If you are a record producer; then you should give some importance on documenting your work particularly in monitoring music production credits.
If you fail to monitor and document your work, you will end up with a high risk project. It is because sooner or later it will be released and hopefully will catch some public attention (particularly commercial releases) then someone will sue you out of nowhere that you are not giving them proper credits for their work. Much worse if you do not have supporting evidence (in writing) to prove the real musicians involved in the project or the engineers. Then you will be facing a serious issue.
In addition as a producer, label or artist self-producing the projects; you should know the technical specifications used in the recording so that you can present this document to any person that are also involved in the project. Example of these technical specifications are bit depth, sample rate, DAW, etc. that provides important information about how the recording was made.
So how can you ensure that your music production work particularly the recording session has been fully documented?
Use a Recording/Tracking Form Sheet
The answer to this problem is to track the recording session using a recording/tracking form sheet. There are no standard forms that you can use. But I would suggest you can use this Recording and Tracking Session Form Sheet.
This is how the upper part of the form looks like:
First part of the form
Below is how you are going to fill up the details:
1.) Date started– the date that the recording started.
2.) Song title– the official title of the song. If the song is copyrighted, use the title registered.
3.) Music publisher/writers– who wrote the song as well as the publishers. Sometimes artist and producers rush to the studios without giving proper credits to the songwriters and publishers. This can result to a legal issue particularly if the labels/artist/producers did not make an agreement with the publisher to use the song. Bear in mind that if you did not write the song, you have to ask permission before you can use it whether it’s for non-commercial or commercial reasons.
4.) Original/Cover – if the artist wrote the song, it is their original work. Otherwise its cover; the record producer should know this so that proper licensing procedures are implemented. Recording studio engineers should discourage recording of cover songs without proper authorization or license.
5.) Artist– the name of the artist or band.
6.) Album- if you are recording an album project, write the album name.
7.) Label– the name of the label, if the project doesn’t have label, use the owner of the sound recording copyright (in this case the artist if they are the one financial the entire sessions).
8.) Producers – the one who is responsible for approving and disapproving the recording take. Sometimes the label hires producers or it can just be the artist themselves.
9.) Studio – name of the recording studio.
10.) Engineers – the name of the recording engineer in-charge; including the assistant if applicable.
11.) Operating system– the OS used by the computer to record the tracks.
12.) DAW– the recording software used e.g. Reaper, Pro tools, Cubase, etc.
13.) Bit depth– e.g. 24-bits, 32-bit float. Never use 16-bit when tracking.
14.) Sample rate– e.g. 44.1 KHz, 48 KHz, 96 KHz, 192 KHz. Never use less than 44.1 KHz.
15.) Audio Interface – the analog to digital hardware interface used, e.g. Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 or DigiDesign Mbox.
Then this is how the tracking details would look like where you can give proper credits to all musicians in the project:
The track # is the numbering of tracks. For example Track #1 for first track, etc. Some multi-track project can have less than 10 tracks and some have more than 20; it depends on the production style and genre.
For the track name, you need to be specific. For example “lead vocals”, “solo guitar”, “snare”. The date is the date of the recording. The difference between the finish time and start time is the number minutes or hours that is used during the recording of the track. Longer number of hours indicates that the track is difficult and has a number of re-takes (e.g. lead vocal).
Indicate the full name of the musician with signature besides it. This is the documentary evidence of the musicians involve in the tracking/recording. This will be different for every track, for e.g. different musician for bass, drums, guitars, etc. This includes the session players (paid to play in the studio). This section is very important for giving musician credits.
The filename is the final take that is approved by the producer that will be submitted for mixing. Be specific and make sure it aligns with the track name, e.g.:
leadvocal.wav
leadguitar.wav
Finally the main parties would now agree by signing at the last section of the document:
Signatory in the recording
The engineer signature confirms that the data provided are accurate and the producer signature signifies that the musician, tracks, filename are final and for audio mixing. It also shows the total cost of the recording which will be used by the producer in any financial auditing. This document would now be submitted for audio mixing along with all the recorded files. Read this tutorial on how to prepare and send recorded tracks for audio mixing.
Content last updated on July 28, 2012