Things That Will Most Certainly Mess Up Your Session
Unresolved personal/interpersonal issues
Heated arguments WILL cause setbacks and wasted time in the studio if they arise. More than one band has broken up in mid-session over incredibly stupid arguments. This is totally different than playful teasing or average misunderstandings. Petty sniping quickly chips away at everybodys’ morale and patience. So either hash out your conflicts beforehand, or agree to the "timeout" rule: Anybody can call "timeout"
on any discussion at any time, meaning that the topic MUST be dropped and dealt with outside of the studio and after the day is done. Really my ONLY hard and fast rule is that the studio must be a safe, creative haven for everybody involved. Things that hinder that are not welcome, which leads us to…
Friends and Significant Others
It’s fun and exciting to be in the studio. It’s only natural that you’d want your friends and S.O.’s to see/hear you in action. But, all too often they’ll bring the distracting bits of the outside world in with them. If your lover is dropping by to bug you about bills to pay, getting the laundry done, etc, you will not be fully focused on the task at hand THAT YOU ARE PAYING FOR. Many musicans– even the very most talented – are hindered by nerves when there are people from outside the band hanging round. And even though the player might say they don’t mind, they just might be too polite to say otherwise. It’s important that you make it known that somebody, anybody in the band has the right to ask that observers leave the recording area at any time and for no reason, without argument or bitchy slagging from anybody. I’m fully cool with as many people observing as you’d want, provided that they all understand that we’re working, it’s costing you money, and that noise and discussions in the control room can be disruptive to our process. I ALWAYS strive to make the studio a good time for everybody – why else would ya want to do it? – but keeping your project on time and on budget is what I aim to do. And, hey, we’re creative people so we must address…
Hard Drugs
I make no moral judgement on anything that adults choose to do for themselves. That being said, after working with hundreds of bands made up of well over a thousand individuals total, I have never had a project involving hard drug use come out as well as it would’ve without. BY HARD DRUGS I MEAN HEROIN, COCAINE AND METH. Besides erratic behaviour and mood swings, thievery, paranoia, senseless arguments and the potential for sudden inglorious death, hard drugs have psycho- and physiological side effects that cause bad misperceptions of how things actually sound. If you use hard drugs, do so on your own time and away from the studio. And though I make no kind of professional endorsement, moderate cannabis, caffeine and/or alcohol use seem to be the only fairly benign mood-altering substances in a studio setting. But be well aware of your limits before hand. Neither the studio nor engineer will be compelled to refund money wasted cos somebody’s too baked/drunk to perform! And you should ALWAYS WITHOUT QUESTION expect the same from your engineer!!!
Headphones
Getting used to playing with a headphone mix can seem strange at first, but the increased recording options that headphones allow make it well worth doing in most cases. To do some types of recording headphones aren’t necessary; but if you’re recording in home or a fairly tiny studio it often is. Particularly, because of the extremely short transmission path of sound through headphones into your ear canal, physics dictate and experiences prove that the sound will often seem sharper in musical pitch than it actually is. For vocalists, this can maim an otherwise great track. Of course, technology has allowed us to deal with "global" (whole track consistent) pitch issues for over 20 years now, but if you don’t catch it right away, it’ll make subsequent overdubs just sound wrong. This perceived sharpness happens when your headphone mix is TOO LOUD. Any engineer will gladly give you as much level in the ‘phones as you want, sometimes you need it loud as hell to get the right feeling, but this is something to be aware of. Likewise, if you’re doing guitar, keyboard, whatever overdubs through headphones, the same thing can happen–verify the tuning of every instrument with the SAME TUNER for your whole project to assure relative intonation, don’t try to ear-tune any instrument through headphones.
