STUDIO PREPARATION
What You Should Know Before You Go
to his performance, his recordings. Mike
Wengren is there with his V-Drums and they
work together. It’s pretty amazing. C.J. Pierce
from Drowning Pool would work all day in the
studio, then record his parts and come in the
next day. Gabriel Garcia of Black Tide is into
GarageBand and evaluates his work before
coming in. After recording for eight hours,
you’d think his fingers would be sore, but he
goes into the lounge, plugs in and keeps playing while I record the other band members.”
Choose Your Team Wisely
To save money, you may be tempted to produce and mix the project yourself. Affordable
software makes it possible for anyone to
saturate the internet with their music directly
from their home studio. Don’t do this!
“Nowadays, kids call themselves producers,
and all they do is put beats together—in
other words, steal other people’s songs!”
says Wagener. “The ability for a guitar player
to record himself and be the engineer is
not a good thing. You can get good tone,
but engineering is a left-brain situation and
playing guitar is a right-brain situation. The
more left brain you have going on, the more
it takes away from the right brain. Guitarists
should just think about playing and singing,
and the engineer can take care of the techni-
cal side. Doing it yourself is not a good idea.
A good engineer can be very helpful.”
“With Pro Tools, you can move three seconds
of music one millisecond forward, do endless
editing and get it just the way you want,” says
Burleson. “But with a good engineer, you don’t
have to think about the technical stuff. Just
immerse yourself in the music you’re cutting.”
in a week of rehearsals, sometimes day four
is better than day seven. Why? Who knows.
“Everybody should be in the pocket,” adds
Wagener. “If one guy plays on his own terms, it
won’t work. Another thing: There’s a little word
called practice, which we don’t hear about much
anymore. If the musicians groove together and
hear each other, things will fall into place.”
How do you find the right person for the
engineering job? “When somebody is recom-
mended, that means something,” says Kulick.
“No matter where you are, someone in your
city or state has a reputation for getting the
sounds.” Do your homework, check refer-
ences, reputations. Once you find someone,
remember that you’re paying for their knowl-
edge and expertise, so listen carefully and
keep an open mind. That said, don’t hire on
name alone. “The wrong producer can take
a project in a direction that isn’t you,” says
Kulick. “There are so many variables in the
way that something is created, molded and
shaped in production. It takes a visionary per-
son to make it special. Listen to someone’s
work. If you like a couple of albums they
produced, or they like you and they give you
