For example:

I record rhythm guitar first to lay down a harmony and I separate choruses and verses by strumming and picking chords. Then I add drum beat keeping the BPMs the same.
After I add bass line (I don't own a bass guitar just tune down low E and A on my gibson and add bunch of bottom end on the EQ) palm muting the simple bass line (it does the job).
After that I add solos, overdubs and other details. Now when played together all the tracks are not synchronized in the way that I am screwing up the transitions between the elements, for the lack of a better term, of the song (choruses, verses, blah blahs).

What is the typical way you guys record?
Do you work on drum beat first and then add the rest or does it matter?
How do you mark the transitions?

This last point where the most errors occur is that even that I know the song (i wrote it) I still get surprise when the transition occurs and find myself of beat. This does not happen to me playing live because I worry about my instrument only and even If I fall off the beat I can get back in the "pocket" quickly. In the recording scenario I am following 5-6 tracks at the same time and BPM is constant (computer generated).

I am doing this via the digitech jamman and the garageband on Mac and visually I can't see the tracks during the recording.
Please help me with this I need some schooling.

Hi Dan the Fenderman!

First off, don't worry. Your experience will grow if you stay relaxed, I know it's hard, but if stuff like this get's in your way, get up, have a milk shake or a burger or something, and start fresh. Feels much better that way.

Right.

Most common procedure would be to lay down drums and bass first, then fill with rythm guitar or piano or whatever your outfit, and then fill in with soli and vocs. From there you can take it wherever you want, backing vocals, overdubs, programming, you name it.
The important bit here seems to me the timing and the structure of the song. Best of course would be to hear a sample mixdown of your recording so we know what exactly the problem seems to be, but for now let's assume it's that.
Timing is very hard to keep even for experienced musicians. That's not because folks can't play, it's more because it's against our nature to function like clockwork. So when we get enthusiastic or excited in music, we might speed up; when we slow down it's probably because the flow of the music dictates that for that particular part.
Practising this of course is a good idea, however, that won't help you right now.

Structure. The best way is to approach a song very methodically. In a studio you would probably even go ahead and count through the whole song, to see how many bars it has; then you'd get down and count how many bars the intro, the verse, the pre-chorus and chorus have, and so forth. That means, whan you're programming the drums for instance, you know exactly after how many bars there's a break, etc. Also helps with laying down bass, rythm git trax, and generally makes you get to know your song. BTW, writing down a procedure chart for a song might clear up uncertainties. It may sound tedious, but sometimes it really helps!

So after you do your counting, first thing is to get a click track in your desired tempo and time, and then add the drums. It's a lot easier for many people to play to a drumloop or a beat than to play to a sterile click track.
After you added the drums and all is still ok with the structure (singing or whistling or playing to the drums can show where you have a bar of drums too many or too few. Nothing worse than recording all the instruments and then finding out while doing the vocs that there's half a verse missing), go ahead and add bass and/or guitars to pimp the whole thing up a bit! After that your backings are done and you can burn those speakers with the appropriate soli! And after that it's time for a nother milk shake.

So again, stay calm, stay relaxed and be methodical. Even greats like Pink Floyd used to have thes issues. Nick Mason writes in his memories of the Floyd, that for Atom Heart Mother they really had problems setting in with the drums after the big choir break, so they did the odd counting and so forth, and it worked out well! They had to record bass and drums on one track, without any accompaniment, and if we trust Wikipedia, that piece is 23:39 minutes long! If you listen carefully of course, you'll find minor issues with tempo and timing, but hey, it's rock'n'roll!

I don't know if this helps. Worth a shot.

All the best mate, and hang in there.

Cheers

Nutter

The Nutter has some good advice there. Do you have any latency issues with Garage Band, meaning does it seems to come out of time even though you have recorded your song in "perfect" time? If so you may want to download something called ASIO 4 all. It helped with my latency issues during computer recordings.

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Hey Yodacaster! How's it going?

I ruled out latency a bit because the built in audio drivers on the mac are usually -literally- quite up to speed. The Asio4all is a great solution if you're on the PC, though. Good tip!

(Again, fendermandan: samples would help locate issues.)

Cheers guys!

Nutter

Hey! I am not familiar with GarageBand or Macs in general. Thats great that they are so fast. A buddy of mine told me they are probably the best to use for media applications.

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Thanks a lot guys. Cool info, definitely worth a shot.

Milkshake,
After having musical diarrhea sort to speak with recorded 6 song ideas in an hour and hearing some rough but terrible results, I was thinking to hit something stronger
Just kidding

Music recording is not my profession so definitely no too much stress here, just wanted to get some basic education. You are right on the latency, I am having a nubie issues here and not the hardware. Mac with the FireWire port has quite a bit of bandwidth to cope with many tracks recorded at once.

Hi Fendermandan, glad to be of help.

regarding the milkshake... well, you never know who you're writing to on this board, I certainly didn't want to cause any other inflictions by promoting alcohol to a underaged kid, for instance... but I guess you deserve something stronger, mate!

Well see how it goes. I'm sure folks would appreciate to hear some of your stuff on here. So show us if you want.

And another thing. This stuff takes time to learn, so if you've only just started, better get those milkshakes lined up! Or better not - might turn into a milkaholic...

Mojo!

Nutter

Sure no probs, I will post as soon as I am happy somewhat with the results. I'll try again to rerecord with the drums first to see how it will work out that way. I sort of know that that process makes sense, but I play guitar so ideas come as I play and I can record ad-hoc on a JamMan. Later on I try to fill the rest of the content naively thinking that I have a song pulse and transitions under control.

Cheers

Dan

The_Nutter pretty much nails the way I usually record, although I believe that there is no 'etched in stone' process and sometime even guys like T-Bone Burnett will try something that his peers have said "no - no no" - - and he claims that even if he had done it a different way, he couldn't have achieved the results that he got.

My main advice is to "fix it before the mix". Don't try and track something quickly and hit some areas where you think you can fix it in the mix.

Good luck!

_________________
Being able to play and enjoy music is a gift that's often taken for granted.

Don't leave home without it!

I always do rhythm tracks first. Starting with drums, that way I can play along with that while recording everything else, and I know it'll all be able to mix down and still be in time. I also find it easier to keep my place if I record a basic rhythm guitar track all the way through the song and create a "scratch track" with that to play along with while recording the rest of the parts.
As far as cues, I just get a basic idea of what time in the song the first beat of the bar is, and then I adjust until it's all lined up. hth.

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https://www.facebook.com/TheDevilandMe.Music

+1 on experimenting!