How Many Takes?

How many takes will the band need to get it right? As many as are necessary, of course. There is no point in going any further and overdubbing to a backing track which isn't absolutely right. This is where your skill as a producer comes in. Probably the most important part of your role is to know when something is right, and this isn't nearly as easy as it seems. Absolute perfection is unattainable, but many successful records are less than perfect technically, with wrong or missed notes and rhythmic inconsistencies. Yet despite this they sound great! The producer should be able to spot a great take, even when there could be some musical errors. If you have captured such a take and recognize its quality, you then have to decide whether to use it as it is, or try and fix the problems. You can fix the odd duff chord in a guitar track with punch ins, where the engineer jabs the record button just before the section that needs to be replaced and, by hitting the play or stop button, punches out afterwards. Punch ins in a backing track can be noticeable where the spill from the other instruments suddenly disappears then comes back again, so listen carefully, and preferably have the engineer bounce the original take and the punch ins onto a new track for safety.

If the band has lost the rhythm at one point, then this is a bigger problem. The same thing applies if a take has started really well and has then broken down. In both of these cases, if recording onto tape, the solution is to edit the multitrack master tape and use sections from two or more takes spliced together. The engineer will do this for you while you pace up and down in the corridor outside if need be. Taking a razor blade to two inch twenty-four track tape is not a task for the faint hearted since if it goes wrong, then you have lost all. It hardly ever does go wrong however because the engineer will know from experience whether or not an edit will work. The main possibility why it might not work is if the tempo has changed from one take to another and there is a sudden gear shift. You can avoid this by getting the band to listen to a metronome ticking at the correct tempo before each take, or even getting them to play to a click track. This latter solution is rather drastic, and it is something that really needs to have been planned for from the rehearsal stage. Some producers regard editing as a creative process in its own right and will actively seek out the best parts from all the takes the band has done. How many takes are enough? Some bands have as few as three takes in them, and if they don't get it within those three takes, then thirty-three wouldn't be enough and it's best to move onto a different song and have another go on another day. Other bands really can keep going, and once they know that they have one take in the can which is good enough, they will relax and keep getting better and better.

Overdubbing

When the tension of recording the backing track is over, the overdubbing stage is where the creative ideas flow thick and fast. (In a MIDI-originated recording, you might say, "When the tedium of dumping the backing tracks to tape is over..."). Being creative is fun, fun, fun - as long as the ideas keep coming. It's when the ideas stop flowing that everyone turns to the producer. It's no good calling yourself the leader of the gang and then turning to someone else to ask, "What shall we do now?". Usually, overdubs get off to a good start and things seem to be going well. That's because you and the musicians are using up the stockpile of ideas that has been built up during pre-production and the early part of the recording process. There will come a point however when it is obvious that the recording needs something, but no-one knows quite what that something is. Often it is very difficult to be creative when you know the clock is ticking and you are effectively flushing hundred dollar bills down the toilet, but there are strategies you can use to allow the collective creativity of you and the band to shine through. Here are a few ideas:

1.  If you have recorded all the backing tracks for the album before starting on the overdubs, then you can skip backwards and forwards according to which song you most feel like working on. If you run out of ideas on one, change over to another one.

2.  Equip the band members with cheap cassette multitrackers (they probably have them already) and give them copies of the work in progress. Send them away to work on their ideas instead of hanging around the studio's pool table.

3.  Equip the band with multitrackers before any recording starts and let them work with copies of the rough demos. Tell them that you want as many musical ideas as you can get - the crazier the better. You can pick and choose later.

4.  Unless you think there might be a clash of egos, let the musicians swap instruments where possible. The guitarist might bash out a simple idea on the keyboard that the keyboard player himself might not have thought of.

5.  Encourage an attitude of being receptive to trying things out. It is common for people to jump on an idea and say that it won't work without giving it more than a few seconds consideration. This hardly encourages creativity. Have 'brainstorming' sessions where all you do is think of ideas, and no-one criticizes them until later.

You may of course have the opposite problem, where there are too many ideas and you need to refine them down into something that is simple, but exactly right for the song. This is very much more difficult than it sounds, but if you listen closely to successful records you will realize that they are often very simply constructed. Don't underestimate how difficult it is to achieve that simplicity. A successful producer is someone who can encourage the generation of many ideas, and then discard the vast majority of them leaving only the ones that will blend together to create the perfect sound.