“How to prepare for your next studio session” plus 3 more

Guest post by Gideon Waxman. This article originally appeared on Soundfly’s Flypaper

As I prepare to head into the recording studio later this month, I figured now would be a great time to share some insights on how I’ve been able to manage my time and resources efficiently, in order to get to this point.

Whether you’re about to lay down your first single or you’re a band confidently sailing into your third full-length album, it’s just as important to make certain practical and mental preparations before entering any recording studio session. Otherwise, you run the risk of wasting your time, or that of the engineer(s), your money, and all the energy and efforts that got you here.

I’ve written out some tips that should help you improve your efficiency and ability to fulfill the creative vision you have in your mind. In addition, below is a quick preparation primer from Soundfly’s free online course, Building a Better Band, with bandleader and podcast host Carter Lee. 

So now, without any further ado, let’s help you to achieve your goals for your upcoming recording session!

Choose to Work With Your Favorite Material

Pre-studio, you should already have a strong idea of which songs you’ll be recording. Be clear in your approach, and dedicate time to rehearsing the songs you feel the most inspired by. It’s a good idea to be discerning when choosing the right material way before the studio session comes around.

The collection of songs I’m taking with me to the studio has been decided on now for several months. Through experimentation, I’ve honed in on my artistic vision and solidified my understanding of what I want to achieve through this album, and how to create the most potent emotional impact on my listener.

I’ve spent a great deal of time refining this material and enhancing the songs — adding layers, textures, melodies, adjusting rhythms, etc. Together with my bandmate, we’ve written lots of material, but we have narrowed it down to our favorite songs that we feel “made the cut,” and fit together thematically in the most concise way.

So in order not to waste precious time or money in the hired studio environment, record only when you feel completely happy with where your songs are at. Of course, new ideas will form in the studio, but it’s good practice to have the songs as fleshed-out as possible, musically and lyrically, beforehand.

+ Read more on Flypaper: “Tips for Getting a “Live Feel” in Your Bedroom Studio.”

Demo Tracks Are Your Best Friend

Your demo tracks are some of the most powerful tools in your armory. The demo is your unedited, raw vision and projection of what you want to achieve. It communicates your fundamental message and demonstrates how you want the song to be presented.

For myself and the way I write music, demos are indispensable. They’re an integral part of the songwriting process. I build relatively complex compositions from scratch on Logic Pro, utilizing MIDI data and various virtual instruments (VSTs) to reproduce a full band production with a different range of textures such as synths and orchestral instrumentation.

With demo tracks, you can have every musical element prepared down to a tee for your studio session. I’ve just finished pinning down note-for-note exactly what drum parts I’m going to be playing in the studio. Creating these guide tracks has pushed me to write more challenging and exciting drums and will hopefully make the recording as efficient as possible.

The technology we have access to nowadays grants us the ability to create music in a genuinely flexible capacity, and it’s mind-blowing. The affordable audio interfaces available are more than capable of recording studio-quality takes, let alone demo tracks. A basic home studio setup merely requires a laptop running a DAW, and there’s a whole host of free plugins you can take advantage of to get started.

+ Learn production, composition, songwriting, theory, arranging, mixing, and more on Soundfly —  whenever you want and wherever you are. Subscribe for access!

Rehearsing Is Crucial

You don’t want to regret your performances later when you hear back the finished mixes. That’s why you’ve got to be prepared for when you enter the control room to crush your takes. There’s only one way to do this, and that’s through building a dedicated practice routine.

Commit to rehearsing your parts, whether vocals or instrumentals, for at least 30 minutes a day. “That’s not long enough!” you’re probably thinking, but I can guarantee you’ll often find yourself practicing for much longer. Instructing you to practice for two hours every day is pretty unrealistic — even for the most disciplined musicians.

Integrating time to practice into your daily schedule will build positive habits. Consistent practice will enable you to develop valuable muscle memory that helps you retain information and make your performances feel more fluid and natural.

Set up tempo maps for your songs and practice along to a metronome to get your parts really tight.

Another simple yet effective way you can improve is to record or film your rehearsals and performances for you to listen back to. It will highlight any mistakes and allow you to correct them.

The bottom line here? Practice, practice, practice! You’ll thank yourself later.

Get Your Equipment in Check

You can’t be turning up on the day with broken strings or shoddy electronics in your guitars. Grab yourself some fresh guitar strings, drum heads, and service your equipment beforehand. You can do this yourself, or if you lack experience, take your instruments to a music shop to be done professionally.

When your equipment is in tip-top condition, it will deliver professional and polished sounds that will translate through to the final masters. It’s worth borrowing or renting professional quality drums and amps if you don’t have access to them. You’ll feel more confident playing on great-sounding equipment!

Better quality instruments and performances will mean you don’t have to rely on fixing shortcuts. Always aim to get your sounds right at the source! Unfortunately, things can go wrong when you least expect them. Therefore be sure to pack spares for anything that might need replacing.

Stay Flexible

Despite my emphasis on the importance of preparing your music beforehand, take much of this with a grain of salt. Don’t fret about having every tiny detail down 100%. Things can (and will) continue to be developed in the studio. Melodies will change, and perhaps even song structures.

So flexibility is definitely key, but the more organized and comfortable you are, the better your songs will ultimately sound.

And stay on top of the details; studio dates, the equipment you’re bringing, extra guitar strings and audio cables, backup hard drives, saved DAW sessions, etc. Adequate planning will help prevent any last-minute chaos in the studio, which is valuable time you’ll want to spend being creative instead of stressing!

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Guest post by Charlotte Yates. This article originally appeared on Soundfly’s Flypaper

What do you want your lyrics to actually do? Show us how desperately you want someone or how angry you are about something? Or do you want to your lyrics to make us behave a certain way, notice the homeless, start a revolution, or dance the night away?

At some stage you have to figure out exactly what you want to express. At first this might not be 100% clear. But you may have a general idea what you want to get across — that’s your theme right there: a basic notion or vision for the song.

Some songs have great big themes like “Anarchy in the UK” or “Strange Fruit.”

Others are more humble but equally compelling and straightforward — “I Want to Hold Your Hand” or “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.”

Here’s Johnny Cash’s list:

“I love songs about horses, railroads, land, judgement day, family, hard times, whiskey, courtship, marriage, adultery, separation, murder, war, prison, rambling, damnation, home, salvation, death, pride, humor, piety, rebellion, patriotism, larceny, determination, tragedy, rowdiness, heartbreak, and love. And Mother. And God.”

Elvis Costello’s is more contained:

“There are five things to write songs about: I’m leaving you. You’re leaving me. I want you. You don’t want me. I believe in something. Five subjects and twelve notes.”

Michael Stipe leans into the dark.

“It’s so much easier to write about angst and anger and fear and darkness and fucked–up feelings than to write about incredible intense happiness.”

Make the Familiar Personal

Songs oscillate around well-worn universal themes, just like books and movies do. They’re called universal because they’re relevant and important to so many people. In song, love is the dominant theme in all its highs and lows: the good, bad, and oh so very ugly.

But there are other significant themes — family relationships, friendship, escape and rebellion, frustration and disillusionment, “making it despite the odds,” needing to sing, dance or party on your own terms, and messages to unite, to be hopeful, to fight back, wake up or drop out.

A songwriter’s artistry comes from how you handle these familiar themes and put your own personal stamp on them. One must strive to individualize the lyric, and freshen it up. Professor Adam Bradley describes that process:

“Songs make the familiar unfamiliar, transforming common themes into language that, when set to song, excite the senses.”

But how do you go from a lil’ bit of something to being able to specify exactly what you want to say or what you want the audience to feel?

+ Learn songwriting, theory, production, composition, arranging, mixing, and more —  whenever you want and wherever you are. Subscribe for unlimited access!

On the Spectrum From Abstract to Direct

I think there’s a semantic spectrum for lyrics which runs from obscurity — where sonics (the actual sound of the word or syllables) matter more than direct meaning — through to gin-pure clarity, where you’re right up to your eyeballs in every detail of the song’s story. A songwriter can decide how clear or cloudy to make the lyrics of any song.

Your theme is the strategy for directing the way the lyrics will travel through the song — what Professor Pat Pattison calls “the journey of the song.” Your tactics should revolve around how distinct you want that lyrical journey to be.

One approach is trying to evoke a particular emotional vibe and all you’ve got is a cool metaphor or powerful image or words you want to use; words like “hurt,” “faith,” or respect.” These all happen to be great songs too, with not hugely clearcut stories in a fully narrative sense. They give just enough detail to let us fill in the blanks while exploring an attitude or an ambience.

Prof. Bradley notes: “A consonance of feeling can work as much as a well-rendered story.”

That attitude might be “get on up” where groove is centrally paramount and the lyrics strongly rhythmic, literally working as part of the rhythm section to make you move. The function of the words “don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.”

A second tactic is working on your theme unfolding through a moment or an incident. Something has happened, someone said or did something or the song is “set” in a particular scenario. Songs like “Raspberry Beret” or “Drivers Licence” or “Me and Mrs Jones” use this.

More specific details are delivered within this type of lyric journey so we understand more clearly what’s happening, where and when. You can see this at work even in the titles; we get a certain amount of information straight away.

+ Read more on Flypaper: “7 Songwriting Rules and When to Break Them.”

Pound the Plot Home With Strong Lyrics

The third tactic is delivering your theme in lyrics that have a full-blown whoa-to-go story with a beginning, middle, and end.

Certain genres welcome this tactic and almost demand it, like folk ballads, country music and rap. Songs like “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” “Stan,” “7 Years,” and “The Gambler” are rife with clear details and a plot progression. Their lyrics travel as a sequence of events played out in real time audio.

All three tactics have their place — the point is being deliberate in which you choose to use. All but the most abstract song has some level of storytelling, some trace element that makes a good song a transformative experience for the listener. When you hear the song, your mood is shifted. (Period.)

Final Thoughts

Because lyrics are united with melody, they travel through time (literally delivered at the speed of sound) creating some sort of emotional response in an audience along the way.

This means the lyrics can be deliberately modified — enhanced, interrupted or delayed — by the music. The idea of a plot progression can be useful, where you chunk out what the lyrical hook will be, where the “build to a revelation” happens and where the payoff might hit. A storyline with Post-It notes for what type of song structure you want and what happens where can clarify things quickly.

But you can also unite the lyric thematic development with the melodic development so the song’s beginning, middle, end or that drawing in, the revelation and the resolution are intertwined. The way the music is shaped tells as much story or creates as much mood without a word being said.

 

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The Jaguar Audio Design online store now has the full line of Dan Clark Audio headphones.  These headphones are designed and built in-house at the company’s headquarters in San Diego, California, and include custom drivers exclusive to the DCA brand. For their brilliant design, craftsmanship, and acoustic performance, Dan Clark Audio products have earned many awards, and we are delighted to be able to offer them to our Jaguar clients. You can order a pair right now by visiting the Jaguar website.

 

At present, Dan Clark Audio manufactures six different headphone models, including their flagship model, the Stealth, that was just released in August of 2021:

 

·  The Aeon RT budget model is the most cost-effective budget model available.

Aeon 2 is the sequel to Aeon, and it offers significant advances in resolution and subtlety over its predecessor. Then there’s the Aeon 2, available in red and black; the Aeon 2 Red version has a closed-back design option, while the Aeon 2 Noire version does not. We are pleased to announce the release of the newest iteration of these award-winning closed-back headphones, utilizing a metallic black paint that is very reflective. The revolutionary sound produced is unlike any other, thanks to the use of a perforated ear-pad. The truth is that the tone almost completely corresponds with the Harmon Curve. Subsequently, the sound is all the more light, and the stage is fairly farther away from the audience,  giving the impression of a larger, more immersive soundstage.

 

·  The Ether 2 System is the gold standard among audiophiles who are very picky about their equipment. In the development of high-performance headphones, planar magnetic and open-backed drivers were used. At 290g, it is one of the lightest and most attractive planar available and is perfect for long-term use in various environments. This second generation of ETHER headphones aims to provide the listener with a profoundly practical acoustic signature and a wide and profound soundstage without forfeiting solace. With different three ear cushions, you can without much of a stretch tweak the sound and solace of ETHER 2 in a matter of seconds. There is also a closed-back Ether model, called the Ether C Flow, which is very popular among music producers, mastering engineers, and other studio professionals.

 

·  The Voce represents the company’s electrostatic model (requires an electrostatic headphone amplifier). It is Dan Clarks’ flagship electrostatic headset and may have been the most awarded high-end headphone of 2018, with awards from organizations such as Positive Feedback, Absolute Sound, and Headfonics. Experts agreed in 2018, it is one of the finest headphones they have ever used.

 

·  Finally, we have the just-released Dan Clark Audio Stealth. The Stealth model is the company’s ultimate statement… A closed-back model with tremendous isolation and comfort. The Stealth technology includes the proprietary Acoustic Metamaterial Tuning System, which delivers a soundstage so huge you have to hear it to believe it. We believe the Stealth will be a blockbuster.

Visit us at JaguarAudioDesign.com

 

 

No one turns on music without the intent of relaxing and enjoying themselves — but listening to your jams can sometimes pose some difficulties. Music is hard to hear over background noise, and you need a quality set of headphones to enjoy it at a decent volume. Fortunately, there are tons of pieces of affordable equipment that will make your music listening experience even better. This article will review some of the best equipment you can find for your listening pleasure.

Earbuds

Earbuds are one of the most popular pieces of music equipment out there because they can be purchased affordably and fit in your pocket for travel convenience. On the other hand, headphones are a bit larger but come with better sound quality and a louder volume. Earbuds are great because they don’t have cords to get in your way, they come in multiple colors, and they can be used with any style of earphones.

Bluetooth Headphones

Bluetooth headphones are another great piece of music equipment to own. They are wireless, so you won’t have to deal with the hassle of cords or headphone jacks once you purchase them. You can connect them to any device with Bluetooth capabilities, virtually every smartphone on the market. They also have a louder sound quality than earbuds due to their size and better speakers, but they are more expensive than earbuds.

Earphone Holders

If your earbuds get tangled easily, you will want to get an earphone holder. Earphone holders contain multiple compartments in which you can slide your earphones in and out, keeping them untangled and easy to store when you aren’t using them. They are a great way to keep the cables from getting twisted or stuck in a knot when you store them away in a bag or a drawer.

Earphones

If you don’t want to spend money on an earphone holder, you can always get a pair of wireless earphones. These will not only keep your earbuds from getting tangled, but they also have the advantage of being wireless and separate from your phone or device. You can place them in your pocket or handbag and still be able to listen to music.

Portable Speakers

Portable speakers are another music equipment must-have. They are wireless so that they can connect to any Bluetooth device, and they have a much louder volume than earbuds or headphones, so you can turn them up when you’re at work or around the house. Portable speakers are small enough to fit in your handbag or backpack, so you can bring them with you anywhere you go. They’re great for parties or group hangouts.

Headphones

If you want the best of the best, you should get headphones. Headphones are tested and designed to be the most comfortable and highest quality for your ears. They come in various styles and colors to match any outfit, including wireless models that will only connect to your phone. Headphones also offer a higher volume than earbuds or portable speakers so that you can listen to your music at a much louder volume than with anything else.

These are just some of the most popular pieces of music equipment out there for you to purchase. They are all affordable, portable, and will also serve to make your listening experience better.

 

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