As I near the end of the recording phase of a project I like to finish with this little exercise. I call it simply the Notepad Technique, and it has saved my butt and helped me take my recordings from OK to awesome many times.
No matter your skill level, your DAW of choice, or your budget, everyone can implement the Notepad Technique and reap the rewards. All you need is a blank pad of note paper and a pen. What you do with it next can take your tracks to the next level.
Via Wellness GM Flickr
Think Like Your Audience
The entire recording process you’ve been wearing many hats and playing many roles. You’ve juggled the roles of songwriter, performer, producer, and engineer and you’ve hopefully captured some killer recordings. But before you sign off on these tracks and move on to mixing, you need to wear one more hat: your audience’s.
The goal of a great song and recording is to move the end user, the listener! So what better way to ensure your tracks do that well than to listen back to them like a they would? And that’s exactly what the Notepad Technique is all about, getting you to see what’s missing in your tracks from a listener’s perspective.
Engaging From Start To Finish
I personally believe that the goal of every great recording is to capture the listener’s attention from beginning to final note. There should be no wasted time. Each moment should draw the listener in deeper. If your song were playing on the radio, there should be no moment that the listener would even consider grabbing the dial and changing the station.
This is where the notepad comes in. Simply open up your session, one song at a time, press play and look away from the screen. In fact, close your eyes. Begin trying to enjoy the song as a listener, not as an engineer. The moment something in the song seems a bit to repetitive, boring, or anti-climatic take note of where it is and what feels wrong.
It could be that the chorus really doesn’t bump in excitement like you thought. It could be that verse 2 seems to drag, especially hearing the hook in the chorus. It could be that the bridge is just too darn long. Whatever your first thought is when you get to it, write it down on the notepad.
Get Specific, Create Solutions
After your first time through the song where you’ve identified any weak points in the song, it’s time to get specific and come up with some solutions. Perhaps you need a synth pad in the second verse to keep things interesting, or maybe it’s some hand percussion in the chorus to push the energy up a notch. Just write down what you intend to do about the issues.
The key point here is to come up with solutions that you can actually implement. Remember, you’re at the end of the recording phase. The goal isn’t to extend things much longer. You don’t need a “perfect” recording with a string quartet. Perhaps some sampled strings will do the trick.
At this point in the game your recordings should be awesome, these final elements will simply fill in the gaps and keep the listener’s attention for the duration of the song.
Keep This Move Analog
Here’s one final suggestion. One of the biggest reasons the Notepad Technique works is because it’s analog. That’s right, you’re using real paper and pen. Why does this matter? Because it forces you to do something we rarely do anymore when working in the studio, look away from the screen!
Having some paper on your desk or lap, is a clever little hack to get you to stop “seeing” your tracks and instead “hear” them for what they really are. You’ll be surprised just how much more you pick up on when listening to the songs this way.
Trust me: skip the digital note taking options and keep this move analog.
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My name is Graham Cochrane and I'm the founder of The Recording Revolution, one of the world's most loved audio recording and mixing blogs with over 200,000 readers each month. 
This is good advice, and it indirectly hones your arrangement chops as well. Not that you want to be making sweeping arrangement changes at this point in the process, but maybe some production-level arrangement tweaks. It also just nurtures those think-like-a-listener seeds in your brain for the next songs you work on. Part of that mindset will be in your brain subconsciously helping you (hopefully).
Yes, look away from the screen. Look down, close your eyes — whatever, and listen with your ears rather than your eyes. I also like to walk away from the sweet spot between the monitors and listen from another part of the room. Or just outside of the room. Can I hear everything I should be hearing? Is the balance right outside of the sweet spot?
Another thing I do regularly is when I think a mix is pretty much done, I live with it for about a week before I go back and do mastering. In this time, I listen to it many many times — in the car, on earbuds, on any system I can run it through, and I make notes. What is still bothering me? As a listener. As a producer. There is always a handful of things I end up wanting to fix or tweak, so I make notes and fix them before mastering the song. I have found this to be an extremely helpful part of the process.
But analog notepads are so expensive!!!
Hehe joke aside. I remember a podcast when you talked about your EP that you would write notes in very early stages. Like when recording drums you started having some arrangement ideas that you wrote on a piece of paper so by the end of the tracking you took a look at this paper and boom there were lots of clever suggestions that you’d probably never think about after hearing the songs over and over in tracking…. If I remember correctly… gotta listen to that podcast again!
I’m using this trick especially when I mix. I use to play the song on volume level that I would have if I’m listening to any other song as “background music”. I then turn away from the computer and listen while I’m reading a magazine or something, and if I hear something that draws my attention thats not sounding great I write that down. Sometimes I also go and sit in another room with my pen and paper and do the same. This have taken my mixes to the next level.
So true!!
“Analog notepad” made me laugh.
This article is a good reminder that we ALL need to “unplug” and “turn off” our analytical selves for a while and get back to when we first got into music. Before we decided to become musicians/engineers we were fans of great songs. Take time to go back to being a fan of music for just a moment and enjoy it for what it is.
What a complete waste of time this article was… write it down on a notepad? so it can be in a stack of notes that becomes separate and detached from the project? Now in the 21 century we whom walked out of the cave and discovered fire make the smart choice of making notes and comments in the DAW.
That way the notes are always with the project, and not mixed in with another project. Plus I have never heard of anyone looking at typed notes on a computer and commenting “does that say double the guitar or mumble to the bar”….
But you got one thing right… this is a “hack” but then again, so is the source.
You missed the entire point of the article AND took the time to reply with douchey babble. Reading your comments was the REAL waste of time here.
Thanks, Thomas. Can we hear some of your mixes please? You sound like you really know what you are talking about…
Great article and a very helpful idea. Don’t take the troll’s comment personally. Keep up the good work!
As always, great article. Thanks! I have my notepad ready.
Muito obrigado!Deus o abençoe Graham Cochrane.
Excellent article and very usefull advice Graham. I’m actually working on my ministry CD and many of your advices came right when I needed them. This is only my 2nd work and feel blessed to have come across your “Recording Revolution” page some 4 months ago. God bless you.
Thanks Roberto!