Recording Tips
By: Emilio Guim
Making a record is an intense task. A goal I had for this year was to put out the debut record of my jazz/fusion band Lullaby North. Putting aside the time I spent composing the music, rehearsing with the musicians and refining the tunes, it took four months from the first day of recording until I had the record in my hands.
Every time I go into the studio, whether it’s for a little demo or a full length CD, it’s a life changing experience. By doing it as often as you allow yourself to, you are getting better at different aspects such as:
- Taking control of those sneaky thoughts that appear while you are playing
- Refining your sound
- Organizing your musical ideas
- Improving your timing
This particular recording has been the toughest one I have produced so far. As you may know I am a sound engineer, so this time I was not only in charge of conducting the band and performing, I was ALSO behind the controls checking out levels, the mics, and everything those two worlds involve.
It was an exhausting experience but I am extremely happy with the result. After all the mixes were done, we mastered the record at Lacquer Channel Mastering.
For those of you who are not familiar with the process, mastering is the final step for treating audio before it is ready to be sent to print. What a good mastering engineer does is he takes the stereo tracks (left and right) of each song and amongst other things, he brings up the volume levels to a commercial standard using high end gear. In this process he also corrects minor details in the songs in order to make the record sound cohesive and as good as it can sound.
I’d like to invite you to take a listen to the record online free of charge at: