Pacing in a studio session is one of the overlooked essentials of success.
I’m obsessed with getting a new engineer up to speed on my strategies, preferences, and quirks before a session, and the reason is that those are the things that most affect pacing – the downtime between takes, the changeover time, and so on.
I find that if there’s more than about 4 or 5 seconds of downtime in a fast-paced session, then you might have just lost a minute. The session slows, with more talking. Some engineers will wait for the performers to quiet down, where I prefer to get the take rolling, sending the message that we’re moving fast.
Getting multiple successful takes in a row gives confidence to performers, and then they start performing better because they feel better. Speed helps with that, too.
A session that starts slow can become an unsuccessful session just as easily – the session tempo breaks down, the performers start to feel tired and draggy, and in the end, they accomplish much less than is possible.
Much is out of the hands of the producer and the engineer in a session – they aren’t the ones performing. But the pacing, and what it contributes to the performers’ psychological success, is crucial.