Re: recording methods - what's your approach?

[Matt Davignon <mattdavignon@gmail.com>]

I pretty much do the same thing:

1) When performing or practicing, I record with a Zoom recorder.

2) I open the raw file to my computer, and mark out the different
sections of the recording that sound like songs.

3) I copy any "songs" that sound at all good to a new file in save
them to a folder called "New cd project". For my last CD, there were
about 40 songs.

4) I listen to all those songs over the course of a few months, trying
to take the viewpoint of someone who doesn't personally know me, and
who doesn't have the frame of reference. Do they hold my interest? Do
I find my mind wanting to skip ahead? Am I presenting the sound
persona I want to present? Using this judgment, I save the "winners"
to a subfolder. By now, the 40 songs are down to about 15 songs.

5) By this point, I usually have an idea of which songs make good
"beginning songs", "middle songs" and "end songs".

6) I start putting the CD program together - starting with "beginning"
songs. I listen very closely to the spaces between songs, and how well
they "flow" into each other. Here's where I do most of my editing of
where songs stop and start within each track. By the time I'm done, I
usually still have 3 to 5 perfectly good songs that don't really have
a place on the cd. I'm perfectly fine with that.

7A) I give copies of the current draft to friends who can be honest
critics, and ask them to take note of any moments where things aren't
totally interesting, or that seem awkward.

7B) I then listen to the cd very closely at least once a day for at
least 2 weeks - literally staring at the screen and paying attention
to nothing else. Here's where I fix relative volume levels between
songs, and make edits to songs that are too long. I'm more interested
in creating a well-flowing cd than creating "a document of my work",
so I'm not bashful at all about cutting out substantial portions from
the middle of a track. If I find my mind wandering, then an edit is
probably necessary. For example, two tracks on "Living Things" were
originally 11 minutes long, and are now 6 minutes long. If they were
still 11 minutes long, very few people would want to hear the CD more
than twice.

8) Then it's ready for professional mastering!

Btw, Sony's CD Architect is a great program for steps 6 and 7. You can
click and drag to adjust the spaces between songs, and volume
envelopes, AND the exact moment when each track # advances, but you
can build a multi-track view of your songs, which makes the very exact
edits for step 7B really easy. With loop-based music, it's fairly easy
to do these edits because you can see the loop's repetitive patterns
in the waveform. CD Architect lets you zoom in and make these
adjustments down to the single sample, and then build fades to smooth
it out.


-- 
Matt Davignon
mattdavignon@gmail.com
www.ribosomemusic.com
Rigs! www.youtube.com/user/ribosomematt