I’ve been asked many times over the years by artists and my studio peers how I produce and engineer with such speed (while still doing high quality work, of course). I hope this can be helpful for the studio professional looking for tips to increase their speed or any artists curious how the sausage is made (I don’t know why I used that silly turn of phrase, writing these blogs is exhausting my vocabulary I guess).
First off, I’ve put in the hours. I made my first recording in 2001. When I was new to charging for sessions around 2010 I put a lot of pressure on myself to deliver quality for people quickly and I became known for my speed. Part of what inspired me to make my studio skills tighter-focused was an album recording experience I had having engineers more experienced than me working on my music. I knew I could do it better and faster than them and I wanted to help other artists get better results too.
I keep every instrument in my studio plugged in, miked up, sound checked and ready to record at all times. My drums, bass, guitar and keyboard tracks basically sound mixed at the recording stage. Some clients have even told me they’ve avoided using live drums in the past because it takes 90 minutes for an engineer to set up, but they know with me a drummer can sit down and start doing takes right away.
I use templates for everything. I keep my session settings, keyboard patches, guitar amp simulator settings, drum samples, etc. curated and organized. Every time something sounds good, I save the settings. If you record with me once, the next time you record with me I’ll be using our last session’s settings as a starting point. Some clients I work with regularly have templates that make a song sound 75% mixed just by recording into it.
Every session I make an agenda with the artist of what we’re going to do and how long I expect each step to take. I’ve gotten quite accurate at that. Sometimes this is done in advance, often it’s done at the top of the session but I rarely begin work without a game plan of how each hour of the session will be utilized.
I force myself to make decisions. I’ll decide something should take X amount of time and I almost always stick to that. In my experience, playing around with something for hours doesn’t lead to better results. I lean on my intuition and skills to make fast decisions confidently. If you’re a young engineer I do think it’s important to spend time toying around and learning your craft but where I’m at in my journey, decisions need to be made.
I’m fortunate to mostly work with highly skilled vocalists that are capable of doing high quality vocals fast. I’m good on my instruments and on the occasions I get other instrumentalists in, they’re pros too. In the event that someone is having trouble with their session vocals, I have techniques for still moving it along quickly. A little bit of tuning never hurt anybody and vocal comping is the real MVP. I’ll be writing a more in-depth article on vocal comping soon.
I mix as I go and I basically master as I go too. I use all my available speakers, headphones, and earbuds to help me quickly make decisions to make the record translate on all systems. The formal mixing portion is only a couple hours because I try to keep it sounding like a record as it grows.
I encourage incoming clients to make demos in this format, which saves time at the top of the session:
https://feelgoodmusicrecordings.com/blog/demos
Those are some of the ways I do fast work for my people. Hope that was helpful and hit me up if you need some speedy work done.
Drew Mantia
Feel Good Music Recordings
3146264270
feelgoodmusicrecordings@gmail.com