From plan to product

Since the blog is a 'making of', I thought I'd let you in on how I'm getting about creating material - gear, workflow, stuff like that.

Still life in my bedroom

Most of the time if I have an idea, I will take it to a guitar, and try to find a chord progression, melody, something I can use to get started. Then I create a rough plan around it: if I have a riff for example, I try to write a bridge and a chorus to match it. Once I have these main blocks, I try to figure out what other instruments I need, and start recording them bit by bit. I usually have the main theme planned, figure out the tempo/groove, use a simple drum placeholder to help record the guitar parts. Then I change the placeholder to an actual drum track. The bass guitar follows, and samples if the song has any. Everything else is trial and error based, add this, remove that, reshape some stuff, until I have a full length draft of what I want.

Way too many cables

Once I'll have these rough drafts for all the tracks, I plan on recording all the drum tracks, since recording everything else in good time seems easiest to me with the drums done. Once the drums are done, I want to start creating the guitar, bass and synth sounds for each track, and recording the themes using them. Once all the tracks are done and recorded, effects, samples, mixing, mastering will follow - just add water, and you have yourself a demo album.



I hope it will actually work out like this - this is by no means an approved way of doing home recording or songwriting. But it's really fun.

Where the magic happens

I record everything using Sonar LE, via signal coming from either a Boss ME-25 for the guitar and bass tracks, or an M-Audio Axiom 25 MkII for MIDI tracks and drums. The final drums I hope to play myself on a Roland HD-1.

My gear

The full list of gear I use is as follows: a Squier Standard Stratocaster, an Epiphone Tony Iommi SG400, and a Fender Sonoran are the guitars, an Ibanez SR300 bass, an M-Audio Axiom 25 II. MIDI controller, and a Roland HD-1 drum set. The amps are a Roalnd Cube 60 and a Behringer BXL450A. As an audio interface I use my guitar processor, a Boss ME-25, until I put my hands on a Roland quad capture. I'll post updates to the list if anything changes.

I plan on documenting what tricks and methods I find useful regarding the technical side of the recording process, and hopefully enraged professionals will read it and yell me the proper way to do it in the form of flaming comments. I always come across really swell people during such experiments, I hope this will be no exception. I really love to learn anything related to my interests, so I value the chance to listen to experienced people.

I'll start posting more specific stuff once I figure out how to categorize them. Even if nobody adds anything, I hope to have a vaguely organised blob of notes that together describe the solutions to all the challenges that have/will arise.