How many working hours will be put into a production aside from the time dedicated to recording?

To fulfill today’s standards in professional music production, there are a couple of procedures that might be necessary to archive a certain goal. Editing is the term you have to keep in mind. The most time consuming instrument to edit would be the drums. Very common these days is to quantize the drums to the grid or in other words improve the timing of the performance. Another thing is drum replacements. Be it triggering the drums with better sounding samples from our extensive library or the samples of the kit itself. Also, there might be pitch correction of the vocals, the bass or even the guitars necessary. All that depends heavily on the performance of each musician or the desired goal of the production. As rule of thumb you could say that for every day of drum recording there could be up to one day of editing needed.

Your material has to get mixed too. A least one day is needed to create a basic sound. But that is just the bare minimum. Depending on how long your material is, how complex you arrangements are and how many special sections with completely different sounds there are (like extensive sections that contain instruments that are never used anywhere else in the project) mixing can take from 3 days up one week or more.

How many days will the production of a demo take?

A demo is a small production with 3 songs at max. Our philosophy is to work professionally in any case. To say “it’s just a demo” is complete nonsense, because every band wants to use their demo to present themselves to A&Rs, labels and booking agents. You have to sound as good as possible to overcome the flood of other bands these people has to deal with every day. 4 days are the bare minimum for a demo production. If you are faster, great. But don’t cut corners at this stage, you will regret it.

How many days will the production of an EP take?

An EP is production with 6-7 songs at max. Again, any production has to meet international standards. All in all you have to spend at least 10 days for a good result. Length and arrangement of the material is a big factor again. Sometimes it takes a little less time, sometimes more.

How many days will the production of a LP take?

A LP is a production containing 8 songs and more. Again, any production has to meet international standards. All in all you have to spend at least 17 days for a good result, but 20 days are very common too. Length and arrangement of the material is a big factor again. Sometimes it takes a little less time, sometimes more.

Whats the difference between mixing and mastering?

At the mixing stage you are working single tracks of every instrument or vocal. Only at this stage we can have influence on volume, character or any other attribute of a single track! After that a stereo track with all the instruments combined is created. That is the point where the mastering process starts. You are now dealing with the overall picture. Loudness, brightness, bass level etc. of the whole mix are now being processed. Other things for the mastering engineer are track listing (the order of the songs on the album), ISRC Codes (important if you have a label or distribution company) and gaps between songs.

What does a producer do?

A music producer is like a director of a movie. He has a clear vision of the final product and is responsible for the whole journey a project has to take to get there. He decides not only over the sound but can take part in songwriting, arranging or any other aspect of the process. We have a lot of experience what producing is concerned. Aside from our services as a studio, we are offering everything above as well. So if you are open for a new perspective on you material feel free to ask.

We want to record everything at home ourselves but let you guys mix our songs, is that possible?

It is possible. But do not underestimate in any way the level of quality your signals must have. Not only equipment choice is crucial. You got to have a very fine understanding of how a take has to sound to be good enough to achieve the best sound possible. You have to be able to hear very little differences in timing, pitch and articulation. “Fix it in the mix” is NOT the right way to an awesome sounding album, be aware!

We have no drummer/bassplayer/guitarist/singer bu want to book a studio session anyway, can you help in any way?

We won’t collecting new bandmembers for you, but we got a large phone book with several professional musicians who can be booked additionally for your session in the studio.