Maximising Studio Time And The Forgotten Art Of Organisation

Last night I was in my friends studio laying down a few tracks with an old Keyboardist friend of mine. I played some guitar, he played some keys, I had a few back-lines set up already for the session and things went well. It made me think about how you use your time in a studio.

Organisation is paramount. Too many times in the past I have gone to the studio with the aim of getting things done and when  I got there, we start playing a few tracks and try to remember where we left it last weekend, usually are at a loss. This is is generally down to the consumption of too much alcohol etc. but also down to the fact that there is no set work pattern and no list made for the next session to go into with.

Time is everything and ways to maximise the time you have in a studio are paramount, if you are to ever have any chance of releasing a well polished, cohesive track. Going into the studio armed with a set of tasks for the next week, means that you can literally get in there turn on the kit and get down to work. Without this there will be huge amounts of time wasted trying to remember what you did, where you left the thing and what direction you were intending the track to go in.

One particular track we have been working on for the last three years is an absolutely blinding piece of music, with all the right elements for a great tune. When we originally wrote it, the tracks sounded great, although in need of arrangement and a good mix down and master it was not far away from completion. Three years later we are still working on it after changing it several times and making the mistake of micro-managing each individual bit instead of concentrating on the wider arrangement first. This led to us forgetting what we had originally done, which sounds we had used, VST's etc. as the original file was consigned somewhere to the lost dimension of "it'll turn up somewhere". The track was quite innocently called "Do It All Over Again" and we never imagined how true that name would ring!
Lesson learned :-

• If something ain't broke don't try to fix it. 
• Don't micro-manage until you have the full arrangement already there, otherwise you will lose the flow of the track. 
• Be organised and make sure everything goes back in the same place with the relevant folder name and date etc. or you will be in a real mess further down the line.
• At the end of the session write down on a whiteboard or whatever you have a list of aims for the next session so you can be fully armed when you return
•  If you drink alcohol etc. in the studio you will get no work done if you have more than a couple and aside from laying down a few riffs maybe, from a musicians point of view, you can forget mixing down, mastering or arranging anything very successfully. 

What seemed to be the best tune in the world ever one night, when everyone was having their jollys, will usually, the next day be what we musicians technically term, 'a piece of shit'. You have been warned. :-)