- Mike W

Broken Tongues Music

CCM Recording Studios

1. What kind of project do you want to record?

Consider the length, number of songs, packaging, and distribution you want for your project.  Usually the first few are easy enough, as you’ll probably know which of your songs you want to record, and that number will dictate whether you’re doing a single, EP, LP, double disc, 90-minute jam record, or what have you.  You should also have some idea as to the scope of your record.  If it’s a full length, do you want to do the full jewel case with booklet, or will a paper sleeve more properly represent your work?  And once you have the record in hand, how do you intend to get it into the hands of your fans?  The last question may inform the one before it as well.  Going digital only, an increasingly viable option, will save you a ton on commissioning album art, packaging and shipping costs, as well as duplication and restocking, but then again you can’t beat putting something physical into your fans’ hands at your shows.

1. What is your budget?

Recording is expensive.  There’s no way around that.  Even if you were to invest in a home recording situation, you’re still spending quite a bit of money (hopefully) on room treatment, mics, preamps, interfaces, a decent computer, instrument maintenance, and electric bills.  And unless you’re an engineer, you’re not getting a pair of trained, experienced ears in that package.  When you decide to take your money and spend it in a studio, setting yourself a reasonable budget will help keep the length and scope of the project in focus.  It will help you and your engineer work out a timetable as well as set the amount of time you have to work on each song, which can be restricting, but also refreshingly challenging.  Speaking of timetables..

1. When do you want to release your record?

Communicating your expectations with the studio you’re working in is critical.  The client/engineer relationship can be seriously strained when each party has different expectations regarding a project.  If a studio requires payment up front, don’t expect the project to advance when you haven’t paid your bill.  If an engineer asks for feedback on mixes, don’t be surprised when you show up a month later only to find that the songs are the same as when you left them.  If you want an early summer release, make that very clear from day one and put in the required work to make that happen.  We are just as excited to create music as you are, but we’re not charity workers and we certainly can’t read minds (if we were we’d be in a much more lucrative line of work).

1. Do you know what you’re getting into?

This is not meant to be condescending, as nobody really knows what to expect their first time in a studio (or first time in a different  studio).  It can be very difficult to adjust to playing in a studio versus a live setting or a rehearsal space.  The number one, end all be all divine truth is this: play to a click.

I cannot stress enough how important playing to a click is.  It will make your overall product sound more professional.  It will ensure each player can be exactly on point with each and every part of every song.  It makes dubbing and editing approximately twelve million times easier, which will save you a lot of money in the end.  So do it. There is absolutely no reason not to, unless you can’t, and if you can’t, go practice with a metronome until you can.

Other things to consider:

Singers: Warm up before coming in.  Know your lyrics, but have them with you as a reference.

Guitarists/Bassists: If you bring your own gear, make sure your guitar is intonated properly.  Put on new strings and break them in prior to coming into the studio.  Bring in extra sets of strings if you’re recording a long record.  Be prepared to tune.  A lot.

Drummers: All that stuff I said about playing to a click goes double for you.  Tune your heads and make sure the heads are in good shape.  Bring your own carpet if you’re not sure if the studio has one.  Moon gel does wonders for deadening unwanted rings and ugly transients.

Keyboardists: Have your patches queued up and ready to go.  Honestly, for whatever reason I have few to no issues with any keyboardists I work with.  Must be something about the instrument.  Keep up the good work, fellas.

Hopefully this has given you some insight into some of the less fun aspects of recording so that you’ll be prepared for them.  Next time I’ll go into mixing, mastering, who should do it, who should be present, and where all your money is going when it’s happening.

- Rex Anderson is a part-time engineer at CCM Studios who specialized in rock and metal bands.  He can also be seen in Candi and the Freams and Random Battles.

I was recently given the opportunity to do a project for a client that turned into one of my favorite projects I’ve worked on here at CCM. My main thing is beatmaking and electronic music production in Logic, and I do lots of remixes. Mostly because they’re fun.

So when a client came in asking us to take a series of songs she had chosen and turn them into “Dance Cuts” for her high school dance team, I jumped on the opportunity. In my mind I envisioned a series of smooth, DJ-ish transitions: songs that fit together nicely without jarring changes in tempo or key. I began working on the project, and soon figured out it was going to take much longer than the client had time. I was attempting to shift tempo & key without it being noticeable or too jarring, which can be hugely time consuming when mixing Garth Brooks’ “Calling Baton Rouge” in with Paramore’s “Misery Business,” for example.

I communicated my concern to her and, she told me I was working too hard! My musical inclination had pulled me in the direction of perfection, while the dance team specifically wanted sudden tempo changes! I realized: this was not my typical remix session, my end result would be less “perfect” musically but, in that, would fit the client’s specifications exactly. Suddenly, instead of being stressed about being able to finish the project on time I was free to play: with the transitions between songs, with the beginnings and endings, and with the simple, beautiful irony of starting in “Hakuna Matata” from The Lion King, and dropping into “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns’n'Roses. Its amazing how easily you can slide between songs by simply lining up kicks and putting in some strategic fades. Obviously a jump from Misery Business to Calling Baton Rouge would be difficult, but thats where the fun is: because it is possible, just a challenge.

I worked my way through the list of about 30 mixes she wanted, some challenging, some so simple I hardly did more than chop up the song, line up the files, and put in some fades. Now I find myself mostly finished with the project wishing I had more. I’ve spent the last few weeks listening to old 80′s and 90′s hits that I haven’t heard in years, which I love. I don’t care how cheesy Kenny Loggins can be, that music is catchy as hell. The important thing, and the real lesson here is COMMUNICATE WITH YOUR CLIENTS. By constantly being in touch with a client as far away as Eagle, CO I was able to clarify her needs, and that made the project all that much more fun.

Client relations can make or break you in this business, and I strongly believe CCM Studios excels in this respect.

-Seamus Hannan
Engineer
CCM Studios

Give us a call at (207) 941-6088 to come see the studio, or just stop by for a quick tour and a chance too meet our sexy interns.

The PropellerHeads
CCM Studios  Denver, CO

1.) Software:  is a collection of computer programs and related data that provide the instructions for telling a computer what to do and how to do it.

2.) Firmware: is a term often used to denote the fixed, usually rather small, programs and/or data structures that internally control various electronic devices.

Updating all of your software, firmware, and hardware is just the same but without the ease of being able to make a phone call. Simply go to your products website and search for downloads,updates, or even support because these things tend to hide.

I disagree.

I love the fact that music production is at the fingertips of anyone with enough interest, even if that means there’s lots of music around that never gets to a “professional” level. Universal access to music production is a wonderful thing simply because it means MORE! More music means more stuff for me to listen to; more choices.

Some people will be satisfied by the sound they can get with a laptop, garageband, a portable interface and a microphone, some will not. This is where the propellerheads at CCM Studios come in: to the average musician the time and energy required in finishing a song can ruin the fun of the process; some people are just made to write music. We are here to act as the liaison between you and and finished product, with all the button clicking and knob twisting in between. Maybe even a musical suggestion or two.

The process of music production, one that once involved many steps and separate groups of people, can now be all in the hands of an individual: the person who writes the songs.

This is great, but when you really want to polish your music CCM is here to do that for you, and we can make all the difference. A good recorded demo or album gives you something to show your friends and family, gets you gigs, and gives you something you can SELL!

More music is always a good thing, and with a good computer, the right programs and gear anyone can start to record. Of course, just as I did, you will realize making music is a full-time activity, and you can often get lost in the details. So let us work the details while you write the music, it what we do best.

Oh, and we can make a bangin’ music video too.

-Seamus
CCM Studios

    Another way to make the session quicker is by copy and dragging your chorus’s, simply copying your chorus and pasting it every where the chorus is. This not only makes it quicker but makes the song more consistant with an exact replica of the performance. Thus bringing us to the on the fly mixing, which is an art form all in itself.

    Most recording studios would do a tracking session and then a mixing session and possibly a mastering session. When you have as little time as we deal with at CCM Studios there isn’t much time after recording to get the best sound as we would hope for. Setting levels, panning, eq, reverbs, delays, compression, and all other creative processing during the tracking is a must in this peticular environment. It also provides for a sort of finished feel inside the cans (headphones) for the artist, making it much more exciting and real to them. Also, rather than setting all the plugins on everytrack and talking up the system usage, utilize auxs and busses to send your track out puts to the corrosponding aux with the processing. This makes it a lot less cluttered and easier to work with when all your effects can be easily found and worked on when it is all in one place. You also get a sonically similar feel between you

All in all it is an effort to keep the client happy and coming back. We have found that it is an easy way to make it sound like you would want it to and easy to keep the clientel because it was so inexpensive and it was a good product. Multi tasking is a must in this type of recording and isn’t always for some but we have made it work here at CCM Studios.

Whether you do more audio recording or MIDI work when making your music, nothing is more frustrating than losing an idea as you rush to setup your instruments and inputs. Here at CCM Studios we believe a little speed goes a long way in producing a mix for a recording artist; you can get more recorded in less time, the artist is more satisfied (and impressed!) with the song, and the whole process feels easier and smoother. There are some tricks in every DAW that you can use to really speed up the process.

The first would be using templates. If you are an organized person to begin with, setting up and using templates will come to you naturally. A template custom designed with your commonly used effects and project settings minimizes setup time at the beginning of your session so you can get to recording as soon as your artist is ready.

Within your template you probably want to have a set of busses set up with all your favorite effects chains. This way you don’t have to worry about re-designing all your effects chains every time you start a new project. Once again, when the artist is ready to go, so are you!

Finally, save your presets! Your favorite Stereo Delay settings, your favorite bass sound, etc. Having nicely designed effects and sounds readily available when creating a song makes all the difference.

In the end, its all about being able to produce a great sounding mix quickly, when the ideas are there and when the music is fresh. At CCM we like music to be produced organically and feel natural, a goal best achieved through preparation, organization and SKILLS!

-The Propellerheads
CCM Studios

ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT

computer, shutting off one monitor, cooling the video card down with airduster, running disc warrior, and the Snow Leopard repair disc all with some but little prevail. With some help from mac support and on call mac repair men it was then decided that the ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT video card must be replaced after finding a post online about this same type of issue. We then brought it to a mac certified repair shop which didn’t exaclty agree with issue because normally problems with video cards there will have “buldging capaciters”. But after ordering a new card it seems to be booting fine! Here is the link that led this process in the right direction. http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3630

First you want to decide which track will provide the source for the compressor, in this example
I chose my kick drum. In the Sends section of your channel strip set one of the sends to Bus 1. (fig1)

fig. 1

In your mixer window a new auxilliary channel will pop up with Bus 1 as the input. (fig2)

fig. 2

On this new track change the output to No Output, since this will be providing just the information for the compressor, and the kick is already being sent to the main outputs. I would rename the new track “SCH kick” or something similar.

Now that the compressor’s source sound is all set up, you can choose the sound you want to be compressed. For each sound you want to set a send to a new bus: Bus 2. (fig3)

fig. 3

Just like last time, a new auxilliary track will appear with Bus 2 as the input. (fig4)

fig. 4

This second auxilliary track will be compressed. At this point it has multiple sound sources (bass & strings). Each track that is acting as a source should have its output turned off since the new auxilliary bus will be sending it’s output to the main channel.

Add a compressor as an insert. In the top right where it says “Side Chain” set it to Bus 1. (fig5)

fig. 5

Depending on the sound you want, you’ll need to fool with the Attack, Release, Threshold and Ratio settings. Most likely you’ll want a high Ratio and a fast Attack. Most of the subjectivity comes in the Release and Threshold settings.

Keep in mind, all this is up to you. Play with the input/output routing, the compressor settings and the levels of your tracks to fine tune the sound to your specific piece of music.

-Seamus Hannan

CCM Recording Studios