Pre-Production in Hayward Ca
The Importance of Pre-Production
Okay, so you’re getting ready to start recording that next project. You’ve got the personnel lined up, and you’ve scheduled your sessions. Now what? Do you jump right in and start recording? Easy there, Tiger. There’s an important step that needs to happen next — pre-production.
What is Pre-Production? Pre-production is the planning phase for the entire project. It’s where you take a project in its simplest form and plan out how you will build the recording around it. This is a crucial phase of the entire process. You can liken a recording project to starting a business. If you jump in without a plan, you’ll most likely end up scratching your head at the end of the project, wondering why you hadn’t planned things out more carefully.
Live and Die by the Arrangement
Pre-production becomes most important when dealing with the arrangement outline, or structure of the project - whether it be a song demo or video soundtrack slating. You need to ask these types of questions, because as soon as you dive into that first tracking session, you’re locked in to whatever arrangement you record. It becomes near impossible to change the arrangement of a song once you have several parts recorded. The arrangement is like the backbone of the song. You can change the instrumentation as you see fit throughout the recording process, but the basic layout remains the same. Blue Groove Studio engineers know how important it is to get it right from the outset.
Record Scratch Tracks
Scratch tracks are basic, quick recordings of the project that you use as your guideline. The sound quality of the scratch tracks is not all that important. Most likely you’ll re-record these parts later. The purpose of scratch tracks is to allow you to listen to the arrangement and "tempo" of the project to decide what works. The engineers at Blue Groove recommend dedicating your first recording session to simply recording scratch tracks. You can listen to them over the next few days and decide if anything needs to be changed in the arrangement. Since these tracks aren’t that important, you can cut or add sections freely. It doesn’t matter if the transition doesn’t sound smooth when you copy and paste the different sections around. What matters during this phase is getting the arrangement right. Once you have the arrangement like you want it, you can now begin to record the “real” parts. Eventually you’ll mute (and inactivate) the scratch tracks.
Give it Time
When finished with pre-production, it can be easy to want to just jump in. However, be sure to schedule in some buffer time between pre-production and your first recording session. When you finish writing a song or script, make a quick recording of it. Over the next few days listen to that recording. Giving yourself some time allows you to make these changes before committing them to the final recording. I know it may seem like a waste of time to do all this preparation, but it will save you time and frustration down the road.
Okay, so you’re getting ready to start recording that next project. You’ve got the personnel lined up, and you’ve scheduled your sessions. Now what? Do you jump right in and start recording? Easy there, Tiger. There’s an important step that needs to happen next — pre-production.
What is Pre-Production? Pre-production is the planning phase for the entire project. It’s where you take a project in its simplest form and plan out how you will build the recording around it. This is a crucial phase of the entire process. You can liken a recording project to starting a business. If you jump in without a plan, you’ll most likely end up scratching your head at the end of the project, wondering why you hadn’t planned things out more carefully.
Live and Die by the Arrangement
Pre-production becomes most important when dealing with the arrangement outline, or structure of the project - whether it be a song demo or video soundtrack slating. You need to ask these types of questions, because as soon as you dive into that first tracking session, you’re locked in to whatever arrangement you record. It becomes near impossible to change the arrangement of a song once you have several parts recorded. The arrangement is like the backbone of the song. You can change the instrumentation as you see fit throughout the recording process, but the basic layout remains the same. Blue Groove Studio engineers know how important it is to get it right from the outset.
Record Scratch Tracks
Scratch tracks are basic, quick recordings of the project that you use as your guideline. The sound quality of the scratch tracks is not all that important. Most likely you’ll re-record these parts later. The purpose of scratch tracks is to allow you to listen to the arrangement and "tempo" of the project to decide what works. The engineers at Blue Groove recommend dedicating your first recording session to simply recording scratch tracks. You can listen to them over the next few days and decide if anything needs to be changed in the arrangement. Since these tracks aren’t that important, you can cut or add sections freely. It doesn’t matter if the transition doesn’t sound smooth when you copy and paste the different sections around. What matters during this phase is getting the arrangement right. Once you have the arrangement like you want it, you can now begin to record the “real” parts. Eventually you’ll mute (and inactivate) the scratch tracks.
Give it Time
When finished with pre-production, it can be easy to want to just jump in. However, be sure to schedule in some buffer time between pre-production and your first recording session. When you finish writing a song or script, make a quick recording of it. Over the next few days listen to that recording. Giving yourself some time allows you to make these changes before committing them to the final recording. I know it may seem like a waste of time to do all this preparation, but it will save you time and frustration down the road.