How long your clients need to make an album?

[jindrich]

a day, a week a month?

the question is not headed to those gearslutzs working on own projects, but to those renting the studio and themselves as engineer to bands who come to record their albums.

so, how long do your clients (bands) need to track AND mix an album (say 10 songs) ?

and you charge for time or for the whole project?

[XSergeantD]

Had a rock band in from around 2/13 till around 5/10 tracking. The producers then took them off to their studio in england to finish vox and I think some kbds and to mix and got word they finished everything around 6/25. I can't speak for the billing, but I think it was a project price at x amount of hrs per day and x number of days

[andychamp]

Shortest "album" project yet: 12 songs in 3 days.

• day 1: basics (dr/b/gtr)
• day 2: overdubs (gtr doublings&solos/vocs)
• day 3: mixdown

Needless to say that, performance- and mix-wise, it sounded the part.

[jindrich]

Originally Posted by andychamp

Shortest "album" project yet: 12 songs in 3 days.

• day 1: basics (dr/b/gtr)
• day 2: overdubs (gtr doublings&solos/vocs)
• day 3: mixdown

Needless to say that, performance- and mix-wise, it sounded the part.

wow, sure it sounded great
was it one of those terrible 20hour/day-we-dont-have-money projects?

[Shandy]

I've done a couple of those 3-day projects here. It's a quick & dirty notch on the ol' bedpost, but not usually an end product I'm real excited to have my name on.

At the other end of the scale, I've had one guy in here since last October working on the same project. It's good to have him around-- I mean, someone's got to pay the rent.

[sawhorse]

Preface:
I come with my own a studio that includes myself as engineer... hourly ($75) and daily (10hrs/$650)... block rates apply at 2 day for $1200... 3 days for $1750... 5 days for $2750. Now this is consecutive dates, mind you.

For an independent artist/band (using their own money) 10 song project, I'd try to budget 15-17 dates total. About 10 hours a song to track... 2 songs a day to mix.

Of course, the style of music depends... whether a lot of parts are taken & kept "live" with few overdubs or more commercial pop/rock stuff with a lot of edits and overdubs... so the time frame can change accordingly. But, personally, I think $1000 per song is a good budget for indie bands that want attention from indie labels...

I'm preparing a budget for an Island/Def Jam artist now doing a 10 song release... we will track 15 and whittle it down. The studio time reserved in the budget is 45 days. you do the math.

[Radioking]

Don't get many full albums in my place but often do 7-9 track mini albums mostly in about 10-14 days recorded and mixed. I am pretty low end really.

However, at the other end of the scale the band I play for takes 5-6 months to complete the recording of an album (20 ish tracks). We must have kept a few studios afloat in our time. Now we all have various home and semi pro studio set-ups of our own we tend to work much faster.

[jeronimo]

An album takes from 70 to 200 hours to get done, but 80% of the time, it's done in around 110 hours.
I did an album, recording, mixing and mastering in one day :)

[DrDeltaM]

Originally Posted by jeronimo

I did an album, recording, mixing and mastering in one day :)

There's only an hour and a bit space on a CD after all

[andychamp]

Originally Posted by jindrich

...
was it one of those terrible 20hour/day-we-dont-have-money projects?

Not quite 20 hrs., but besides that, you're right.
But that's the only time I offered any client such a deal.
And I made them promise they wouldn't tell other bands what a bargain they'd gotten. So far, they've kept their promise.

[carival]

Most of them need a relatively short amount of time. One day would be the shortest time spent for quite a few jazz or blues, live to two track records. Not including mastering. About a month (actual studio time, not period) would be the longest for other genres. Typically a week to record and a week to mix. Fortunately, most of my clients play keeper tracks (no editing desired) during basics (including many vocals), so overdubs are only added stuff and a few vocal fixes, no redos. Sometimes a singer will like to have a week booked for their vocals. The better the players are, the less time they need or want. The worse they are, the more they want to spend, generally yielding little improvement. These are mostly smaller, indy label releases with pretty small budgets.

[andychamp]

Originally Posted by carival

...The better the players are, the less time they need or want.

That is so true!
Plus it makes for less boring sessions and my head is free to come up with solutions that will actually benefit the session (as opposed to being preoccupied with how I'm gonna hide/correct the players' mistakes later on)

[djui5]

3 days to 3 months usually. Sometimes they go longer with larger records :)

[C_F_H_13]

Originally Posted by djui5

3 days to 3 months usually. Sometimes they go longer with larger records :)

That's pretty close to what I would say too. The other big thing I have to factor in is editting and "sweetning".

Last full record I did, we tracked 10 songs completely in four 10 hour days. Actually it was about 32 hours to do 10 songs cause of setup and breaks. Then after that I had about 10 days of going through takes to make sure I didn't miss any magic....then editing/sample addition/vocal tuning/beat detectiving. Then I spent about 10 days mixing the record....3 days to mix 10 songs...then 7 days of recalls and changes.

So all in all I'd say about 3 weeks is my average.

[jeronimo]

Originally Posted by carival

The better the players are, the less time they need or want. The worse they are, the more they want to spend, generally yielding little improvement.

Originally Posted by andychamp

Plus it makes for less boring sessions and my head is free to come up with solutions that will actually benefit the session (as opposed to being preoccupied with how I'm gonna hide/correct the players' mistakes later on)

Ohhh boy, I´m so glad to hear/read that... Same thing here!!!!

[bobby yarrow]

It varies a lot, depending on how good they want it to be.

I'm kind of a bottom-feeder, but I'm done doing ultra-low-budget records. A really well-rehearsed band that wants a live sound can get a lot done in a day, but the best I've ever done is bed tracks in a day + another couple of days of overdubs. (Working a project now where, for reasons that seem like fetish to me, the artist wants no overdubs on most of the tracks, and no comp'ing or punch-ins anywhere. You'd think that'd make it quicker, but we're doing great if we get a song in a day.) Straight mixing, I never manage to get more than 2 songs done in a day.

So, for 10 songs, figure minimum 3 days tracking, 5 days mixing, plus a day for mix adjustments.

Most of my projects are much more hands-on, and much more time intensive. I'd rather make 4 or 5 records a year than band thru a bunch of short projects, really.