The Inner Workings of a Bedroom Producer
Nick Bassett
I began recording in the summer of 2001 on a then fairly new Fostex MR-8 digital recorder. It came with a 128 MB flash card, had two XLR inputs (neither of which I ever used except as a DI guitar input), a built-in mic, and built-in effects. The transport buttons were made of a hard clear plastic that made a super annoying, surprisingly loud clicking sound when pushed. If I was lucky they lit up in a yellow/greenish tint, informing me that the device had registered what I just pressed. This setup allowed me to record and mix eight tracks, and if I needed more, I had to bounce multiple tracks together to free up precious space. I spent several years working on this unit, yet I never recorded anything worthwhile. However, lucky for me it’s been nearly two decades since the MR-8 and now recording at home is as simple as downloading an app on your laptop, tablet or smartphone. This, combined with countless YouTube tutorials and free plugins can transform you into an intermediate producer in a matter of days. If you’re still reading this, I’ll do my best to explain my own personal experience in self-producing music at home.
Staying creative can be one of the hardest parts of writing and recording music. It’s odd, but the less I have going on outside of making music, the less inspired I am to create. It’s an issue of having so much freedom that it’s easy to brush things off to be done at a later time. As you can imagine, and may even be experiencing yourself, being stuck at home away from your outside life (friends, family, bandmates) can make it quite hard to stay motivated and remain productive. While I can't speak for anyone else’s approach, I may at the very least offer my own personal method of writing, recording and producing music while self-isolating, due to quarantine.
The writing process for me generally starts one of two ways. The first scenario being that I’ve already got a full arrangement or a rough idea of a song ready. I open up the DAW (Either Logic Pro X or Pro Tools), figure out what the song's tempo is going to be, and begin to sketch out a sort of scratch drum track. I use a variety of different drum programs, whether it’s Addictive Drums, Superior Drummer or Logic’s own Drum Kit Designer (any of these will work, and can be made to sound right with some basic tweaking). Once I’ve got a decent placeholder-type drum track, I’ll plug in a guitar and start playing the main riff while switching between different amps and effects that sound appropriate to what I’ve got in my head. In this situation, I’ve usually got a pretty good idea of how the guitar should come across, so it more or less comes down to dialing/honing in the overall vibe.
Now that I’ve got a sound I’m happy with I’ll usually record the entire rhythm guitar part, switch pickups, double the take and pan each fairly hard left and right. I also tend to mix a great deal of the music while I’m tracking because I find that having something that sounds right as I move along helps keep me inspired. This also helps creatively. It’s like the closer I can get to the final vision, the more focused and clear the overall idea becomes and helps me to see where there are open spots to add parts I wouldn’t have likely heard otherwise. Once the rhythm guitars are recorded and balanced well with the scratch drum track, I’ll generally begin adding lead guitar over them, still mixing them as I go to make sure they mesh well together. Once all of that is finished I’ll generally go back into the scratch drum track and start to refine it, adding smaller details such as cymbals, fills, etc. This begins to give the arrangement more life and an overall polished feel. If everything is sounding good together, I’ll then begin tracking bass in a similar approach to how I track the guitars.
At this point I’ve likely got a pretty realized sounding song. So, I’ll usually take a small break - twenty to thirty minutes. When I come back, I listen to the entire arrangement. If anything jumps out at me that needs work, or if I hear something that I didn’t have in mind prior (whether it be leads, layers, or textures) I’ll stop, and track whatever I’m thinking right then and there before losing the idea. Now that the instrumental is tracked and mixed decently, I’ll begin recording vocals. I’ll use the same method I used for guitar and bass, tracking with effects in real time. Again, I feel this helps with remaining focused and gives a clearer vision of the final picture, so to speak.
The second approach is fairly similar to the first. The only real change is instead of already having a song that I’ve got worked out, I open up my DAW, plug in a guitar, find an inspiring amp sound and begin messing around in hopes that something interesting happens. It’s essentially a blank canvas. If I do stumble onto something I like, I’ll track that, make a scratch drum part for it and repeat, listening along the way, adding parts as I go. At some point I’ll have enough pieces and I can then begin to organize them into what I think is a cool arrangement. After that, I refine the drum track and pretty much start recording over the top of it in a similar fashion to my first approach.
Staying motivated and productive doesn’t just entail constantly recording or writing music. Some days, regardless of how hard I attempt to come up with a riff or a song, it just doesn't happen. Forcing something to manifest itself in my experience generally makes for lackluster material. So, at times like this, I generally resort to reading about recording methods and techniques or about artists and producers that inspire me. Even if I’m not creating something, I feel that learning and absorbing information tends to create its own kind of spark. I’d compare it to watching a cooking show and then being inspired to make a nice meal.
Maintaining creative endeavors keeps me in a more positive mental state similar to what I’d imagine exercise junkies feel when they’re working out. If at the end of the day I can look back and say, I recorded this song today or, I mixed this, I'll generally feel better and in turn that motivates me going forward to keep learning, creating and making music. If you’ve suddenly got a lot of time on your hands due to being out of work or sheltering in place, it may be worth trying to spend your time being musically productive. At the very least, I can say it’s worked for me.
Nick Bassett is an American musician, producer and composer from Modesto, California. He has played guitar as well as bass in a number of different bands including Nothing, Whirr, Death of Lovers, Camera Shy and Deafheaven.
