Like many studios, we’re starting to re-open our doors to performers and musicians. We’ve missed working with you all so much! In order to make sure we don’t have to lock things back down, here are a few things to expect and consider when you come in for a recording session in a studio post-pandemic lockdown.
Minimising the time you spend in the studio
Being part of a creative recording session can be one of the most engaging and enjoyable experiences for a musician (why do you think we do this for a job?). However, a performer doesn’t always have to be present for the whole session once they’ve recorded their parts. We know many sessions see an exhausted drummer asleep on a sofa only an hour or so after they were furiously hitting the kit. One of the main ways to reduce the risks of infection is to minimise exposure times, therefore we would urge you to consider if you really have to be present for the whole session. We can actually stream the audio from the session online and have you ‘present’ via video link now, so you don’t even have to miss out on hearing the song develop and adding suggestions as the work progresses.
VIPs Only
Many producers and studios have always insisted that only the necessary personnel are present in sessions to keep things focussed and avoid distractions for performers. That’s likely to be the norm now for health reasons too. We’re also operating a simple and private Track & Trace system where visitors to the studio will all be asked to input their basic contact details so that we can get in touch if we believe they may have been exposed to an increased risk of infection. Naturally, this information will not be shared with anyone and will only be used for us to contact you.
Sharing isn’t caring
This should be an obvious one but sharing instruments, microphones, coffee cups and personal items such as laptops or phones is going to increase the risks of transmission. In a studio, if it’s not possible to have a different microphone for each vocalist, you should at least be able to sterilise those items between use. We’ve stocked up on a microphone sanitiser which is kind to delicate electronics and got metal pop-shields which can be quickly sterilised between performers unlike the fabric variety which need to be washed and dried. As performers, remember to check that you’re approaching a ‘freshened up’ instrument or microphone and try to resist the urge to just pass your guitar over to a bandmate to work out that tricky extended jazz chord that you think the song needs.
Safe hands
So much of making a record can involve hours spent editing drum tracks, reducing breath noise, tuning vocals, re-amping guitars, etc. These parts of the process can be done without the performer in the room and often it can actually be beneficial for an engineer to have some time outside of the pressures of the recording session to experiment with these parts of the process. Please don’t be offended or disappointed if it’s suggested that we can take it from here, we’re just making sure that we don’t have to shut down for weeks because a visitor or staff member gets sick.
Again, we can get you involved by having you stream the audio online and get your feedback right there and then - or you can wait to hear the mix in context and streamline the process. Either way, not having to listen to hours of click tracks and kick drum editing isn’t as big a compromise as you might think.
Also on the subject of safe hands, wash them often!
Learning as we go
This is new territory for all of us, and we’re always open to suggestions on what we can do to make things safer. If you have seen others do things differently and you think we can improve our process, let us know!