Recording your performance

Do you need a simple demo that captures your live performance style to help get gigs, or do you want to create a more elaborate production that may include overdubbing or bringing in other musicians? If you want to incorporate additional instruments or players, you will need to plan the arrangements, or at least line up other musicians to contribute to the final product. Even if you choose to keep things simple, it doesn’t hurt to revisit arrangements—sometimes things that work well in performance don’t translate on recordings. You may want to shorten or lengthen tunes, tighten up sections that you normally stretch out during a performance, modify tempos, or make other adjustments to ensure that your music comes across the way you want on a recording.

Identifying and analyzing commercial recordings you like can help refine your vision and communicate it to other musicians and to your recording engineer. Do you hear a particular guitar sound you’d like to achieve? Is your ideal sound natural or bigger than life? When you go to the session, taking along an example track by an artist whose sound you admire will help your engineer know what you are aiming for and provides you with a familiar reference when listening to the studio playback.

Prepare Your Performance

For many performers, nothing causes as much trouble as the sight of the red recording light. The desire to record a perfect performance makes you tense up just when you want to be relaxed and inspired. One solution is to practice recording yourself with anything available, from an old cassette deck to a small digital recorder, before you head into the studio. The sound quality is unimportant; the goal is to experience the pressure of playing your best while the recorder is running, and to listen critically to your performance. This is your chance to address—in private and before the recording session—issues ranging from simple mistakes to problems with arrangements. Although you want to be sure you can deliver a solid performance in the studio, remember that you are probably your own worst critic. It’s easy to get wrapped up in small issues no one else will notice.

If you are a solo performer, consider playing your tunes one-on-one for a supportive friend. Even those who are comfortable performing before a crowd sometimes find it unnerving to play for a single person; and in the studio, it may be just you and an engineer who is critically listening to every note!

The studio environment can also wreak havoc with tempos and groove. You may rush because of nerves or as an attempt to inject some energy; on the other hand, you may slow down or lose the feel by trying to play each note perfectly. To avoid these pitfalls, practice with a metronome until your timing is rock steady—and be sure you know the tempo you want to use for each tune. Work on any spots where you find yourself fighting the metronome. If playing with a metronome feels too stiff, try setting it to half time, so that it clicks on beats one and three, or even to one click per measure.

You can also use your home recordings to examine how dynamics and other technical aspects of your playing come across on a recording. You may discover that you need to exaggerate dynamics or perhaps tone down some more aggressive techniques to sound your best.

Prepare for the Studio Environment

Practice sessions with the recorder at home are a good time to anticipate some of the unnatural aspects of the studio environment. For example, you may be asked to wear headphones, especially if you are playing with others. If you plan to overdub additional parts, you may need to play with a click track in the headphones, which will make all that practice with a metronome worthwhile! If you sing and play, you may be able to record both parts at once, or the engineer may want you to play the guitar alone and overdub the vocal later—so be sure you can play the tune without singing.

Unwanted noise is always an issue when recording. Sensitive studio microphones will pick up your foot tapping, your sleeve brushing against the guitar—even your breathing, especially with quiet solo guitar tracks. Unless you want to capture those sounds, practice to avoid or reduce them. Finger squeaks are always an issue for guitarists, and they often become more noticeable on recordings. Squeaks can be difficult to eliminate completely, but you can usually minimize them by adjusting your technique. Coated strings tend to squeak less, so they can be especially useful for recording.

When recording with microphones, it’s also important to stay in a consistent position, so practice moving as little as possible while you play.

One pleasant surprise in the studio is the way modern recording systems make it so easy to correct mistakes. It’s common to patch together multiple takes to get a good final track, and it’s often possible to fix even a single bad note. Whether or not you want to take advantage of these editing capabilities, just knowing that one small mistake won’t ruin an otherwise great performance can help you relax and avoid mistakes in the first place. If you need to redo some parts of a tune, it helps to have practiced restarting at any place in a tune, maintaining the same tempo and dynamics.