production process...

[Arsenu,]

so... i'm producing a 5 song EP for a rock band and the guys want it to sound LIVE, as they play it when rehearsing. which means playing bad and not keeping time generally...

so what iv'e come up with in order to keep the "live" feel while still sounding professional is:

1. recorded them during rehearsal on a phone.
2. mapped the tempo or each song so that most sections are on a different tempo as the drummer is not playing to a click (sigh)
3. next week: record guitar,bass,vocals for guide track
4. record the drummer in a studio playing to the guide+click
5. record the rest separately, mix, master ??????.... profit.

problem:
iv'e ignored slight out-of-time bars and kept the tempo changes to pretty much every section, BUT... some of the tempo changes are as little as +-1 bpm, which is very hard to actually feel while tracking.
what i'm afraid of is that the drummer might not be able to follow the click track precisely since the changes in tempo are often so small, that it's hard to notice them until about 3-4 bars after the tempo changes.

* genre is soft rock, kind of like RHCP, so nothing even remotely technical for the drummers, but still playing tight is a must

i'm sure some of you have had experience with stuff that's not in-your-face brutal death metal. care to enlight me with your opinions?

 

[Heabow]

I had to deal with many crappy bands that wanted to sound like blah blah.... but most of them don't even know that they actually have to sound like they want first!
For this particular situation, I'd ask to the guitar and bass players to play with the drummer while you record drums only as definitive takes - maybe the singer too if needed. This way the drummer can keep the right feeling (you can also record guitar and bass at the same time as raw tracks) Then you record the other guys separately or rhythm guitar + bass together.

 

[Arsenu,]

had thought about it, but i don't want them to lay "live" takes in any way since they're not professionals in any way...
i'll track G+B+V at home so we don't have to worry about time but for drums we do.
the tempo changes will make it sound "live" as they want, but in order to get good tracks from the drummer i will have to be extremely precise about what he did wrong in the last take, and how to improve.
im just worried he won't be able to adjust to minor tempo changes...

arghhhhh i hate it when the guys behind the music care about it more than the guys actually playing

 

[Heabow]

Oh yeah!

 

[aortizjr]

I deal with this a lot. Of all different styles... This is where you have to go old school. Sometimes the best you can do with a recording is make it the best damn representation of the band you are recording. I know often we feel like we have to polish that turd and make it professional. But you can rock the hell out of your end, but if they suck, they suck....

The reality is that if they do suck that bad, then you are better off making them happy and making them comfortable. Then they will spread the word about how awesome you are. So get your sonics in order.

I say... fuck the click. Bands get great results like this all the time. Run the guitars and bass DI (take a real DI, and use sims). Have the singer be in the control room or with a gobo to prevent bleed with the drums. Or if you have enough room and gobos, gobo off the guitar and bass. Even better would be other rooms or iso booths. But get them playing together and a good headphone mix.

Then just do your best to listen for bad sounding tempo fluctuations and do your best to get the best takes. The best thing about a tempo track is you can mix and match takes. Otherwise, you will have to pick the best one, or let them pick.

You can attempt to punch-in drums if he messes up. But you should be able to punch in the rest, do overdubs, etc. Maybe overdub vocals if the bleed is bad.

Edit where appropriate. I will sometimes use Cubase to time stretch parts a bit to even out tempos or speed up parts. Slip edit here and there, tighten them up. Typically no more editing than a death metal band to click... soft rock has less notes.

Then come mixing time, just roll with it. Reamp or whatever as much as necessary. You can still get professional results with less work than you would think. Worst case scenario, the band hears how much they suck, or they love what their hear, think their shit is awesome, and you roll with it.

Sometimes the stars align and you get magic that way. Sometimes that is the best way to get great takes. I find it especially true with non-metal. Man folk players are the worst. Most them have to sing and play at the same time and don't even play the song the same way twice. So you roll with it, make it work, and make it awesome!

Have fun!

 

[Lodge]

Holy shit, do I feel your pain. I come from a Blind Guardian/Iced Earth "perfect" playing type of background. I was asked to come in and help an alt rock band record their demo, the main songwriter from the band only listens to Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Bush, that type of shit. He considers Black Album Metallica and Godsmack to be heavy metal, if that tells you anything. The drummer, however, comes from a prog/thrash background, think Rush and and old school Megadeth. Everything I have produced for these guys sounds too "polished" for the main songwriter. I'm not hot shit like some guys around here, but I've learned all I know from these forums, either from casual reading or from using guitarguru's igoogle search template. (so fucking useful by the way, great way for noobs to search important shit without looking so noobish, thanks nucca). Anyway, the only way I was able to get this guy a "raw" mix he was happy with was to simply plug in my Presonus fp10 with 8 inputs, 6 of which I used to ghetto mic the drums, 1 for the scratch rhythm DI and 1 for the scratch vocal DI. Then, I went back and used drumagog to replace the drums, yet keeping them in exact time with the loose/live feeling of the original recording, and having everyone else come in and lay their shit down on top of that.

It has been quite the process, completely backwards from how I would do things if I was recording my own metal, but it was the only way to make everyone happy. I had the bass player come in and play to the live recorded/replaced drum track, and everyone else from there. It sounds like shit to my ears, yet gold to them. You pretty much have to forget everything you have learned from these forums to make these people happy. They don't know what they want, and if you make it sound too good and they hear how shitty they play, they are quick to blame it on "polished" production. I actually had a legitimate complaint from one member, and I'll leave you with that. "I don't know man, it sounds too good. Its like, you can hear every instrument clearly and on its own, its just too... polished or something. It needs to be more raw, because that's what we're really about." What the fuck do you do with a complaint like that? Yes, I'm drunk, and very sorry if I rambled too much or derailed your thread. Best of luck!