Ingredients
3 pints of Alan Brey
2 sticks of Goran Rista
2 cups of Dan Carroll
1 ounce of Ben Gray
Gavin Arnold
Shannon Puig
1 tablespoon of Chris Dion
1 ripe Stevie Callan
1 DAW (digital audio workstation) of your choosing
1 audio Interface
1 patient wife
1 decent wifi connection (stay away from iiNet)
1. Firstly, you will need to gather some ideas. Lyrics, concepts, titles, chord progressions, bass lines, beats, riffs, etc. Record them immediately or you will forget them. I use Logic but any DAW will do. Your phone can also be handy to temporarily store ideas. Blend all of these together until you feel a song developing. Generally new ideas will taste delicious, but you need to let them sit in the bowl overnight and come back the next day. If they manage to evoke some sense of excitement then proceed to Step 2. Do not be afraid to abandon the song and start over if you have any doubts.
2. Once the song has started to take shape, it is important to stay focused and continue throwing ideas into the mix. You will be tempted to start producing the song before it is finished, especially if you are familiar with songwriting conventions that allow to you to throw something together quickly. By all means rummage through your sample library and mess around with weird synth sounds, but they are not songs, they are weird synth sounds and are much more effective as seasoning on top of an actual song.
3. It is now time to get experimental. Play the song in different keys and different tempos. Depending on your preference it might be a good idea to imagine playing the song to a live audience. Relaxed tempos and comfortable vocal ranges might feel great in the studio but can create an odd taste when you are full of performance adrenalin. Personally, I like to think of a studio recording and a live performance as two separate things so try not to get too caught up thinking about it, but it is something worth keeping in mind.
4. Now that we have committed to a key and a tempo, it is time to lay the foundation. The outcome of this process will play a large part in determining the success of your finished product. If your drum track isnt solid you will be pushing the proverbial flaming turd uphill for the rest of the cook. So take your time to get it right and accept no substitutes.
I am particularly fond of the Logic Virtual Drummer and will use him/her to get my drum track close to where I want it. You can then convert that track to midi for further editing. The crucial step though is to replace your virtual drummer with a human. There are drummers available online to suit every taste and any budget. For this particular recipe I have used Goran Rista from Miami.
5. Send Goran a mixdown of the song with the Virtual Drummer as a reference, then send a mix without drums for him to play along to. Wait a few of days for the drum tracks to turn up in your inbox. Goran will send you 4 or 5 different takes and you simply choose your favourite, if you have any audio editing skills you can chop up a composite of the different takes. Continually check your inbox until a download link to the wav files turn up, keeping in mind the time different between wherever you are the West Coast of America.
6. Input the drum stems into your DAW. You now have a flavoursome foundation to build on. The next step is to start replacing your initial demo tracks with the real thing. There is often some grey area in this process. When you are in a hurry to get an idea down you often don’t take proper care in how the sound is captured, which can lead to less than desirable audio quality. At the same time, your initial performance often has a magic that can be hard to recreate on demand. Personally, I would prefer to err on the side of vibe over fidelity but you will need to work out where you stand on this issue for yourself.
7. Traditionally, after finishing drums you would add bass. Sometimes, the bass player (Gavin Arnold in this instance) will leave on a five week European tour before the bass parts have been finished and you will need to improvise with whatever ingredients you can find. As Gavin’s tasty Fender Jazz bass is unavailable you will need to source another. Ben Gray and John Brown both have nice bass guitars so politely ask if you can borrow them for a week or two. Despite sounding like characters from a Cluedo boardgame, these are real people but you will need to substitute these two with your own friends. If the bass line is particularly complex, and above your range of abilities, you can always order a session musican via Gordan Rista’s website. ‘The Good Wife’ is a case in point here.
8. Guitars! With a decent audio interface you can get some excellent guitar tones using virtual amps in the luxury of your own home. At some point though, you need to stir some air into the recipe. Ask Steve Callan at SAE to put some mics up around your amplifier. Steve has good hair and great ears and will forget to invoice you for six full months, which will allow you to spend your recording budget on something else.
9. By now you should have a sweet bed of music on which to lay some vocals. Get in touch with Dan Carroll at Rada Studio in West Perth through a combination of smoke signals and silent prayer. Perhaps you are an accomplished singer and can enjoy the ride but for the average hack recording vocals is a soul crushing experience to be endured not enjoyed. Record every line three times so you can listen back later and pick the one that is least out of tune. At the end of each day push aside feelings of inadequency (and the urge to quit music entirely) and force yourself to return to the studio, if only for the coffee and the company. When Producer Dan says encouraging things try not to dismiss them by thinking of all the times you said encouraging things you didn’t mean when producing other people. Remember that Dan is a nicer person than you and take comfort in the fact that it can always be ‘fixed in the mix’.
10. If you are lucky enough to have four singers in the band, it is time to take advantage of this and add some vocal harmonies. Gavin Arnold lives down the road so get him in first. Next, add in Shannon Puig and book the next available space in Ben Gray’s calender. To avoid disappointment it is best to do this many weeks in advance.
11. Add some Shannon Puig trumpet. There will be a fairly small window of time between Shannon arriving and your wife going to bed so you will need to make efficient use of the time available. The girls are good friends and having not seen each other for a while will want to hang, however, you must do your best to limit this social interaction. Disregard if you have a wife that can sleep through the sound of a trumpet in the back room.
12. Now that you have assembled all of the essential ingredients it is time to play around with some subtle seasonings that can add depth and spice to a recording and reward the few people that might listen more than once. Bells, shakers, hand claps, synths, loops, soundscapes that caught your ear at some point, the time you accidentally recorded yourself on the streets of Tokyo, now is the time to throw caution to the wind and throw everything you have at the song to see what sticks. If you are fond of mood enhancing substances, now could be the time to indulge.
13. It is time to put your finished dish in the oven, so to speak. Get yourself a Dropbox account and start uploading your audio files. If Daniel Lanois isn’t answering your calls, send them to everyone’s second favourite Canadian, Alan Brey. Alan lives in Tokyo these days which is conviently located in the same time zone as Western Australia. Be sure to clearly label all your files so it makes some kind of sense when it gets to the other side. Methodically upload the files making sure nothing gets left behind. Patiently wait for Alan to work his magic and send back an mp3 of the results. Listen. Realise that you forgot to send an important vocal harmony/guitar line/piano track. Upload the offending file/s and repeat.
14. Once you have your mix back from Alan, you will need to find a wizard that is well versed in the dark arts of audio mastering. For this recipe I have added some Chris Dion from Quantam Music in Canada. Chris will put the songs through various obscure machinery and fine-tune the songs with his finely-tuned ear. This will ensure all the flavours are perfectly balanced, still taste good when you listen through your crappy earbuds and don’t blow up the car stereo speakers when you crank it on the way to Brendon’s house.
15. Congratulations! You now have a fully realised batch of songs to your name. Of course the jouney is not over quite yet. You still have to sort out artwork, manufacturing, distribution, promotion, launches and justifying to yourself why you have spent almost every cent to your name on something that has little to no commercial value.
++PRO TIP Garnish with 16 page colour magazine that nobody will actually read.
