Pre-production
Creative Space
Arrangement of Songs
Specialisms
Original Tracks
Original Funk
Original Prog Rock

The Importance of Pre-Production

Pre-production is the process by which you plan out the individual songs, and your whole album, if you are working to album format. It's critical in the creative process. In the music industry, pre-production is the time a recording artist spends time creating and refining their musical ideas before presenting them to as production studio and a music producer. Developing an album can be complicated and it's important to plan out your basic structure before you start the formal recording process. By using the Henry's Machine Suite you can do quite a bit of the preparatory work for the main studio at a lower hourly rate.

Creative Space

Henry's Machine Room is the ideas centre of the studio. This is where new concepts find their footing and songs and lyrics come together. In this studio you have all the implements you will need to put down your ideas in a guided way. You can work on your ideas using Cubase or basic instrumentation with an established songwriter and arranger who will have an idea of what you can aim for and will work with your basic melody and harmony, laying it down in a format where it will be remembered, and can be used at the next stage.

Henry's Machine Room contains keyboards, guitars, a bass, and microphones as well as a Cubase system and the presence of an experienced Cubase user to help you formulate your ideas and bring them to fruition. There is also access to the internet so that you can listen to other inspiring tracks and take your lead in whatever way you like. Jane is an accomplished arranger and can develop your music to a level where you can get an idea of its potential before taking it into the main studio.

Arrangement of songs

Arrangement is an important phase during which you decide how your song will flow. Clearly arrangement of a sort can take place throughout the recording process, and often many versions of a song can be created, but the initial arrangement carries a great deal of power. Sometimes it's difficult to change the arrangement once certain developments have taken place. So you can use this time to decide the style you are aiming for, the number of verses, where the bridge comes, whether there should be an intro and how long it should be, and so forth. Although these things can be changed later, it is a good idea to have a clear picture of your track from the outset.

Other not inconsiderable parts of pre-production are decisions about tempo, whether a click track will be used, what instrumentation would be ideal, and whether the song or track is similar to other tracks that have been popular. Pre-production is usually an activity undertaken by one person, although it's not impossible with two writers, or even a band, once the initial ideas are there.

Henry's Machine Specialisms

Where the HM system differs from other methods is the degree of originality we encourage in songwriting approaches. Although we are happy to work with traditional styles and established genres, we are also ideas-based and like to build on Cubase soundscapes, in particular making full use of Omnisphere to capture originality of sound in a way which relates to current music developments empathetically rather than in fixed formats. So we are happy to work with you at this arrangement and pre-production phase to get you off on the right foot, whether your style is electro, folk, rock, dance, dubstep, punk or funk. We also work in neo-classical styles if this is your preference.

Original Funk Tracks

The HM Suite is also used by the writing group, Henry's Machine to create its own iconic blend of funk, soul, reggae and MOBO styles

This in turn features in tracks performed by Hookstick, a unique funk, soul and reggae performance and recording band.

As the funk project is a long-lasting development, and given the studio roots in Birmingham and Coventry, a high degree of funk and MOBO specialism has grown up over the past few years which we are eager to share with clientele.

Prog. Rock

The HM Suite is also used by Eclips'd in the development of a Pink Floyd style album, currently under wraps.