When it comes to recording music, it’s tough to find an efficient way to manage your money with all of the different things that you need to invest in. Here are a few tips to help you get the best quality music for the lowest budget:

1. Use the studio time as an opportunity to knock out as many songs as possible.

2. Pay for final mixes separately for the songs that you actually want to release.

3. Book enough time that allows you to comfortably knock out the tracks you need to record.

Rehearse Before the Session

For some artists, pulling up and free-styling is the move. They’ve got it down to a science and it works for them.

For everybody else, sessions often get caught between starting new ideas, recutting the same vocals over and over again, or deciding how much mixing you actually want to get accomplished. The answer is simple, come in with a plan and execute.

Artists that spend the time to write and rehearse their tracks before going to the studio can knock out several tracks in a two hour session. They know what stacks, adlibs, and effects they want OR work with an engineer that can easily guide them. This allows them to spend less on time in the studio and then go home and decide which tracks they want to release and pay for a final mix (typically less than a 2 hour session) per song.

Only Pay for Final Mixes

Paying for a final mix is arguably a much better choice than booking mixing sessions for multiple reasons. Although you can’t sit and give direct feedback to the engineer, it gives them more time to get the job done.

The engineers can mix it down a little each day (with fresh ears), which almost always results in less revisions when the artist first hears it. Another is that the engineer is given the opportunity to reference the mix on multiple sets of speakers. This basically means that not only does the song sound good at the studio, but it will sound great in the car, headphones, or most other settings where people will listen to it.

I’m sure we’ve all had experiences where a song sounds great in the studio but then when you’re listening to it on the ride home, the vocals are too loud or the 808 isn’t hitting the same… these often result because of a lack of reference. It helps to collaborate with engineers.

Enjoy the Process

Lastly, don’t take this memo as a sign to get in and race the clock each session. Just get to know yourself as an artist.

If you rehearse before your recording sessions, you won’t constantly need to go back and re-record things. But when you do need to re-record, give yourself an extra half hour to listen and recut whatever you don’t like while you’re at the studio.

From there, let your engineer know which song to work on. This lets you put a little extra cash behind marketing instead of booking pointless sessions and repeating the cycle.