Recording an album in 7 Days

As we all know, making an album isn't anywhere near as difficult as it was 10 years ago. Now anyone with a £300 computer and £100 software is capable of producing a high quality album from conception to CD.

So why do so many of us musicians still have trouble taking the step from writing to releasing?

Why are we so unfocused?
Music making is now so accessable and so easy that we're spoilt for choice. I have around 40 - 50 unfinished tracks lying around, they're probably never going to be finished. Why? because I'm not happy with them. They don't sound exactly like they did in my head. The fact is that its been so long since I started them that they probably did sound like it did in my head but have passed it and turned into something completely different. They've lost the initial focus I had when I started the track.

Making it happen

The technique ahead is a summarised version of the technique I used to create two of my albums. I am currently putting the finishing touches to a book with a more detailed look on how to record an album in 7 days.

The first thing you need to do is commit yourself. Choose your start day and prepare yourself for working 9:00am to 5:00pm for seven days. You're doing this for you. Make the most of it.

The second thing you need to do is have pen and paper next to you, test your equipment to make sure everything works, have spare strings/batteries/cables ready and take at least an hour break in the middle of every working day.

Using this structure you'll learn to move quickly and commit to decisions and finally get to do what you should have done years ago!


Day 1: Writing.

1. Press record on your DAW/4 track/tape recorder and just noodle around with your instrument.
2. Every time you have a great idea, write it down on a piece of paper along with the time on your recorder.
3. Move onto the next idea

The important thing is to keep moving onto new ideas all the time. This keeps them fresh and stops you getting bored of them/overthinking them.

Day 2: Refining.

1. Choose one of your favourite ideas
2. Play around with your idea trying extra melodies with it, harmonies and generally fleshing out the idea
3. Spend 25 minutes for each idea until you have between 12 and 14 fleshed out ideas

Once again, keeping moving is the key. Don't overthink things, don't worry about perfecting it.

Day 3: Recording

1. Fire up your DAW
2. Set your metronome and arm a track
3. Record ONE take of your idea
4. Arm the next track and record the next part, again in ONE TAKE.
5. Repeat the steps until you have a draft of your song.
6. Spend no longer than 25 minutes on the song

Do this for all of your songs. Spend no longer than 25 minutes for each song.

Day 4: Editing.

1. Pick a song.
2. Choose the first track in the song.
3. Solo the track so that you can hear just the track and the metronome.
4. Listen to the track and split the track up and mark the sections that sound best
5. Ensure that you have enough bars to satisfy your chorus, verse, bridge etc... Basically in total you will have once through of all of your sections
6. Tweak any out of time/out of tune notes in those sections
6. Go back into your song and replace the sloppy/out of time sections with the good sections
7. Move onto the next track and repeat steps 3-6 until you have tidied all of your tracks

Do this for all of your songs. Spend no longer than 25 minutes for each song.

Day 5: Rerecording / Arranging

1,Choose one of your favourite songs
2. Play it once through and make a note of things that need changing/fixing. This could be moving sections, muting instruments, adding intro/outros, plugin/instrument choices, timing, out of tune notes, incorrect chords.
3. Make the changes
4. Rerecord ONLY the sections that you feel need rerecording.

DO NOT take this time to rerecord everything that you have. This is the point where the self-doubt creeps in, don't listen to it! Commit to your ideas!

Do this for all of your songs. Spend no longer than 25 minutes for each song.

Day 6: Mixing

1. Fire up your DAW and pick a project
2. Pull the volume faders down for all of your tracks
3. Press play on your DAW
4. Raise the volume of your drums so that they're peaking at around -3db
5. Bring up the volume of your bass track so that the level sounds right with the drums
6. Add EQ the drums and the bass so that they gel together.
6. If you have any vocal tracks, nows the time to bring up the levels and tweak the EQ and compression so that they fit with the drums and bass.
7. Bring up the volume of the rest of the instruments one by one tweaking EQ and compression as you go.
8. Burn all your tracks onto CD
9. Listen to your CD on multiple systems as possible. Car CD players, small CD players, on headphones and through the hifi speakers making notes on what needs to be tweaked on your songs. e.g. too much bass on guitar, lower vocals.

Do this for all of your songs. Spend no longer than 25 minutes for each song.


Day 7: Tweaking & Mastering

1. Fire up your DAW
2. Using your notes as a reference, make final tweaks to your songs
3. Render all your songs to .wavs/.aiffs
4. Create a blank project on your DAW
5. Create as many audio tracks as you have songs
6. Add EQ to each track and a multiband compressor (bypassed for the moment) on the master track
7. Import your audio files into the project in the order you want them in, one on each track, stagger the timing of each so that they follow each other sequentially.
8. Listen through to your tracks. Choose the best mixed track (the track you're most pleased with) and tweak the EQ for each of the tracks so that they fit in with your best mixed track. (bear in mind that your not trying to EQ to make it sound exactly the same as your "best mixed" track, just so that there isn't a big difference in sound when it jumps from one track to another.
9. Turn on your master compressor and tweak the settings so that it adds a small amount of compression to catch any stray peaks in your tracks
10. Render your album as it's individual tracks and burn to CD
11. Show of your work to all of your friends!

Congratulations, not only have you commit yourself to creating an album, you've learned and practiced techniques that will help you make better music quicker for your next album (wait, is there a gap in your diary next week..?)