Before a remote session, send me these five things
Most remote sessions that go badly don't go badly because of the playing. They go badly because the first exchange was missing something, and then two days disappear into email.
Here is everything I need up front. If you send all five, I can usually turn a track around without asking you a single follow-up question.
1. A rough mix, as a stereo WAV
Not an MP3. MP3 encoding smears transients, which makes it harder to hear where the pocket actually is, and if I end up nudging timing against a lossy reference the feel drifts.
44.1 kHz / 24-bit stereo WAV is fine for a reference. Include everything that's already tracked — drums, bass, keys, scratch vocal. I'd much rather hear a busy arrangement and play around it than hear a click and guess.
2. The session tempo, and whether it's fixed
Tell me the BPM. If there's a tempo map or the track drifts (live drums, rubato intro, a ritard at the end), say so explicitly and send the tempo track if you have one. A single wrong assumption about tempo costs more time than everything else on this list combined.
If the song was recorded to a click that starts before bar 1, tell me how many bars of count-in the reference has.
3. Where the guitar goes, and what it's doing
You don't need to notate anything. A sentence per section is enough:
Verses: nothing. Chorus: sustained power chords, low. Bridge: one lead line, the melody the synth plays but an octave down.
What I actually need to know is the role — is this the hook, is it glue, is it texture nobody should consciously notice? "Play something cool over the chorus" is a fine brief if that's genuinely what you want, but it's worth saying so on purpose rather than by omission.
If there are chords and you have them, send them. If you don't have them, I'll chart it.
4. Two or three reference tracks
Specifically for the guitar sound, not the song overall. "Like the guitar in this, at about 1:12" is worth ten adjectives. Tone words mean wildly different things to different people — I have had "warm" mean both a dark neck-pickup jazz sound and a cranked overdriven Vox on the same week.
If you have a tone you don't want, that's just as useful.
5. What you want back
Decide this before I record, not after:
- DI only — you re-amp or process at your end. Maximum flexibility, and it's what most mixers actually want.
- Processed only — committed tone, ready to drop in.
- Both — the usual answer, and what I send by default unless you say otherwise.
Also tell me: how many takes or alternates do you want, and do you want them comped into one part or delivered as separate passes?
What you get back
Unless you ask for something else: 44.1 kHz / 24-bit WAV stems, starting at bar 1 of the session, so they drop straight in without alignment. One file per part, named by section. If the project runs at a different sample rate, say so and I'll match it — I'd rather match yours than have anyone resample.
If you're putting an enquiry together, working through this list first will save us both a few days. Email me with as much of it as you have.