Setting Tempos for Music Recording

Video Transcript

"One of the more overlooked steps in the preparation process for recording is finding tempos for all of your songs, so that you'll have a tempo set for your click track that you'll play along to when you're recording. Now why is this? Well, no one enjoys sitting down with a metronome, and trying to figure out exactly what tempo something is, because after a while your ears start to play tricks on you, and you're not sure if something is too fast, or too slow. However; if you don't do this, you're going to end up doing it anyway once you're in the studio, and then you're going to be paying for it. So if you're going to have to spend let's say; an hour anyway figuring out tempos; why not do it at home or in your practice space, and not pay for it; rather than going into the studio and watch your money disappear. In order to do this you don't necessarily need your entire band. You can do it in your practice space if you want. Sometimes the good bet is to record yourselves playing, and then afterwards listen to the playback of that recording, and sit with a metronome and try to match it up. Another thing you can do is sit down; maybe just you; if you're the singer; like me, and the guitar player, and play along, and try out different tempos, and see what's right, and rather than settling on one specific tempo; come up with two or three that you think are good choices; that way on the day of the recording you can go in there and play them out, and then hear them played back to you, and then you can pick your tempo that way. But the key here is that even if you just have a general idea of what the tempo is for your song, that you get this information figured out before you go into the studio so that once you get into the studio it's all business."