(compiled from old posts that were deleted due to my own stupidity, handwritten notes, and my imperfect memory)
My amateur rock & roll band of 25+ years decided at some point early in 2021 to fulfill a bucket list item and record at EA with Steve. This was not only our first time at EA but our first time in a professional recording studio. Below is my account of the experience.
The band:
Three-piece rock & roll band - guitar/bass/drums, with the guitarist and bassist splitting vocal duties. Nothing fancy.
Song material:
We started out with five original songs that were several years old. Each song had a fairly conventional verse/chorus/verse arrangement around 3-4 minutes in length. Initially, we weren't exactly sure if we wanted to record all of them as an EP or just a couple of them as a single. It was going to be contingent on time and budget.
Initial contact:
Web form at
https://electricalaudio.com/contact in early May 2021. I asked generally how long to expect it would take for a well-rehearsed band to record a single or an EP at EA and that we had interest in doing so. EA staff was great and responded to the web form promptly with advice, all of which (of course) turned out to be accurate (I'll break down exactly how long it took to record our project a bit later...). We also discussed estimated costs, which also ended up being accurate based on what's posted at
https://electricalaudio.com/booking-rates.
After some additional back and forth by e-mail, in late May 2021 we ended up booking two days in Studio A with Steve for late September 2021. There was earlier availability, but we wanted to make sure that we were well-rehearsed and prepared before going into the studio; at that point, we hadn't rehearsed together as a band in over a year due to the pandemic.
Preparation:
As soon as we knew we were likely going to book dates at EA, we started rehearsing together regularly at a cadence of one 2-3 hour rehearsal per week, focused solely on the songs that we were going to record. I would suspect that bands may want to and should practice more often if they are going into a professional studio, but we were used to that kind of rehearsal cadence in the past out of necessity; i.e. limited time on our hands due to day jobs and not living that close to each other.
Rehearsals were focused on nailing down the song arrangements and getting as tight as possible as a band. We made a few minor changes to the arrangements of the five songs I mentioned previously, but in addition, around July or so, the guitarist brought in a couple of new riffs that he had been working on with the intent on writing and recording a sixth song. The three of us molded those riffs into a new song, with lyrics also provided by the guitarist. We were able to get that song to a finished state about a week or two prior to the studio session.
During the last month of rehearsals, we started practicing the instrumental tracks together (guitar/bass/drums) without vocals to best prepare for the studio session. The guitarist and I also had two separate rehearsals just to work on vocal arrangements (one of the pieces of advice given to us by EA beforehand was to not be wishy-washy about background vocals while in the studio as that has the potential to be a major time waster). All of these rehearsals were recorded for reference.
The plan:
As mentioned, we had booked two days with Steve in Studio A, and at that point were prepared to record a six-song EP. We had been given advice early on that it was feasible to do all of this in two days if the songs were well-rehearsed and not complicated, but that the schedule would be tight. So we went into the studio with a backup plan: two of the songs (the new song and one of the weaker, older songs) would be dropped if we were running out of time, resulting in a four-song EP instead of a six-song EP.
During the final rehearsals, in a notebook we wrote down every part that we wanted to record for each song and who was performing each part. To minimize time needed, we planned to record all instruments (guitar/bass/drums) together in one pass without any instrumental overdubs, and then overdub the vocals (lead and background) together in one pass. Also to minimize time needed, we decided in which order we were going to record the songs based on instrumentation to reduce switching.
We planned to bring most of our own equipment to the studio - instruments, amplifiers, etc. - except microphones, mic stands, and of course recording equipment. One important thing to note is that we brought spares of just about everything, including spare guitars and spare amps. We were able to fit all of the equipment in two cars.
Of slightly less relevance but of importance to those who don't live directly in the city of Chicago (we live in the suburbs), we also decided to stay overnight in an Airbnb in Roscoe Village so as to avoid having to drive out of and back into the city between the two days, saving commute time and energy. In retrospect, I think this was a good idea.
The session, Day 1:
We arrived at the studio more or less on time and started by unloading and setting up all of our equipment into Studio A: guitar, bass, and respective amplifiers in Center Field, and drums in the Kentucky room. Almost right away, while just setting things up, the main channel of the guitarist's primary amp crapped out. Obviously EA has spare amps and we probably could have used one, but the guitarist had brought his backup amp with too and was quickly able to set that up instead. Right away, it was paying off to have Plan Bs in place.
We then went into Studio A's control room to meet with Steve to go over the plan for the two days. The plan was agreed to and I believe the discussion went smoothly but to be honest I don't remember much about it. I think I was having an out-of-body experience at the time, perhaps feeling a bit surreal that I was actually there. I do remember that it was decided at that point to set up the studio for 16-track recording and not 24-track recording.
The above took about the first hour of studio time. The next step was to set up the studio for recording, primarily Steve setting up microphones and then doing soundchecks. This took up the next three hours. So the first half-day was spent setting everything up and preparing for recording. This is something the studio pointed out to us very early, that only booking a single day of studio time is inefficient and limits the amount you can record because of the required time to set up. You'd be able to do a lot more booking additional days.
The next step in the plan was to record the instrumental tracks for all six songs, assuming at that point that we'd be able to finish all of them. The general workflow here was to do a take and then go back into the control room and listen back to it, including each instrument isolated. If there was a mistake, we'd then have an opportunity to fix the mistake (called a "punch-in"). (As it turns out, it's much easier to fix a mistake on guitar or bass than it is on drums; more on that later) At that point, if all sounded good, then we would move on to the next song.
I'll mention a few words about how recording the instrumental tracks went in the order the songs were recorded:
"Goodbye" - an original song primarily written by me that the band had rehearsed and played at every gig for about fifteen years. Instrumentally, it's slower and not at all complicated. We thought it would be a good song to start recording. That turned out to be wrong. We had several false starts to the song (to be fair, we were still at the tail end of soundchecking) and the first take that we ended up finishing was just kind of okay and required a bunch of punch-ins. On playback in the control room, I don't think anyone in the band was satisfied with the take, including and particularly me. But we had already spent a bunch of time on that one song and had an instrumental take on tape that was more or less complete. At that moment the band decided to move on.
"Looking for an Answer" - the fastest song of the bunch and one that we often have trouble with. Nailed it on the first take with just a few punch-ins. So much different and better than the first song.
"Undefined" - along with "Goodbye", another one that we had played the most often. We were originally going to start recording with this one but there is a riff at the beginning that I was so paranoid about screwing up that I insisted we did something else first. (I think I made a dumb quip - as I often do - about there being a 50/50 chance of me screwing up the riff and Steve said he'd take those odds...) Anyway, we got the song on the first take and I didn't screw up the riff.
"I Believe in You" - another song of mine that we had been playing forever and to be honest we had kind of gotten sick of. We planned to end the song with three repeated choruses and in the mixing stage fade out the song (as the last song on the album). To make the song more interesting, I told the guitarist to intentionally play a couple of "wrong" chords during the last couple of choruses. Well, that punk, he took more liberties than that. He instead decided to randomly change the C9 chord in every chorus to whatever convoluted version of C major that he could come up with. The result was, nevertheless, interesting and made us laugh. The first take went really well otherwise and at that point I was willing to just say I guess that's how the song goes now... so it stood. One other note is that there is a moment of silence in the song that had a drum count off that the drummer wanted to remove. This was one of the times that Steve's tape-splicing expertise was on full display.
At this point, we were at about eight hours through Day 1 and more or less on schedule, so we went ahead with the final two songs.
"Trouble" - the new song. We ended up recording it at a faster tempo than in rehearsals, but got through the first take without any problems. The take sounded good in the control room, so we moved on.
"Fear" - went fine, but noteworthy because it contained the only mistake that the drummer wanted to fix during the entire session. It was so minor, too - a little click of the drumsticks during a fill. However, relative to a mistake on guitar or bass, it seemed much more difficult to fix. Steve had to find the exact spot on the tape in which the click occurred and obliterated it from existence.
That concluded Day 1. We left the studio happy with how things went except for that damn first song. We were uncertain what we were going to do about it.
1 hour (set up equipment) + 3 hours (set up mics) + 1 hour x 6 (record instrumental takes) = 10 hours
The session, Day 2:
After spending most of the previous evening and breakfast discussing what to do about the first song ("Goodbye") - I initially wanted to keep the take and overdub a second guitar part; the guitarist and the drummer wanted to redo the whole song - we ended up deciding to do a second take. At the end of the previous session, we had kept all of the equipment and mics set up, anticipating we might decide to rerecord that song, so it was relatively easy to do so. The second take more or less went without a hitch and did sound quite a bit better than the first take. That took up the first hour of Day 2.
The next hour was used to change the setup of the studio to record vocals. We decided to again use Center Field for vocals, and then two mics were set up side-by-side about 10 feet apart with each singer also provided a pair of headphones. We then went through all of the songs again while changing the order in which we recorded the vocals, with the songs with the most straining vocals last (e.g. "Looking for an Answer"). After each take, we'd listen to the song back in the control room and vote yay or nay.
There was only one song that was giving us a lot of trouble during vocals, "I Believe in You". The harmonies in the chorus just sounded like ass. We then changed the harmonies on a second take and it was better, but still sounded not great. Realizing we were lagging on time - we only had a little over a half day left - we begrudgingly decided to move on after spending about two hours to complete vocal takes for all of the songs.
It was then time to mix the songs. Steve would start each song with all tracks muted and then would start slowly unmuting tracks, starting with the drums. While I had an inkling previously of how good everything may have sounded during recording, this was the first time when it really hit me how good things sounded in the control room. Oh, the drums. Damn.
There were a handful of things done during mixing to make subtle improvements to some of the songs. If I recall correctly, I believe just a *touch* of EQ was used on either the bass or one of the drum mics on one of the songs, levels were raised on the guitar on a few occasions during instrumental parts, and we also listened back to the imperfect vocals on "I Believe in You" a few more times to figure out if and how it could be improved. Steve suggested a little bit of echo be added to a sustained note in the chorus to smooth out the poor intonation and that worked well. It's very subtle but unmistakble if you know what to listen for.
Once we agreed on a mix for a particular song, it was then committed to stereo tape and then we listened back to it on that tape for confirmation. Each song again took more or less an hour to mix, which brought us to the end of Day 2. We had finished what we hoped to accomplish in exactly 2 days of studio time; no less.
We then tore down all of our equipment, packed the cars, paid the bill and said bye to Steve, and then left the studio with the 16-track master tape and a reference CD in tow. The stereo masters were sent to Chicago Mastering Service for mastering (a little more on that below).
1 hour (second take of "Goodbye") + 1 hour (vocal setup time) + 2 hours (vocal takes) + 1 hour x 6 (mixing each song) = 10 hours
Post-production:
As this is aside from what happened at EA, I'll just add a couple of brief notes about what happened next. In parallel to arranging the studio session, I also had arranged for mastering to take place at Chicago Mastering Service - digital and also lacquer for vinyl production - and also vinyl pressing of the EP at Smashed Plastic in Chicago. After the recording session, as mentioned above, the stereo masters were sent to Chicago Mastering Service and then mastered in October/November. Lacquers and artwork were sent to Smashed Plastic.
Digital version of the EP can be listened to and downloaded here:
https://dipchicago.bandcamp.com/
If all goes well, 12" EP will be released sometime around Q3 of 2022.
Final Thoughts:
Recording at EA with Steve was an incredible experience, and I would not hesitate recommending it to anyone who might be interested in doing so. Setting up the session went smoothly, all of the advice given beforehand was spot-on, the session itself was something I will never forget, it was a pleasure working with everyone we met at the studio, and I am so happy with the end product.
Based on our experience, I would like to emphasize the following points learned/confirmed to anyone interested in doing this:
- Contact the studio well in advance of when you would potentially want to record so that you have more than enough time to prepare.
- Reserve more time than you think you need. We were able to finish everything in exactly the amount of time allotted, but were only one problem away from not being able to finish everything. Even though we had a Plan B in place, which is a good idea anyway, I would have been devastated if we only finished four or five of the songs instead of the six. We should have booked at least 1/2 day if not a full day more.
- Trust all advice given by the studio. This is their day job. They are experts at this stuff. They know what they are doing.
- Rehearse regularly and plan everything out in advance of the studio session. Absolutely minimize the amount of decision-making needed while in the studio so you can just focus on executing the plan and not waste studio time.
- Have Plan Bs in place when things do go wrong. It is inevitable that something will, whether it be an amp crapping out, a shot cable, a broken string, or something ridiculously stupid like the guitarist lost his only guitar pick.
I'm happy to answer any questions others may have, either on this thread or by PM.
jfv