The fascinating adventure of a music album
Hi everybody!
I’ve been listening to questions, curiosities and perplexities all around me, and I noticed that there is a lot of confusion about all the artistic and technical processes a music album has to go through, from the inception to the completion of the product.
I could not ask for a better chance to talk about it!
My intention is to talk about this topic in episodes. To better focus on the content of every post, writing something that will not be full of jargon and technical concepts. This series of topics does not want to be the definitive guide of how to make your music album, indeed a collection of guidelines for musicians and technicians who follow this blog.
I am going to present a hypothetical situation, analyzing and talking about all the challenges that a band (or an artist) has to face in order to bring the score home. It will also be an analysis of all the technical process that a studio should adopt to offer to the client as a package for the basic service.
Let me start by presenting the index of the content for the new posts! I will talk about things like:
- Pre, pre and even more Pre-Production: The collection of the songs and the music you want to record and publish, with all the tips you need to obtain a good result.
- Can you copy that, Houston? Communication between sound engineers and musicians: Everything that concerns the professional etiquette between musicians, technicians, sound engineers and producers. Tools, tips and trick to manage all those relationships in order to achieve the best result possible.
- Gimme another take, please! The recording process: How to handle a recording session? What’s the right attitude from both sides? Which kind of recording should I choose?
- Cleaning it up. the editing: I will be discussing about the first step into the post-production, cleaning and arranging horizontally the recorded material. Good editing is the optimal base to achieve an even better mix! How much the musician should and could influence this process?
- Mix, Mixing, Mixage, all synonyms:In this phase we touch the real magic, almost statuesque in its nature, where all the sonic features of the product are delineated and refined. I will tell you my method of surviving in this step… But I will willingly avoid to go too much in details about gears, plugins, brands and models that can be used in this process.
- Set-up the table, food is ready! The mastering:Here I will discuss about mastering, the sacred and unnamable beast of the majority of the sound engineers. We’ll see why a good mastering is so important, and why musicians should not ignore it.
- Fresh lemonade for 15c! Marketing and distribution:Now that we have the final product, how can it get out there?
Once again, I want to remark that everything will be discussed taking into consideration not only the job done by the technicians, but also from a musician-friendly point of view.
Boom! Stay tuned and don’t be shy to ask away your curiosities.
