Hey dudes,
I decided to get into this producing thing. I called up the band with most potential and after a few monthes of work we almost have 50 songs. It's just radio rock / pop rock that we've taken a shitload of time on writing songs for.
I want the production on this cd to kill (don't ask me why I'm doing it). Anyway, drums are not happening in my current room at the level I'm looking for.
I'm wanting to go into a monster studio and get some big ass drum sounds. The drums must be mega pro. I don't want 13 year girls saying "this sounds funny". It needs to sound major label. Luckily the drummer is the best sounding drummer that I've worked with (I mixed an album he played on with 2 mics on the drums and it was great).
As always our budget is fairly small, but adequate. We are looking to take maybe a weekend for the drums. He may be able to nail everything in one day.
The deal is I'm just an idiot using an old living room to record. I need a kick ass room with a kick ass engineer who won't break the budget to nail some pro tones. I'll stay out of the way and just learn the engineering end by watching. I don't want to cut any corners with this. I'm considering hiring a drum tech to come in and make sure that the drums are totally money (assuming that the engineer can't do it).
The drummer has a Pearl Master series that costed about $5k. It's a good kit. I'd be willing to use other drum gear to get the sounds we are looking for if needed, though.
Do you guys have any suggestions as to what studio we should book? What engineer to use? How much we should spend for a day or two at a real room? Anything I'm not thinking of? Would it be silly to request recording onto 2-inch tape and then dumping that into digital?
Also, I'm not sure the best way to record the band. When we get our song list down to the best 12-15, the band will be mega rehersed and tight. They may be able to kick ass live in the studio like a rock band should. Another option is to use a click track, record all the instruments shittily at my place for use in a headphone mix, make sure the drums are money, and then overdub everything else back at my place. Any thoughts? I've done records with clicks and I've done records done live. Some of the live recordings are sloppy and lose something. Some are awesome. Some recordings with a click are sterile and boring. Some sound perfect. Either way, I simply want this to be a great sounding record that people will enjoy. Any thoughts would be appreciated.
I'm about halfway between St. Louis and Memphis. We are open to a road trip to Nashville or maybe even Chicago if the price to performance ratio is there. Memphis or St. Louis may have a great room / engineer, but I wanted to hear what you guys thought.
Brandon
