We are the music makers - producers?

@>>>>>> I spent decades studiously ignoring studio trickery when I was in bands. The ignorance was almost a badge of honour until I realised how much i'd been holding myself back by not engaging with the basics. I guess i've been self sufficient recording-wise for about 10 years now. By no means an expert but I do have a few golden rules that I try and stick to, In no particular order: Hope this isn't patronising. I would have found it helpful when I started so i'm sticking it down here.

• The performance is everything. I don't even bother trying to record if I know i'm stressed, shattered, hung-over, sick or whatever. II try and set aside some time when I know i'll be free of distractions and get set up in advance.

• I also try and grab material in that magic moment between just learning it and getting too slick or rehearsed. That usually means starting recording when I haven't quite got the hang of it yet and recording a bunch of takes until I'm just about getting though it then comping the last couple of takes. Quickswipe comping in Logic is ace for this.

• Also I try and get myself as comfortable as possible and aim for vibe over everything. It doesn't always work. Recording vocals at 4pm halfway through your second drink is the sweetspot. trying to record a bass overdub when you're pissed is a fools's errand.

• Source. If the source sound is good it's just a matter of not fucking with it (within reason). if you have a guitars sound you love in the room you can probably capture 80% of the vibe with a single close mic. Maybe add another room mic if you're feeling posh but basically, great guitar sound though an SM57 on the grille and not fucked with, will still be a great guitar sound.

• High pass (shelve off some low end) ALL the things. For years I think I overdid this advice and had aggressive cliff face EQs below 100hz on everything but the bass. Lately the shelving I use is way less aggressive, but definitely still there. The logic behind this is essentially that any track you don't do this to will include an element of low frequency (especially a Marshall stack) and by the time you've stacked up a load of tracks without a high pass filter the cumulative low-end is really starting to take up a lot of headroom and energy and muddy up the mix and steam volume. It's not just removing low end, it's removing unnecessary low end that wouldn't really be audible in a mix anyway. It's a bit of an art to get spot on but gently shelving off below 100hz on anything that is't primarily supposed to providing bass is a good start.

• Gain staging. This is like plate spinning for me. I find it a nightmare. It's effectively making sure nothing's up against the digital limit or too quiet, but is presenting enough of a clean signal to the output so that the combined track signals create an output level that is the happy place of needing a but of subtle mastering lift. Too hot across the board and you end up with nowhere to go. Too cold you end up having to crush the shit out of stuff at the output and that never sounds great.

• Using Aux channels/Bus/Sends. Basic stuff but a game changer. Instead of putting discrete reverb and compression plug-ins on every track, Set up an aux track up for your basics and send as much or little signal to them s as you want. Saves load of processing power too. I usually start with three Aux channels: room reverb (sending a bit of everything that would have been played live in thee old days gives the impression of it all being in the same room), a vocal reverb and a compressor. Then I just use the send controls on each channel to decide how much of every channel you want to put though it Eazy.

Once you've got all that down and a decent "mastering" chain sorted you're pretty much away.