Electronic Music Superstar Stonebridge On The Latest Inner Circle Podcast

Stonebridge is one of the most musical and cutting edge electronic music producers on the scene today and I'm really pleased to have him on the latest edition of my Inner Circle Podcast.

Stone has been producing international hits since 1993 but most recently he's had some big ones with Ne-You, Britney Spears and Jason Derulo.

In this show he talks all about his technique, how he got into DJing and producing, and gives some advice that's useful to anyone in the business.

I'll also talk about the the new Yahoo music video service as well as provide some tips for managing your studio time.

You can listen by going to bobbyoinnercircle.com, iTunes or Stitcher.

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3 Tips For Managing Your Studio Time

Many producers (particularly if you're on your first project) are great at the creative part of the job but can't get their arms around the concept of time management. A music production project, regardless of whether it's being done in a home studio or a commercial one, requires a great deal of time management, especially if you have a deadline. Here are 3 tips from The Music Producer's Handbook for managing the time on a typical album project, both in the studio and out.

"Managing both project and people time is one of the more difficult jobs of a producer since it involves a lot of educated guessing. You never really know exactly how much time any one segment will take, but you do have a general idea if you’ve done your production homework. So how do you figure out how much time you’ll need? Just like any project in any company, you make a timeline that has specific milestones while leaving a little leeway just in case the unforeseen happens.

1. Take stock of the situation. Let’s say that the record label wants to have the project in their hot little hands on October 1^st and you’re coming in on the project on May 15^th. There’s no way that you can determine just how long each project segment will take until you evaluate the songs, listen to the demos, listen to any previous recordings, hear the artist or band live or in rehearsal, and generally get a good feel for what’s possible and how much must be fixed or tweaked. This evaluation period might take a week or two but could be compressed into as little as a day if necessary, depending upon your experience in these situations and the quality of the songs and players. 

2. Approximate how long each project segment will take. After you evaluate the artist’s or band’s songs and get a feel for the arrangements and how well they play them, you can determine how much pre-production time it will take to get everything into shape. You might determine that you’ll need a month of preproduction because the arrangements are weak, or maybe just a few days for some song tweaks. If you don’t have that kind of time or the artist is resistant to more rehearsal, then you’ll have to allot more time for basic tracking, maybe an extra day for each song, instead of the 2 or 3 songs per day that you might expect if everything is finely tuned.

During preproduction, you’ll also get a feel for what kind of overdubs you’ll be doing and what kind of time for experimentation you’ll need. Unless most of what you’re recording during tracking is a keeper, you usually figure at the very fastest that it’ll take a day for all the overdubs from each instrument. This means that you’ll record all bass fixes for all the songs one day (if there any are required), one day for guitars, one for lead vocals, etc. If you have more time and budget, you would stretch that out to a day to record the lead vocal for each song (10 songs = 10 days), a day of guitar fixes from the basic tracks, a day for guitar overdubs and a day for guitar solos, a day for background vocals for each song, a day for percussion for all songs, etc. Ultimately, overdub time will be determined by the number of overdubs that you have in mind, their difficulty, and the skill sets of the players and singers. Better players = faster overdubs.

3. Develop your milestones. First, work backwards from your delivery or completion date. You now put in the time allotted for mastering, mixing, overdubs, tracking and preproduction. From there you can put in your milestones for completion. For instance: 

Preproduction start - May 21

Preproduction complete - June 7

Tracking start - June 10

Tracking complete - June 17

Bass fixes - June 20

Guitar fixes - June 21

Guitar overdubs - June 22 - 29

Guitar solos - June 30

Keyboard overdubs start - Aug 1

Keyboard overdubs complete - Aug 7

Lead vocals start - Aug 8

Lead vocals complete - Aug 18

Background vocals start - Aug 20

Background vocals complete - Sept 1

Percussion overdubs - Sept 3

Extra - Sept 5 - 10

Mixing start - Sept 11

Mixing complete - Sept 26

Listening session - Sept 28

Mastering - Sept 30

Delivery - Oct 1

Notice the extra days in between preproduction and tracking, tracking and fixes, lead vocals and background vocals, background vocals and percussion, plus the extra days built into the schedule. This is to make sure that there’s plenty of leeway should something take longer than anticipated or unforeseen circumstances arise."

To read additional excerpts from The Music Producer's Handbook and my other books, go to the excerpts section of bobbyowsinski.com.

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The 5 Types Of Studio Time

Many first-time music producers are unaware that there's many more responsibilities required to complete a project that go beyond the music. One of those responsibilities is often booking studio time, but there's usually a bit more to it than that. Here's an excerpt from my Music Producer's Handbook that describes the 5 types of studio time required on most projects.

"A fairly large project usually has numerous rentals of both long and short term. The trickiest long term rental is always the studio, since if you don’t complete what’s needed on time, then you’ll have to move somewhere else if the studio has booked time after your booking has run out. This can be a royal pain, since it means tearing everything down and setting up again, loosing some time and momentum, and your sound, in the process.

Studio time is broken into 5 categories:

• Preproduction - This is the time to work material out before hitting the hi-priced studio. It can be in a garage, a bedroom or a rehearsal room and can last from as little as a day to a couple of months (more on preproduction in Chapter 7). It should be said that a long preproduction schedule is usually a function of working with artists or bands that write their own songs and are early in their careers since the songs and arrangements usually require a fair amount of tweaking. Artists and bands later in their careers usually have a great sense of arrangement and have become sophisticated enough musically to keep the preproduction phase to a minimum. There is no preproduction for commercials, movie or television scores since the composer/arranger has it pretty well worked out and the musicians are skilled enough to learn or read it on the spot.

• Tracking - Sometimes called “basic tracks,” tracking usually consists of recording just the rhythm tracks, although in certain situations it could mean the entire band as well. The rhythm tracks can be comprised of only the drums, only bass and drums, or only drums, bass, guitar and/or keyboards, and can last anywhere from a single day to months, if there’s no preproduction (more on tracking in chapter 9).

• Overdubs - Overdubs usually consist of recording at least the lead vocals and/or any kind of solos and lead lines that the song requires, but could also mean overdubbing layers of guitars, keyboards, horns, strings, percussion and background vocals. The overdub phase can last anywhere from a day (in very rare cases) to months or even years (again in extremely rare cases). Overdubs may take place in the same studio as tracking, but in these days of smaller budgets, it’s now common to go to a smaller, cheaper facility (or a free one owned by the producer, engineer, or band member). This is also the most difficult portion of the project to gauge the time, since it can vary widely (more on overdubs in chapter 10).

• Mixing - It used to be that mixing was a pretty easy part of the schedule to determine how much time was required. A day to a day and a half per song was pretty much a standard measurement, especially if you used an A-list mixing engineer. Now with recall and automation on mixing consoles, and mixing “in-the-box” in your DAW, it’s easy to bring back a mix exactly to where you left it. While that seems like it should lead to faster fixes, it seems that more time is spent mixing than ever, a result of trying to get every last tweak possible. It’s still best to figure a couple of days per mix if you’re mixing in a studio with an analog-style console (more on mixing in chapter 12).

• Mastering - The mastering phase is the easiest to gauge since it’s usually only a half to a full single day for an entire album, regardless of the number of songs. In rare cases (and big budgets), mastering can turn into a multiple day affair or even use different mastering houses, but that’s not usually the norm."

You can read additional excerpts from the Music Producer's Handbook and my other books on the excerpts section of bobbyowsinski.com.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.