The school year has officially begun, which means we have rotated interns at my studio. Every time I have a new intern I’m reminded of the many little things I, and other engineers, do to make our workflow faster and easier. Here are some habits you should try implementing to get your recording sessions running more smoothly.
1. Organize Your Gear In A Meaningful, Ergonomic Way
This may seem obvious, but keeping your gear organized saves time, energy, and frustration. If you’re constantly stopping your work to run to the other room for a cable you need fairly often, it’s time to rethink your setup. At my studio, we do a fair amount of transferring media from analog to digital formats. To do this, we have a tape machine, turntable, and a cassette deck.
We also have gear used for making long-distance connections: A Comrex for phone calls, a Zephyr XStream for ISDN connections and a laptop with an audio interface for SourceConnect/ipDTL, etc. All of this gear was mixed together and split between either side of our control surface with a tangled mess of cables behind it all.
We’ve decided to simplify by reorganizing everything so that all the gear used for transfers is on the left and all of the long distance connection gear is on the right. Everything is more efficient to access because I’m not going back and forth as much.
We also keep all guitar pedals together, and our microphone cabinet is organized by type and capsule size so everything is easy to find at first glance.
2. Use Different Coloured Mic Or Patch Cables.
This comes in handy especially when it’s time to troubleshoot. If there’s a dead channel, you can easily follow the patching with different coloured cables.
3. Don’t Leave Excess Cable At The Stagebox
Leave excess cable length at the base of the mic stand rather than in a pile at the stagebox. How much time passes between finishing set-up and moving the microphone stands around to accommodate a band? Usually, very little! Just being aware that stands will move and leaving some cable slack during set up will save you from a tangled mess later on. I always plug my XLR cables in at the stagebox first, then walk to the mic I want to plug in, bringing the access cable with me to coil at the base of the mic stand. This ensures that there is enough length that is easily accessible when the stand inevitably moves.
4. Save And Backup Often
Command + S is definitely my most used key command. I often accidentally save Chrome browser pages because I’ll have tried to save after hitting “enter” to launch a Google search. Any time you see the little black dot within the red circle in the Pro Tools window (on a Mac anyway…) this means there is unsaved work. Whenever I see that dot, I hit Save.
I also have my Pro Tools software set up to create a session file backup every 10 minutes and to keep the most recent 30 backups. This has definitely helped me out in the past during an unexpected power outage!
5. Regularly Check How Much Hard Drive Space You Have
Keep an eye on how much free hard drive space you have left, especially before recording sessions. Here is a handy chart to have on hand detailing how much hard drive space audio at different parameters takes up.
Bit Depth | Sample Rate in kHz |
MB per track minute |
MB per Stereo Minute |
MB per 8-track minute |
MB per 16-track minute |
MB per 24-track minute |
MB per 32-track minute |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
16 | 44.1 | 5 | 10.1 | 40.4 | 80.7 | 121 | 161 |
16 | 48 | 5.5 | 11 | 43.9 | 87.9 | 132 | 176 |
24 | 192 | 33 | 65.9 | 264 | 527 | 791 | 1055 |
24 | 48 | 8.2 | 16.5 | 65.9 | 132 | 198 | 264 |
24 | 96 | 16.5 | 33 | 132 | 264 | 396 | 527 |
24 | 192 | 33 | 65.9 | 264 | 527 | 791 | 1055 |
32 | 192 | 43.9 | 87.9 | 352 | 703 | 1055 | 1406 |
I try to make sure I always have at least 200 GB of free space on my hard drive. Not that I’ll end up using all that space, but making sure there is ample space results in a happier computer, especially when it has to work hard in tracking sessions.
6. Label Outboard Gear With Label Tape
When you’re setting levels, why spend time mentally walking through your signal path before figuring out what channel to adjust? At my studio, the hardware we use the most are preamps so we keep a roll of label tape and a sharpie right on top of that rack for easy access.
Here, I’ve labelled right above the preamps I usually use shorthand for the Millennia, hence the left-right arrows for stereo pairs and up-down arrows for high keys or low keys on the piano, and denote either mic or instrument.
7. Patch Mics In The Same Order Every Time
I usually do drums, aux percussion, bass (mics then DI), keys, guitars (mics then DI), strings, horns and vocals. If you haven’t caught on by now, most of these tips revolve around minimizing your thinking and increasing efficiency. In your career, there’s a good chance that you’ll encounter bands or ensembles with similar input lists multiple times. Keeping inputs in the same order, or close to it, every time helps you to navigate larger sessions quickly. I also colour code in the same order - the rainbow or ROY G BIV. After a while, it became reflex for me to scroll to the very first track to find the kick drum or to the very last track in a session to find my reverbs and effects.
8. Learn How Long Regular Tasks Take
Keep an eye on the clock while setting up and learn how long it takes you to set up regularly occurring gigs. I’ll admit, this is a tip that I am still figuring out, especially with remote recording gigs. Time management is one of the biggest factors in reducing stress for me. I’ve been in the position of finishing set up, right as it’s time to press record and it’s not a fun position to be in.
A 4-8 mic classical concert recording in a hall I’ve recorded in before takes me about 40 minutes to set up and test by myself. Rather than arrive 40 minutes before the concert, I arrive 90 minutes early with the goal to be set up and tested before doors open to let the audience in, typically 30 minutes before a concert. If it’s a hall I’m unfamiliar with, I will arrive 2 hours before the concert. That way, I can set up comfortably and make sure to grab some food and hit the bathroom before the show starts.
I would much rather budget extra time into my day to set up and test everything than to get stressed out over not having enough time to feel confident in my setup.
9. Tighten All Mic Stand Joints Before Putting Away
A personal pet peeve of mine is when I pick up a mic stand only to pinch my hand because the last person who used it didn’t tighten one of the joints.
10. Use The Signal Path As A Mental Checklist
if you’re packing gear for a remote recording session, mentally walk through your signal path and write down everything in it. Mic goes on clip/shockmount, goes on a stand, XLR plugged into mic and snake, snake into pres, etc… You’ll be less likely to forget something if you imagine the cables and connectors needed to complete your chain.
What About You?
Are there any habits that you have that increase your efficiency? Let us know in the comments!