Perhaps the most important phase of any recording project is the one that most people breeze by, or avoid all together - Pre Production.
Skipping this phase is a fool-hearty way to screw up a good project.
And it is a great way to waste precious project funds.
So lets look at some tips for how to use your Pro Tools rig for preproduction.
In most of the projects that I produce I will spend considerable time with the writer (or writers) of the project mapping out how songs will be structured and what instrumentation will be used.
While we are doing this exercise we explore where the tempo should fall, what key best supports the vocalists power range, and even song structure.
These are the fundamentals of pre-production and they used to be handled by taking copious notes.
In today's world they can be done right inside the ProTools environment.
Here's how I do it.
This Is How We Do It I will set up a session with a tempo ruler in the edit window.
View>Edit WIndow>Rulers>Tempo.
This will give me the ability to work with the song's tempo.
So I will sit down with the artist and an acoustic guitar/keyboard, and this blank window open.
I will have the artist sing, scream or rap his lines while performing the song in its most stripped down manner.
This follows the old adage that if a song doesn't work on an acoustic guitar (or piano) it simply doesn't work.
So during this time we will explore tempo and key.
Once we have those two elements locked down I will set up a click track [new track>click track] and lock it down.
I will then record the acoustic instrument and a scratch vocal playing to the click track.
This will give me the skeleton of the song.
Having this skeleton is critical for building the song in the big studio when the time-clock is running and dollars are actually being spent.
While the scratch tracks are being recorded I will use the memory location tags to make notes of where song parts are.
You can access these memory locations by pressing the enter key during playback.
I will make memory locations in the obvious places: beginnings of choruses, verses, bridges, pre-chorus, re-intros and outros.
Pleasant Surprises While we are setting up the bones, as it were, discussions will often arise about instrumentation, vocal parts, or creative effect ideas.
These are great ideas that should not be lost.
How do I capture these? I use the tracks and memory locations inside Pro Tools to note the ideas.
Say the artist shouts out and says, "yea I was thinking of putting a glockenspiel on the out of the bridge.
" I will simply make a new track and label it "Glock" [for the bells not the gun] and then make a note in the comments section of the track saying, " Descending chromatic pattern at the end of the bridge.
Use glockenspiel sound from sampler.
" I do this for every unique idea from instrumentation, to vocal harmony parts, to lyrical doubling and even special effects.
It makes production simple since now all you have to do is open an session and start filling in those empty tracks with actual sounds until the entire project is complete.
Skipping this phase is a fool-hearty way to screw up a good project.
And it is a great way to waste precious project funds.
So lets look at some tips for how to use your Pro Tools rig for preproduction.
In most of the projects that I produce I will spend considerable time with the writer (or writers) of the project mapping out how songs will be structured and what instrumentation will be used.
While we are doing this exercise we explore where the tempo should fall, what key best supports the vocalists power range, and even song structure.
These are the fundamentals of pre-production and they used to be handled by taking copious notes.
In today's world they can be done right inside the ProTools environment.
Here's how I do it.
This Is How We Do It I will set up a session with a tempo ruler in the edit window.
View>Edit WIndow>Rulers>Tempo.
This will give me the ability to work with the song's tempo.
So I will sit down with the artist and an acoustic guitar/keyboard, and this blank window open.
I will have the artist sing, scream or rap his lines while performing the song in its most stripped down manner.
This follows the old adage that if a song doesn't work on an acoustic guitar (or piano) it simply doesn't work.
So during this time we will explore tempo and key.
Once we have those two elements locked down I will set up a click track [new track>click track] and lock it down.
I will then record the acoustic instrument and a scratch vocal playing to the click track.
This will give me the skeleton of the song.
Having this skeleton is critical for building the song in the big studio when the time-clock is running and dollars are actually being spent.
While the scratch tracks are being recorded I will use the memory location tags to make notes of where song parts are.
You can access these memory locations by pressing the enter key during playback.
I will make memory locations in the obvious places: beginnings of choruses, verses, bridges, pre-chorus, re-intros and outros.
Pleasant Surprises While we are setting up the bones, as it were, discussions will often arise about instrumentation, vocal parts, or creative effect ideas.
These are great ideas that should not be lost.
How do I capture these? I use the tracks and memory locations inside Pro Tools to note the ideas.
Say the artist shouts out and says, "yea I was thinking of putting a glockenspiel on the out of the bridge.
" I will simply make a new track and label it "Glock" [for the bells not the gun] and then make a note in the comments section of the track saying, " Descending chromatic pattern at the end of the bridge.
Use glockenspiel sound from sampler.
" I do this for every unique idea from instrumentation, to vocal harmony parts, to lyrical doubling and even special effects.
It makes production simple since now all you have to do is open an session and start filling in those empty tracks with actual sounds until the entire project is complete.
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