Remote Recording Sessions

Many orchestral recording facilities/studios/services offer the possibility to do a remote session either via Skype, Source Connect or another form of audio stream where you as the composer can hear what’s coming right through the monitors in the studio over the internet.

While this is comfortable for doing sessions that are quite far away from your location and that are just to record a small amount of music, it doesn’t replace being there. First of all, especially when doing sessions over Skype, the audio quality is a big issue. Even with a broadband connection on both ends, the audio quality over Skype is not really good enough to judge details so you need to trust the engineer there to hear all the small things that are problematic.

The other issue is the communication gap. It might be possible that the people in the studio fixed already an issue while you were still typing or talking about it after a take. If you are there, you will immediately see and hear what’s being fixed, so over remote connections there is a considerable amount of slow down. Especially when you have a very strong vision about how your music should be interpreted, the communication lag over remote connections can slow down the process tremendously.

And lastly, it is always the best experience to be with the orchestra hearing your music, seeing the musicians play etc. so if you can chose between both options, rather go for being present on the stage and even a bit of travel is worth doing that.