retaking the entire track. Even with that, I didn't have to redo anything more than twice, and most of them were fine after the first time through the punch-ins/retakes. One of them was just about perfect on the first take, so we took that one. Hopefully, a sample or two should be uploaded before too awfully long.
Maybe this is just is just me, but when I play on other people's CDs (particularly when they are paying me for my time), it's important to me to get it right -- and get it right sooner rather than later. Not only are they paying me for my time, they are paying the studio for the amount of time it takes me to get it right. It's been my policy for a while that if I screw it up four times, then I don't charge any time for that track. (Of course, that's within reason. Complex bass lines will take me more time to get right; it's kind of hard to come in to a studio cold, pick up a strange piece of sheet music that is written with several different time signatures, densely packed rhythms and a few key changes thrown in for good measure, and then nail it in two or three tries. But most songs aren't like that -- I should be able get them pretty quickly.) If I can't, then I don't charge. It's bad enough that a someone has to shell out money to the studio for me to blow the song, trying to learn it on the fly; they shouldn't have to pay me for my own incompetence as well.
Posted by Casper at October 19, 2003 07:44 PM