Producing Without Boundaries

The modern day recording studio can look many different ways depending on who you ask.

To those outside of the industry, it’s a boujee place with big speakers, multiple recording rooms, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of microphones, amps, guitars, drums, and keyboards.

To others, it’s a bedroom, a set of headphones and/or near-field monitors, and an audio interface.

And then there are some folks like me that prefer the nomadic recording setup with my roadcase rig, with the flexibility to record wherever, whenever.

If you’d like to know more about this setup, check out the article I wrote about my new studio rig. I’ll link it at the end of this article.

With pro audio technology becoming more advanced, affordable, and portable, producing music has never been easier. Along with this, the line between production and mixing is becoming more blurred, and for some, the power of choice actually inhibits productivity in the studio.

“What plugins should I use”

“What frequencies should I boost”

“What drum library is going to sound the best”

I’ve been there. It can be incredibly easy to “get lost in the sauce” when you’re songwriting. Or even worse, feel like songwriting is a chore because of the plethora of choices when it comes to plugins or setting up a session. So I wanted to provide you some powerful production tips to help you get the ball rolling, ignite that creative spark and get you shelling out that next banger in no time.

1. Use a template to get you started.

Do you find yourself repeatedly using the same plugin chains, bus routing, amp sims, drum libraries, etc. when running a session? Turn it into a template. Most DAW’s allow you to save a snapshot of your workstation so that when you spin up a new project, you can hit the ground running.

I have templates for songwriting/pre-production, vocal production, drum production, and mixing, all fine tuned to allow me to get started in a session effectively (some of my templates won’t show in the screenshot because they are on my studio computer)

For production, I keep my routing pretty simple:

• Fairview RS Drums channel for quickly mapping midi. I use the 16 x Stereo version of Kontakt so that I can route the drums later — when writing I just send them all to my drum master with some mild eq and compression.

• A few guitar tracking channels with some of my go-to tones to get riffing quickly.

• Left and Right Rhythm Guitar channels for double tracking, being sent to a Rhythm Guitar Bus with some light processing. I usually drag and drop the tone from my tracking channel onto these once I have that dialed in.

• Bass channel with the Nolly Bass library (sorry bassists. I’m picking the CPU here.)

• Post production folder to drag and drop post production samples into.

• Vocal Tracking channel with some processing

• Master bus with SSL style compressor and Waves L1.

Having this template allows me to jump into a session quickly & modify things as I go.

2. References = Results

This one is for during production sessions and final tracking. As a guitar player, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a tone in my head, but wasted tons of time aimlessly loading amp sims and twisting knobs, only to be left with some abomination of a guitar tone that was nowhere near what I was going for.

Simply put, we as musicians were gifted with ears — USE THEM!

Make reference playlists on Spotify for guitar tones, mixes — whatever you can think of. When dialing in your guitar tones, go back and forth between the DAW and the reference track to lock in the idea. If you’re using real amps, make sure to capture DI’s (Direct Input or Clean signal from the instrument, usually by way of a DI Box) during tracking, because chances are if you’re like me, you’ll want to re-amp later.

Using references unlocked so many doors inside my brain for pro audio. I’m hoping that using them will do the same for you.

3. Just roll with it.

In a perfect world, all recording sessions would run smoothly and the song would write itself. Unfortunately, we live in the real world where this doesn’t always happen.

When this happens, I like to refer to #2 in the form of a inspo playlist, or hell— even go through the loop library in Logic — for an interesting sound or chord progression.

From there: just roll with it. See how far you can take that idea. The reality is, it’s not going to be perfect right off the rip.

Perfect example is “Runnin with the Devil” by Van Halen. This song was originally recorded with Gene Simmons on a demo EP dubbed “Van Halen Zero” by fans. The song is undeniably there, but it is not the masterpiece as we know it today: the tempo is significantly faster, sections are longer, and more stripped back from the final production.

What’s awesome about digital recording, is we can dive back into a session and dub, chop, edit, and re-track as we please without having to roll new tape.

So once you have an idea, just roll with it and see what happens.

4. Get it right at the source.

No amount of shiny gear can polish a turd. If you didn’t set your gain levels, place your mics correctly, change your strings/heads, or simply captured sloppy performances, the production is not going to sound pro.

You don’t need expensive gear — you need practice.

Change your strings, take sample recordings to get levels dialed in, and be sure to play to the best of your ability.

In fact, use your production sessions to practice tracking. This is one small reason why I double track guitars in my pre-production sessions. One, because it sounds awesome, but two, it encourages me to play as if I’m in a final tracking session. The demos come out sounding way better, leaving you (or your client), way happier.

By getting it right at the source, you are saving your future-self a ton of time during the mixing process. Less processing on your end because what’s coming in is already good.

5. If it sounds good, it is good.

At the end of the day, music is subjective, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The meter on your compressor may be wanting to jump off the screen. That EQ curve may look ridiculous. But sometimes, that is okay.

Y’all should see the amount of distortion on my screaming vocal bus on this single I’m fixing to put out… it sounds pretty fcking cool though.

Let your ears be the judge. If it sounds good, it is good.

So there you have it, 5 tips to get you rolling on your next banger. By the way, in case you missed it, I’m releasing music tomorrow. Pre-save the single at the link below.

Rock N Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution,

Paps.

My Recording Rig: https://www.riffscodecoffee.com/p/simple-effective-gear

Pre-save Link: https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/shawnpaps/jim-bob-reloaded

Single Teaser: https://youtu.be/pfLSsD8-nyA