Making a Music Recording Schedule

Video Transcript

"Now let's talk about creating a realistic recording schedule. If you're ambitious like many musicians, you're going to try to squeeze a lot of different components into your recording session. However, in real life, this doesn't work. Recordings, even with great musicians and great circumstances, usually take longer than they're supposed to. Why? Usually it's a combination of things like everybody trying to fine tune their work, wanting to do just one more take to make sure it's right. The engineer fixing something here and there, people getting frustrated, everybody needs to take a break now and then. The bottom line is, if you think that you're going to get everything done in ten hours, realistically it's going to take about fifteen. Things just take a while in the studio, and tensions run high, as with any project, so your best bet is to figure out your priorities and then do the scheduling in that order. So let's say you're priorities are drums first, then bass, then vocals, and you figure that under good circumstances you can knock off all the drums in about four hours. Well, I'd give myself about six hours then for drums, because you never know when something crazy is going to happen like the drummer breaks a snare head, or you discover that there's a weird hum going on in one of the zillion microphones set up in the room. And then what you do is, plan everything else accordingly. Give yourself a break, give yourself a generous break for lunch, things like grabbing coffee, little things like this, they do add up time wise. And also make sure that you give the engineer a break in your schedule. Technically you own the engineer for whatever amount of time you have for the day, whether it's eight hours, or ten hours, or twelve hours, but that engineer is going to need a break. And by showing the engineer the courtesy of giving him or her an hour for lunch, or even better, sharing lunch with the engineer, you're going to guarantee that the engineer is feeling good and is working the best with you. And remember, that no matter what, your schedule is going to change as you enter the studio. Nothing ever runs perfectly on time in a recording studio. You may actually be ahead of schedule at certain points and discover that you have more time for other things. So, however you decide to make your schedule, do it with a pencil, not a pen."