Click here to e-mail

www.cymbalsimon.com

Drum Lessons in Stirling Scotland

The Boxes above are all External Links...the Buttons on the Left and the Bottom of the Page are Links to Pages on this Site.

 A typical ‘live’ recording Set-up where all of the band are effectively playing as they might at a gig or ‘live’ performance, is usually the quickest and the best way to capture a Bands’ sound.

Setting up to do this can take up to 2 hours for a 4/5 piece band as all the individual drums, instruments / amplifiers and vocalists need to be assigned their own microphone to ensure the best quality of recording.

 We then need to create a monitor mix for the performers to allow them to hear what they are playing during the recording process. Once this is done recording can begin.

Sometimes the band might need to play a song quite a few times in order for everybody to get used to the sound through there headphones and to achieve the best recorded performance.

This means a band can record the song a number of times and then choose the version they like the best.. These are called ‘takes’. This is what separates live performance on stage from a recorded performance. For instance, The Beatles recorded around 67 ‘takes’ of “Strawberry Fields Forever” and in the end used ‘take’ 49. Meaning they played it 67 times before settling for the 49^th performance, which was the one they thought was the best. With today’s modern technology we don’t usually have to go quite that far. We can ‘overdub’ certain mistakes without the whole band playing the whole song again.

 All the instruments and vocals are recorded onto separate ‘tracks’. The band will play together but record all their instruments and singing onto these separate tracks. The idea is to get as good a performance as possible from the whole band recorded as a ‘take’. If that ‘take’ has a few mistakes in it, all is not lost. Mistakes on the guitar, bass and vocals can usually be fixed by overdubbing new parts onto the recording. The drums are the main instrument that has to be spot on in your final ‘take’.

 Once we have a good ‘take’ for all the songs we want to record we can start to ‘mix’ the song. Each ‘track’ has its own individual volume level to make that instrument or sound louder or quieter coming out of your stereo’s speakers. This process is called ‘mixing’. Once all the instruments sound good and clear, we can record our ‘mix’ onto a CD. Then you can take your finished demo home and impress all your pals with how clever you are!

 Costs are £120 per 8 hour session weekdays 10am – 6pm. Normally a band can record and mix between 3 and 5 songs in an 8 hour session. Costs outside those times are £20 per hour.

JAMES TAYLOR (PROPRIETOR AND SOUND ENGINEER)

www.homegrown-productions.co.uk