Pre-Production: Scratch Tracks

Pre-Production: Scratch Tracks

It's a friday night. I'm sitting in my apartment. alone. with my guitar. and a tiny little microphone.

The first step in the recording process, especially when you're recording instruments separately, is to record scratch tracks of all the songs.

For the rest of the band who will be recording one at a time (more or less), having a guitar-vocal track to play to is critical in keeping the timing/rhythm of the song.


My job tonight is to record ALL my songs with solo guitar and voice while a "click track" is playing in my headphones. I record the songs in time with the click track so the band will have the right tempo to play to. This saves a lot of time and editing in the post-production phase of the project.

I'm recording with a small USB microphone called the Snowflake by Blue Microphones. It's small and startlingly inexpensive, but it does the job perfectly.

It's hot in here.

Now it's time to take these scratch tracks and send them to my band and to the studio! Woohoo!