Music recording in schools

When approaching recording in schools, it is worth remembering the fundamentals, and that doing what you can well is paramount. Resources are often too short to make anything completely perfect, but good recordings are about doing all the basics well and making marginal gains. There is plenty of low-hanging fruit.

DAW organisation

There is no happiness without order. The easiest thing to improve in the practice of your students is their use of the organisational tools of the DAW at their disposal.

Keeping your students super-organised when using a Digital Audio Workstation is an easy win: it helps them structure their work more effectively, and helps you understand more quickly what you're looking at when assessing or offering feedback. Well-labelled and organised files are a must when working in industry, so it makes sense to develop this in education. There is a range of ways you can organise your DAW projects better, some obvious but still worth mentioning:

1. Label your tracks. It's simple, but this is something I frequently see done poorly. Looking at 20+ tracks all called Audio # in a never-ending list of numbers makes it difficult to understand what anything is, especially recordings involving drums. Spending time on this helps students and teachers alike. When doing this, use consistent abbreviations for things. SNR is snare, L + R for panning, and so on.
2. Colour-code everything. I have used the same system since working in a studio back in the day, and students love to think they are using something professional. It might seem a little arduous at times, but it just means that you can instantly see what it is when looking at a student's work. Assign colours to groups of instruments, as in the following: drums are red, bass is navy blue, acoustic guitar is light orange, electric guitar is dark orange, and so on.
3. Use Group tracks. This helps for both organisation and processing. Logic Pro is great for this, as it has two types: ‘Folder’ stacks for tidiness and sorting, ‘Summing’ stacks for processing. Ableton can ‘Nest’ groups, which is even better for making large files tidier.
4. Set up default presets for plugins and instruments. All DAWs do it and it speeds up workflow. Model this for students, show them what you like to have set up and tell them why.
5. There is a shortcut for everything; use it. It speeds up workflow, and anything that does that is an asset. I like to keep a large class notebook on the go with students updating it when they find new shortcuts. Every update of a DAW includes new ones, so it is important to keep up to date with these changes.

A well-organised Logic Pro file:

File organisation

‘Periodically save your mixes as a new version.’ This is the best advice possible and something that becomes second nature in pro studios. This doesn't just work for mixing projects, but for any kind of studio work. If you keep only one version of a file, you run the risk of losing everything if it corrupts – you cannot go back and find something that has been deleted, or something that has been irreversibly altered.

Data management should be a habit for the student as well as a responsibility for the centre. If those students have ambitions of getting into industry, then this is a habit they should start as early as possible. Show students a file-naming system that you use and insist upon it for all work handed in, and they will soon adopt it (or at least try to). This will set them up well for a future in music technology, and a whole host of other things.

This approach should extend to backups. I have a dropbox, two time machines backups, and still put stuff on external drives. When it comes to exam coursework this is the responsibility of the centre, but students can certainly help with this.

Vibe in the studio is everything

‘No one can be creative in an environment where they feel intimidated.’ Vibe is everything in a professional studio; a hostile atmosphere will mean poor performances, mistakes are made, and no one is happy. Just because you are in a school environment doesn't mean this is any different. Positivity is non-negotiable for me. A student drummer might be really nervous; help them. Music is supposed to be fun, collaborative and enriching. When it is, it just sounds better.

A bad work person blames their tools

‘Don't make a perceived lack of technology an excuse to fail.’ I love this, because it is so true! All too often people focus on the price of things, but fundamental techniques trump high-end equipment every time. Make sure you use what you have – however small – as well as you can. Avoid phase, control the proximity effect, prevent click bleed.

All too often, poor judgement is blamed on a lack of access to elite equipment. There is a perception that you ‘need’ expensive things, but so many major albums were made in the most ad hoc way – White Ladder by David Gray, for example. The most successful thing I have ever made was recorded in a disused open plan office space on headphones!

Make sure you are teaching students that there is no ‘perfect’ recording environment, and this mean you need to apply the techniques you know to make the best of any situation. Good acoustic absorption, sensible mic placement, good gain-staging, well-tuned instruments, good performances, and so on – this is what makes great recordings.

Ten tips for recording in schools

1. Buy a reflection filter. They are relatively cheap, and most vocals are ruined by a poor sounding room. It will exponentially improve your recordings.
2. Invest in acoustic treatment. You can spend all the money you want on microphones, but if the space they are in doesn't work, they won't either. You can build your own from insulation and furniture board, or there are plenty of foam options on the market. It will make such a difference.
3. Set up speakers properly. Tweeters should be at ear height, and the speakers and the listening position should form an equilateral triangle. Make sure you can only see the front of the speaker (not the sides) from the listening position. Most important, make sure they are facing down the longest dimension of the space.
4. Buy a good-quality, large-diaphragm dynamic mic. The Shure SM7b and similar can get you better vocal recordings in poor-sounding spaces, as they capture less ambience.
5. Don't break the bank on equipment. There are plenty of good medium-range brands out there (Røde, lower-end AKG, etc.).
6. But don't buy cheap, you will pay twice. Supplier-own brands should be avoided.
7. Make your space as ‘dry’ as possible. Creating an excellent acoustic live space is beyond the financial capabilities of even the most elite schools, so kill as much resonance as you can with materials that are available to you.
8. Keep the studio as tidy as possible. Build a culture of this with your students; wrap leads properly, never leave clips on mic stands, leave spaces tidier than you found them, and so on. This makes the studio look more impressive to students, and easier to use for both teaching and working on projects.
9. Always get the take, rather than trying to edit everything all the time. Pitch-correction and flextime options are great when needed, but getting a good performance is so much better.
10. Try not to clock-watch! This can be difficult in educational environments, especially when recordings take place during strict lesson times; but rushing things never works – it kills the vibe. If you can, be patient.