Albums on a budget

[Seshmeister]

Looking for some advice here.

I think some of you have done this already?

We are about to go into that midpoint between a studio demo/home recording and the major record deal and I'm realizing I know nothing about it because I've done the former a lot and read about the later but who knows about the bit in between?

I think after a bit of work we have found the studio and producer we want to go with. The plan is to do 10 songs and mix them in a week or so. Unlike anything else I've recorded in a studio I'm saying we should do the music live as a 3 piece with no overdubs apart from mistakes and have a single guitar(double tracked). No rhythm guitar even behind the solos Van Halen style.

My thinking is that if you are going to do something a bit cheap then you should go for energy.

Anyone else ever done a budget album in a studio? Any advice?

For example in my head I thought you would do 2 days on the music, day 3 and 4 overdub the vocals and backing vox but I was told tonight that can't work because your singer would need to do too long at one stretch singing for 10 hours at a time so you need to do it in batches in budget mode.

[ELVIS]

Oh, I thought you were looking for an album you can afford on a budget...

I was gonna suggest VH III

But you already have it, I'm sure...

[ELVIS]

Seriously though, I would take it one step at a time and get the music done as you suggested and not even worry about vocals until you're all satisfied with the music tracks...

Then purchase more time for vocals and other perversions...

[chefcraig]

I'd tend to agree with ELVIS, yet the thing about tracking live in the studio is always one of separation and leakage. You just might end up wasting countless hours in post-production attempting to clean things up, before you ever get around to tackling the vocal chores. It's something I've learned not only from recording over the years, but from working on job sites as well: Yes, prior planning prevents piss-poor performance, but you still have to make allowances for the unexpected. There is simply no way in hell you can talk/plan your way through a job at a meeting and then turn around, expecting things to follow that precise time line.

[Seshmeister]

They have an isolation room aside from the big live room so I was going to stick my stack in there and DI the bass so very little leakage hopefully.

[Seshmeister]

Oh, I thought you were looking for an album you can afford on a budget...

I was gonna suggest VH III

But you already have it, I'm sure...

I actually don't. I think there are even a few songs on it I've never heard.

[ELVIS]

I heard most of it when it debuted on the radio at the time...

I was drunk, high, wasted and loaded at the time and it still sucked...

[Seshmeister]

Look this thread is meant to be about me not VHIII.

Even bringing it up in this thread is probably bad karma...

[ELVIS]

It's not about your fucking hip!!!

Baby steps...

[jhale667]

Once you see how many tunes you can bash out the instruments for at a time, then see about booking smaller time blocks for vocals, overdubs and incidentals...can you get 4 hour blocks, or is their minimum time available longer, like 6-8 hours?

[Coyote]

Practice the songs beforehand as a band, as if you were preparing for a gig. That way you can just knock 'em out and keep moving.