Let’s face it…
At some time in your brass playing career, you’re probably going to need a high-quality demo recording to send out to an orchestra, agent, cruise ship entertainment manager, conductor, teacher, family & friends, etc etc.
So, to help you get started, here are a few tips and words of advice.
How to make an audio demo recording for auditions: Part ONE
Q: Should I hire a professional recording studio at $x/hour, or should I make the recording myself?
A: As a brass player, there are valid arguments both for and against using a professional recording studio to make a demo recording. My personal preference is to make a recording myself, and here are my reasons why:
- Time and money: With a recording studio, you are generally paying by the hour. So, if things take longer than you originally expect (they almost always do!) or you have a bad day, the meter is runnin! So, unless your pockets are pretty deep and money isn’t an issue for you, you might find yourself being overly stressed out in your session – especially if you haven’t recorded in a studio before!
- Chops: Let’s say you book a 2 hour slot, but after the first hour and half, you could really use a break before attempting that Bolero excerpt. You’ve got 2 choices: either run the Bolero on tired chops (never a good idea), or wait for twenty minutes and try to squeeze it in at the end.
- Chops – the other end of the scale: Let’s say you booked that 2 hour slot, you’ve got chops to burn, you’re in the flow, but your time is running out. You could pay for overtime, as long as no one else has the studio booked after you…
- Recording engineers: Personally, I used to spend quite a bit of time in studios, behind a mixing board at live gigs, and working with different engineers, so I know that although the majority of audio engineers will know how to get great drum, bass, guitar, vocal, keys tracks down, many of them won’t have much experience in recording a ‘legit’ brass sound. There are of course engineers out there that are masters at capturing a warm, resonant, lively, full ‘legit’ or ‘jazz’ sound, so if you know one of these guys (or gals), be nice to them
Bottom line though, you might not get the sound you were expecting from your average recording studio with an engineer who spends most of his/her time recording electric bands. - Reverb: This is a biggie. Even though effects machines have come a long way over the years, and excellent quality reverb can be added to a ‘dead’ studio sound to make it more ‘natural’, in my opinion, you just can’t beat recording in a live acoustic. Sure, some recording studios do have very large recording rooms, such as the BBC Studio 7 in Manchester, but my guess is that this sort of studio recording room is outside of most of our budgets!
So, my advice, when it comes to making a high-quality demo recording, unless you have a lot of spare change, is to avoid the studio, and to make the recording yourself.
Q: Sounds fair enough. But isn’t it a bit overwhelming? All that equipment? And where should I record? Where should I start?
