Here I was thinking that to record a song, all I had to do was turn up, play my guitar while someone pressed record, maybe a little bit of editing, and that'd be the end of it. Oh, how wrong I was...
It turns out that pressing the record button is probably one of the easiest parts of the entire process. I'm just lucky that I found someone who knew exactly what they were doing to do all the difficult stuff for me. I'll walk you through the process below.
1. Before even entering the studio - This is fairly straightforward - you've got to know what you actually want to record. And getting as much practice in as possible beforehand makes the entire thing that much easier. But also, having a really good idea as to how you want the end result to sound is crucial. Not just "I want it to sound like XYZ song", but the actual structure of the song. For example, my cover of Hero, playing the rhythm as normal on the guitar, but also playing the melody on the guitar over the top of the rhythm instead of having vocals. Another example is my version of Iris: rhythm as normal, melody on the guitar, but then singing the last 2 choruses myself. Knowing this beforehand makes life so much easier for when it comes time to record.
2. Walking into the studio - The first time I recorded a song? This was exactly when the nerves started to hit. I knew what I wanted to do and how I wanted it to sound, but actually doing it is a completely different kettle of fish. Obviously, practicing is where you can get away with mistakes and keep trying things until you get them right. Thankfully, my recording engineer sat me down, talked me through the process and helped me feel right at home. This is when he also confirmed what I was wanting from the session, as in the structure of the song as I mentioned above. During this we also worked out a couple of core components too, such as figuring out the tempo of the song to setup a click track, having the microphones set up perfectly, making sure the tempo was loud enough on my headphones to help me keep perfectly in time, and actually being able to hear exactly what I was playing too. Again, the recording engineer made sure I felt relaxed and comfortable before my work began.
3. NOW we press record - When I say "we", I really mean just the recording engineer. Again, after making sure I was set and happy to go, he pressed record, and away I played. However, not just once. This is where one of my misconceptions about recording came in. I assumed we'd play the song from beginning to end a few times, pick the best take, and move on. Instead, we recorded each element multiple times - which I'll cover more of shortly. But this is where you find your zone, and just strum or sing away as if no one is listening. Like it's just another practice.
4. Time to listen back... - I mentioned nerves previously... well this is when it really hit. I think it's safe to say I'm my own harshest critic, so I went into it listening for every single possible mistake I could hear. But listening back to the recording of your own work like that makes you feel something that's quite hard to explain. At the start, I immediately got lost in the song as if I was hearing someone else playing it. It's such a surreal feeling hearing something you've done, that's been professionally recorded, being played back over and over again. It's safe to say that it had been a really long time since I felt as proud of myself as I did the first time I listened back to the recording.
5. The part that still baffles me today - This is where the magic happens. Hate to break it to you, but none of the recordings were 100% perfect. Whether my finger placement on the frets was slightly off where it should've been, whether picking a string sounded slightly muted, this is where the multiple recordings save the day (provided you used a click track). For those that don't know, a click track is simply a continuous click played through the headphones that helps you maintain a consistent tempo. This gives the recording engineer a common timing reference, which makes it much easier to line up multiple takes of the same part. As we listened back to the recordings and identified the slight mistakes, the recording engineer could quite literally cut out the sections that weren't quite right, and replace them with sections from another take. If it's done properly, you can't even tell where one recording ends and another begins.
Then there was even more magic he was able to apply, adjusting different levels and all sorts of other things to make the final recording sound as good as it does today.
6. Making it look like a song - This is where the creativity continues. Every released song will have artwork to go with it, and this is where I like to add a touch more of what the song represents to me. But that requires a bit of thought beforehand. As I mentioned in my previous post, the artwork I used for Hero was just a simple picture of me from behind, sitting on a bench at the beach. However, I added a shadow into the image representing someone important in my life who is no longer here. A little bit of editing (and, in this instance, a little help from AI) to make the image look incredible, along with adding the title and name to the cover, and the artwork was done.
And then if you want to take the next step - creating a music video. Now I'm more than happy to admit that I'm in no way, shape or form a professional videographer, nor a professional video editor. But I feel at this stage of my journey through music, that's what helps it feel that much more authentic. Again, working out what you want to see in the video is important. For Iris, the chorus is the part that resonates with me the most: "And I don't want the world to see me, 'cause I don't think that they'd understand. When everything's made to be broken, I just want you to know who I am". Without dumping an emotional life story, there's a lot of me that I keep for the most part hidden, but this music video gave me the chance to express a little bit of that - so my connection to music was the obvious choice. Showing the journey from walking into the recording studio, footage of me playing the guitar during the recording, as well as me singing at the end, but also expressing a little bit of my very personal connection with the coast as well. Then compiling all that footage, colour grading it, synching it up with the master recording from the studio, and cutting between each video recording is just a process that at the moment, I rely simply on what feels right, however involves a heck of a lot of work to create a "polished" video.
7. Releasing it into the wild - To my surprise, it's actually quite a bit easier than I realised to release your own music to the world. However, there is still a bit of work that is involved. Firstly, you can't just simply upload it directly to the likes of Spotify or Apple Music, you have to go through a Distributor. I won't go too in-depth into that process, but ultimately there's licensing that needs to be sorted, acquiring accurate metadata for the song, uploading your cover artwork, listing all the contributors to the recording and composition of the song, which platforms and territories you want it released in, and when you want to release the song. It seems like a lot, however a good Distributor will make that process as smooth as possible.
So, as it turns out, there's a heck of a lot that goes into recording a song instead of just rocking up with a guitar and pressing record. But that's what makes it so exciting.
I'm still very much learning with every single recording session I have, and I really do look forward to what's to come.
But there is one thing I do know - I'm incredibly lucky to have a talented team behind me, backing me the entire time.
— Nathan