ADVICE
At Conway Sound we believe in establishing lasting relationships with our customers. This is why we offer this page that will save you time and money if you follow the advice listed.
1. Don’t bring too many people to the studio!! This will make your studio time an expensive party. Also everyone thinks they are a producer when they come in. And also when it gets out of hand we kick out everybody and keep the money– We don’t want you to waste your time and money, we want to make good records! We limit the sessions to 10 people, if you have a large group we can work that out, but if there are a bunch of people doing nothing but talking I will kick them out.
2. Don’t get too drunk! We recommend that you only bring beer or wine. Hard alcohol has been the source of many arguments, fights and wasted time. Now a shot of whiskey can be great before doing a vocal take sometimes, but please don’t let it get out of hand.
3. Have your material down. If you have everything memorized it gives you the ability to work on the details of what you are doing. If you are still trying to get through the song without mistakes you will have to settle for something far less then perfect.
4. Set the time aside. This is the biggest problem with modern recording. Everybody is trying to chip away at a record. If you take off a week from work as a group and lockout the whole week at the studio, your record will take less time, cost less, and be considerably better then if you try to squeeze it in here and there.
5. Know your threshold for frustration. If you can’t practice for 3 hours straight, you cant run takes for 3 hours straight. You should always have a few things that we can work on in mind (and the engineer will have some too). That way if cutting the same vocal track over and over is not happening, we can work on the mix, or FX or other fun stuff.
6. Get one thing right! I believe that it is always better to leave the studio with one thing that is awesome, then 10 things that you are not proud of. If you came in planning on cutting 10 tracks in one day, I firmly believe that your money is better spent getting 3 that you are really happy with. Sometimes 10 will be easy, but if not I would recommend getting the 3 that make you happy every time you hear them.
7. Take all this advice with a grain of salt. All this info is here to help you make the most out of your studio time. If you know you want a cacophonous disorganized production technique, it will get you a different overall sound and that sound is just loose not necessarily bad. So dive in!
1. The metronome. If you want to use a click track you should be practicing with one as a band. Just because your drummer can play to a click on his own does not mean that you can as a band. The click opens up worlds of editing, looping and other fun studio production techniques, but you must be prepared for it.
2. Get the best instruments you can. I always get drummers in who say they left their really nice kit at home! Don’t do that! Isn’t that why you have a nice kit? Especially if you are making a record, you should get new guitar strings, drum heads, drum sticks, reeds. . . Make sure your instruments are not excessively noisy, if your bass picks up AM talk radio get it fixed.
3. Book enough time. Although some professional records are recorded in one day, they are not setup, recorded, mixed, and mastered in one day. Making a record does take time. To do it right and get the same quality you hear from a commercial release will take anywhere from 50 to 500 hours in the studio. On your first day of tracking, if we do not get the drums to sound great, the album will not sound great, period. For an album it is well worth it to book a 6 hour session the night before just to get the drums sounding awesome. The drums sound is %75 of the sound of a record, if the drums sound bad the album sound bad, if the drums sound good, and everything else sounds bad the album will still sound decent.
1. If you are making the beats here at the studio, you need to do it in the right order which is– 1. Make beats, 2. Go home, practice and work out who will be on what verse and chorus, 3. Memorize every thing, 4. Come back in, and record all the vocals. Why is this important? If you want to write, practice and create your verses in the studio you will waste a ton of time (and money). No matter how good you are, you can always spit your verse better after you have practiced it over and over at home.
2. If you are doing a compilation or have a bunch of different people on your record you should to schedule them (the people) in blocks, when people talking, battling etc get too loud in the studio I can’t do my job very well. We limit sessions to 10 people, and that includes babies, babies momma’s, babies daddies, cousins, girlfriends etc– If you bring more then that then we wait (while the clock is still running) until somebody gets into a car and drives away.
3. I advise that we ALWAYS make the live mixes of your songs (if you will want them) right after the album mix– why? Because if you book a show and realize that you need the live mixes two days before it’s your problem, not mine. I charge $50 each for out of session CDs + the time– so what would have cost $20 in session now costs about $100. I do this because I probably have something booked and it is a pain when I need to pause somebody else's session to fix your problem.
4. Easy on the Erk and Jerk. Seriously– if you want to be a professional, start by acting like one– it’s as simple as that. As you can probably tell I’ve had some problems, and there are people who are banned from here– and most of the time E&J was involved.
1. Practice with a metronome. If you are interested in adding additional instruments and production to your pieces the having the ability to play to a click track is crucial. We can add some aspects to your work if you cant do it to a click– but if you want any sort of drums, percussion or rhythmic instrumentation you will need to be able to play to a click.
2. For recording guitar and vocals together practice while standing up. We can record either sitting or standing, but if you are standing there is more space between your mouth, and your guitar, this will help to get tracks that are better sounding overall. If standing totally kills your vibe, no worries you can sit, but it is always better to have more options.
3. Be prepared to record your vocals separately from your instrument (if possible). Much more can be done with a vocal track if it does not have other instruments leaking into the vocal mic. Certainly we can record everything simultaneously, but if you can do them separately we will have more options in terms of mixing and production.
4. Try to have some ideas of what you would like to add. There are endless amounts of options, and we can help you much more if we have a general direction to go from. A good idea is to get some CDs together that have the type or feel of instrumentation that you would like to add.