Ever wonder how the pros prepare for making records? One word, pre-production. In this clip Paul explains his pre-production routine and how it simplifies the recording process.

Pre-pro for me is all about songs. Um. I’ll have ‘em send me everything. I usually have Devin, my guy, load it onto my phone so that I can, when I’m around the house or driving or whatever, I’m just like, passively listening to them, cuz everybody has demos now, you can just sing into your iPhone, you know. 

And so, I’ll get familiar with the stuff without actually just sitting down and like, really focusing on it. And then, let’s say, let’s say I know I’m going to have pre-pro with them, uh, in a week or whatever. Then I’ll, ok I’m familiar with all the songs, I’ll sit down, listen to ‘em, uh, actively and make notes about what I like about each song, what I don’t like about each song. I try to be more supportive than, um, negative, but honest at the same time and, uh, and then I’ll usually, you know, let’s say we’re shooting to get five songs for the EP, I’ll give my picks in terms of like, these are non-negotiables. If you don't cut this song, I’m not working on this project, to I like these, but there’s only space for two and there’s four here so that’s something we need to talk about. And then, these are the ones that I’m not connected to at all. And so that’s, it’s a hefty amount of work for me on the front end, especially like for full length records if a band’s turning in thirty songs, um, but it’s work that has to be done. 

And really what it is for me is just looking for, uh, songs I’m willing to go the distance with cuz it’s gonna take a lot of time and a lot of, um, emotion and, uh, sweat from me, so I need to be connected to it. And then, we’ll usually, either through email or sit down face to face if they’re in town, and to try and get the list down to okay, these are the five that we’re doing. 

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So, if it’s a band, I want you guys to go work on these five, work on the parts we just talked about based off my notes and, um, and I want you guys to know the songs well enough to be able to play them and concentrate on emotion, energy, not thinking about what chord is coming next, but not play them so much that it’s just muscle memory. There’s a balance in there, um, and, and then when they come back to the studio or whatever, uh, for the tracking, I kind of, I want ‘em to be about sixty percent prepared where it’s like, there’s room for creativity, we’re not locked into “okay the bridge has to come here.” Um, cuz I don’t really, I can’t flush that stuff out until we’re in there, doing it and I’ll even say stuff in pre-pro that I’m, when we’re tracking like “that was totally stupid,” you know. The chorus needs to be twice as long or whatever. Um, and if you’ve got a band that’s too rehearsed sometimes it’s hard to knock them out of like that muscle memory so, um, that’s kind of the process for a band. 

For solo artists, it’s the same, like, with the song choice and everything, but we might spend more time on the front end kind of working on arrangement because once you, once you’re spending a bunch of money with session players, it’s like I don’t want to be like “should the bridge be twice as long?” We wanna have it more dialed in because we’re paying them, you know, for their time. With bands it’s a little more, “let’s wait and see when we get in there, how it feels,” you know. 

Um, but a lot of my process honestly from beginning to end is just trying to keep the energy and the excitement, the positive vibes at an all time high. And so, that means jumping around a lot like, if I feel like everybody’s starting to drag down cuz we’re working on some keyboard part that’s not happening and all of a sudden three musicians have left the room because they’re not interested anymore it’s like, okay. Next song, let’s do something else and come back to this you know. Um. So, yeah.