The Band Jam Songwriting Setup
Our series on songwriting setups for different situations continues! Today, we’re looking at gear that’s super useful when writing music in a group jam session with your friends.
The digital mixer
We now have affordable digital mixers, i.e. gear designed specifically as an all-in-one mixer, recorder, and computer interface. A digital mixer is a product that combines features of an analog mixing board with digital integration of some kind. Often, this means you can record your tracks digitally either to an SD card, or directly into a computer, or both.
Ever played at a nicer live music venue and seen your sound tech tapping on a tablet, while they’re setting up your stage mics? That tablet is a wireless interface that connects to a digital mixer back in the sound booth.
Digital mixers have been around for quite a while, but until recently they’ve been designed and marketed as higher-end professional audio products. Some of the very first digital mixers from the early 2000’s era were custom digital circuit boards that would allow you to integrate your $100,000 analog studio console seamlessly into a digital Pro Tools rig. It’s taken a while for the prices on this tech to come down to levels affordable for DIYers, but we’re finally there!
Affordable digital mixers for use in the rehearsal room
Recently, brands like Tascam and Zoom have been innovating in this product category, by turning digital mixers into handy rehearsal and demoing tools that are more affordable. They’ve dropped the price significantly, while maintaining quality, and keeping lots of useful computer connectivity. Now, it’s become easy to record your full band onto separate tracks, onto a computer, with just a single piece of gear.
No need to buy all of these components separately, hook them up, and then fiddle with them, just to record a simple idea with your band in rehearsal.
A digital mixer functions as:
an audio mixer
a digital audio interface into your computer
a digital recorder to an SD card
a PA system for your rehearsal area (handy for your vocalist)
a studio monitoring system (for hooking up studio monitors and headphones)
All of this, in an all-in-one piece of gear. Super useful! Here’s one of them, the Tascam Model 12:
How to use a digital mixer in rehearsal with your band
With this type of affordable gear, your band could set up all your mics in your rehearsal space, while also including PA speakers for your vocalist to sing through.
Then, by leaving your mics always set up around your gear, you could come into rehearsal, grab your instruments, hit a few buttons, and quickly record an entire jam session with your band onto individual tracks, into your computer.
Having all of your music recorded out onto separate tracks, as opposed to a voice memo with everything in one stereo file, gives you the ability to make more focused writing decisions when demoing your music. Now, you don’t have to replay a whole song from the top just to work on a single section of music. Instead, you can focus on getting only your chorus or bridge sections exactly right, playing live, while looping just that section into a digital audio workstation.
You could also make high quality full-band demos of your work, and then bring those individual tracks into a professional studio for additional treatment.
In addition, this gear also unlocks the ability to do rough mixes of your band on your own time, and to your own schedule. There are some limitations to this approach, but it’s a really powerful tool to have at your fingertips.
Limitations of the digital mixer rehearsal studio
Because this all-in-one gear option is such a powerful tool, it’s easy to start to feel like you might never need to go into a pro studio at all if you’re using one.
Why bother with all that, when you can just do the same thing recording yourself in your rehearsal room, right?
Well, it’s important to remember that no matter how much gear you have in your rehearsal space, you’re not really getting the same thing by recording your tracks in your rehearsal room on your own. There are a lot of differences between recording yourself in a home context, and what the professionals do.
Any pro studio will have a much higher level of gear, and lots of experience recording music using that gear. That’s really what you’re paying for when you use a pro studio: quality of gear and musical experience of the people who work there. Even though the technical recording processes might be similar when recording your band yourself in rehearsal using a digital mixer, there’s still a lot of value that the professionals add to the music creation process.
My recommendation: use this kind of gear, and the technical facility it enables, to refine your musical intentions in more specific ways during the songwriting process. Then, bring those clear creative intentions into the professional studio when it’s the right time to record, and this gear will have more than paid for itself!
Remember, gear like this doesn’t replace the professional studio setting. Rather, it enhances your ability to write and develop musical ideas more accurately, and that in turn allows you to get the most out of the pros when you’re ready for them.
Once you’ve got your band recorded onto separate tracks, be sure to grab the Mixing Cheat Sheet so you can get those tracks sounding their best!
