photo by cloudsmountainThe art of producing songs in the studio involves a tremendous amount of patience and focus. Songwriters should strive to achieve a recording that will be appreciated for many years to come. Crafting and perfecting your production process is different for everyone. It’s important to be aware of what works and what doesn’t. Learn from past experience and always strive to make progress creatively, technically, and professionally.
Today, I want to discuss the importance of using scratch tracks. Scratch tracks are recorded parts of a song that have not been perfected yet. They are meant to be rough takes, not to be used in the final mix (although sometimes they turn out to be your best take!).
Scratch tracks are useful as temporary placeholders, while you build the rest of the song around them. They’re also great for listening back and fine-tuning how you want to deliver the part when you record the final version. By taking the time to lay down scratch tracks, you can get a better idea of where the recording is headed. They help you envision a road map for arriving at your final product.
An example would be to record a vocal scratch track early in the tracking process. The sooner you have the lead vocal in place, the better because it’s often the most important element of the song. You want to structure the rest of your instrumental parts around the lead vocal. Having a scratch version in place helps you write parts that don’t interfere with the vocal part, but compliment it nicely. Once all the other parts have been recorded and finalized, you can go ahead and record the final vocal part. It’s best to save the final vocal tracking for last so that the singer can draw on inspiration from the all of the instruments and really feel the fullness of the music.
The real advantage to crafting your songs with scratch tracks is for listening back and soaking in your creation in progress. The process if recording a song often lasts several weeks. During that time, you should be listening to your rough mixes outside the studio- in your car, in your headphones, home stereo, etc. The more you familiarize yourself with every nuance of the performance, the more seasoned you will be when it comes time to lay down the final takes.
Many bands actually take months for pre-production. That is, recording and mixing entire songs as rough drafts before starting work on the actual record. Most independent songwriters don’t have the luxury of endless studio time for drawn out pre-production sessions. However, it’s always a smart idea to factor in extra time for producing your songs with at least some scratch tracking of parts.
Recording multiple takes in pro tools
When recording in Pro Tools, you can easily record multiple takes of a part using playlists. The playlists feature in Pro Tools allows you to record an unlimited number of takes on a single track. For each track in a multi-track mix, you activate one playlist - whichever take works best for that part.
To create a new playlist, click on the up/down arrow to the right of the track name. In the options that popup, choose “New…”.
Give your new playlist a name. Pro Tools automatically names it by adding “.01″, “.02″, “.03″ to the end of the track name. Personally, this naming convention works fine for me, so I generally just keep the suggested name and click OK here.
Re-record the part on a new playlist, and repeat the process each time you want to do another take. When you playback the song, or prepare for bouncing to disk (mix down), select the playlist you want to use by clicking the same arrow you used to create the new playlist.
Playlists in Pro Tools provides an easy way to record scratch tracks before laying down the final take. Record the rough take first, then flip the track to a new playlist when you’re ready for the real thing. Later on, during editing or mixdown, you may decide there were parts of that rough take you liked. You can always flip back to the first playlist, cut the parts you liked, and paste them into the final playlist on that track.
Over to you…
What’s your process for doing scratch tracks, and your method of setting them up using your recording software of choice?
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