Scratch Tracks: The Secret To A Smooth Session

Do you like recording your song to just a metronome, and nothing else? Not hearing the vocals to know where you’re at, hearing no one else’s performance to really get you in the groove, and uncertainty in knowing you played that bar the right amount of times? Sounds like a not-so-fun time to me! There’s one thing you can do to avoid all of this, and it’ll take you 5 minutes: Scratch Tracks.

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Scratch Tracks

Scratch tracks. These are the god send of keeping organized, keeping track of where you are, playing with the right amount of feel, and reacting to your bandmates.

Scratch tracks are a simple, one full take of your song with the vocals and a chordal instrument, that will be replaced later when the rest of the “real” instruments have been tracked.

These are like the outline of a paper. A rough first draft. From this you can add all of the spices and seasonings to really bring the song to life.

The Benefits

Many times, especially for songs that aren’t very well practiced, it’s easy to lose your place playing your part when you’re the only one playing. It’s even worse when you accidentally add a measure without even realizing it until the next person records!

With a scratch track, you’ll know exactly what chord you’re on based on the scratch guitar or piano or whatever, and you’ll know what section of the song you’re at based on the vocals. Moreover, you can match or emphasize the energy of the section because you’re hearing someone else play with you!

This helps the engineer out before recording the “real” tracks as well. We can put markers on the session to differentiate the sections of the song, which helps tremendously when trying to maneuver across the session.

Tempo Benefit

By creating scratch tracks, there’s also a hidden benefit: selecting the tempo of the song. If you’re able to record scratch tracks at home, you’ll get the chance to fine tune the tempo of the song that best fits.

Sometimes when trying to find the tempo at the recording session, we won’t realize that the tempo is actually a tad too fast or too slow until we record a part. Or a nightmare situation: after recording the drums. With the vocals in the scratch track, it’s easy to tell if the tempo is just right, so no worries once you record a scratch track.

Sonic Benefit

Usually drums are tracked first. This is for multiple reasons: it takes a long time to set up the drums and place the mics, the drums are a huge part of the sound of the song, and it lays the foundation for everyone else to record to, timing-wise and energy-wise.

Since drums take so long to set up, it’s usually good to get those out of the way first. It’ll give the engineer the most time to focus on the biggest part of the sound, the drums. The drums take up low end from the kick all the way up to the high end from the cymbals.

Since these elements are all recorded at the same time, it’s best to spend the most time tweaking and making sure this is right before moving forward; it’s very hard to fix mistakes when recording drums.

Without scratch tracks, the drummer will have to use up some of their thinking power to make sure where he’s at and thinking of what the other players will be doing during certain sections. With scratch tracks, he/she can just focus on playing along and making sure he/she has a good performance, which will benefit everyone else down the line because they’ll have to play to what was just recorded!

Practice Benefit

One last benefit to scratch tracks, if you don’t have a demo, is you can send them to your bandmates to practice if they're made ahead of time. This will give them time to know what to expect at the session and solidify any possible changes made to the arrangement. By the time they get to the studio, you’ll want them to just have to go through the motions and know it like the back of their hands.

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Scratch tracks are one of the most valuable things to have to start off a session. If you have the ability to record them at home (quality doesn’t really matter, they will be replaced!) then I highly suggest you do! You can give it to your engineer at the start of the session or before so they can get set up. Just make sure you’re playing to a metronome, and write down the tempo for the engineer!

If you'd like a full comprehensive studio preparation checklist, you're in luck! Go check out the studio preparation checklist I've made over at the blog homepage if you haven't already, that tells you everything you need to know in order to get the most out of your recording session!

Good luck with all of your recording endeavors!

-Michael