A rough guide to pre-production

Pre-production starts long before you hit the studio. In fact, it starts the day you and a couple of mates decide to get together and make an unholy (or very beautiful) noise together. All that time practicing, writing, performing, honing the songs is, essentially, pre-production. It's all the stuff you do amongst yourselves before the first big day of playing the music in front of someone who isn't in the band.

However, in the days and weeks leading up to your recording session, you should focus on a few key areas:

• Identify and practice the songs you're going to record more carefully and thoroughly than any others you may have in your repertoire. Recording a demo is often a very intensive process where a lot needs to be done in a short space of time, so making sure the band is rehearsed as a whole and knows what the plan is will help immensely.
• On both a band and a personal level, make sure all your parts and arrangements are complete and well rehearsed. In other words, come to the studio with the songs completed and ready to go, with everything clear and concise. Nothing wastes time, money, effort or makes everyone frustrated and angry more than making it up as you go along in the studio or trying to write missing sections as you go along. Readiness and preparedness are everything.
• At this point it might be nice to invite the engineer to have a listen to the band. Maybe you've got a gig, or a myspace page with older recordings on, or you invite him down to a practice. The response you get may vary (we are very busy types), but he'll be glad to have been given the opportunity to check you out in some form, as it gives him a "head's up" as to what to expect come the first day of recording.
• Make sure your equipment is working, sounds the way you want it to sound and you are stocked up and ready come the big day. Spending time making sure everything sounds as good as possible is part of the recording process, but we can't re-wire your amp, pop down the shops for new strings or sticks, or make your 20w, 1x8" practice amp sound like a MesaBoogie Dual-Rec on full bore. Change strings and skins a couple of days before and tune them up before arrival, make sure you're well stocked on picks, sticks and spare cables, strings, batteries and so on.
• Get a good night's sleep the night before. Seriously. A 10 hour day in the studio usually ends up being more like 11 or 12 by the time you factor in travel, loading up the car, and so on. You won't spend 10 hours solidly playing, but it'll be tiring nonetheless and the necessary focus and concentration makes it a long, hard day.

Once you've got all that squared away, it's on to the next step:

Tracking >>

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