We’re back with another episode of FAQ Friday!
While at NAMM 2019 we ran into Austen Bullard who had a marvellous question to ask me: “When you’re in the studio writing with an artist, do you have a process for efficiently getting from the writing stage to demo and then getting to the recordings that you use?”
I Basically record as I go, if we are in the studio, I have David there cutting a song and we change the tempo slightly or change the arrangement a little bit, whatever it is, if we’re in that zone and he’s been singing it and playing acoustic and it’s feeling good, I’ll just send him in.
If we have the tempo we just record it and we find invariably that the initial acoustic guitar and vocal 90% of the time become the final product.
There’s something about it when you’re doing it on your own and then building the track afterward that might be the only time you get a feel and a grove you can preserve. If you build a track independently then sing overtop you may lose that intimate piano vocal, acoustic vocal.
I like really really passionate, intimate sounding vocals if there is something sad I want the vulnerability and it’s hard to reproduce that after a week that you are not working on that song. I love the “first take magic”- as Austen called it.
If you’re writing or in pre-production you’re “in” the song. A famous of this is when Adel broke up with her boyfriend, then he got engaged after 3 months. She wrote a song about how she was still in love with him at the time and then 9 months later had to comeback to record it, when she was no longer emotionally attached to the topic. It’s hard to comeback and sing about a past relationship, The least you can do is have a decent enough microphone ready to go at all times.
As Ulrich Wild says the best microphone for any given situation is the one that’s right there.
Today’s video also features FAQ Friday Q&A’s from:
• Fix Audio Designs (0:30)
• IK Multimedia: (5:11)
• Blue Microphones (9:18)
• Sontronics (10:32)
• Leapwing Audio (14:22)
• Radial (15:35)
• Austen Ballard (17:13)
• BOSE (22:11)
• McDSP (23:25)
• Phoenix Audio (24:57)
• iZOPTOPE (26:03)
• Nobels (28:54)
