A Rough Day at the Studio; Doubt was the friend who came round afterwards, brought the wine and ordered the pizza.

I recently had a really strange experience in the recording studio while putting the finishing touches to my band's EP.

I usually love studio work! It's the time when a song comes to life and you finally get to hear the track the way you imagined it in your head all those months ago. It can be really productive - if you get the right producer. If you're at the stage where you're considering investing your hard earned cash in laying down some tracks professionally, here's a warning for you. Find the right producer!

Sadly, a chance encounter was the only persuasion my band needed to be led into the studio of the producer we're currently using. Needless to say, this is a terrible selection process and he's not the right fit for us at all. Due to the dynamics of my current group, (one incredibly strong personality who gets to call the shots, but doesn't really know what's what) the decision was made to book in with the studio before discussing anything with the band. I really doubted that he was the right guy for us. Looking at the extensive list of past clients, it made for an impressive but mismatched read; none were in the same genre as us, or even anything close. This was mistake number one.

Mistake number two? Don't expect the producer to do anything more than the job of a producer, and certainly don't allow them to either; it's a can of worms you'll never be able to close.

The big problem here was that our producer was invited into the fold of the band, acted as a sixth band member for a while before graduating into the position of band manager. Crazy, eh? Looking back on it, I can see how this situation came about.

This band's career has been like an exploding confetti canon; we each had different skills and levels of experience making a pretty colourful mix, but when we got together it just exploded. Within the first year we wrote over thirty songs, appeared at some pretty big music festivals and experienced a winning streak when we were on commercial radio at least once a week. It was incredible, but commercial success is no substitute for experience.

Half the band have no experience working in studios and so, walked into it completely submissively. The process turned on it's head and instead of the band holding the reigns and walking away with a product true to it's original concept, we've ended up with the producer's interpretation of our work - it's a million miles away from what we wanted and coming from somebody who doesn't work with artists of our genre, what should we have expected?

It all started when he came to one of our gigs, listened to us play and then spent  the rest of the night being asked to comment on what he thought we should change. It all just snowballed from there; one minute he was making a suggestion on how to improve someone's drum pattern (totally acceptable and really helpful), the next he was sitting us all down to mentor us on interpersonal relationships (not really qualified, or even anywhere near appropriate!) and charged us for the time!

The most stark moment for me was when I turned up after a busy day at work to find my guitarist in the booth with the producer having a full on music lesson with him! By the time I arrived, they'd been in there for two hours while the guitarist played and the producer critiqued his right hand technique and the way his wrist moved while he played. Looking at the itemised bill, we could have paid for him to have almost eight hours of lessons with an actual guitar teacher for the same cost! He just didn't realise that this is NOT a routine part of studio work and that these issues really needed to be hammered out before we got to this stage.

I left the studio that day feeling exhausted. I called out for pizza and curled up on the sofa with my doubts spinning round my mind; I doubted he was the right producer for us, I doubted we were ready to even be in the studio just yet and I really doubted we'd come away with a product we were happy with. For fear of being labelled negative, stubborn, oppositionally defiant or a stick in the mud, I kept quiet, ate my pizza and watched reruns of Ink Master until it was time for bed.

Fortunately for me, I know when to pick my battles and keeping quiet was the perfect way to give the situation enough rope to hang itself.

The track was eventually finished and so was the itemised bill - it came in at a devastating three and a half times the original estimate. We had to delay any future recordings until we'd all recovered from the expense. Although it was a set back, it really gave us some time to contemplate the decisions we'd made and think about how to avoid this happening in future.

The good: next time we go into the studio we'll have straightened out the fine details and be really prepared, know what to expect and be able to keep the cost down closer to the original estimate. Every strange experience is a learning experience and I can certainly say that's true in this instance.

The bad: it's given half the band a twisted first experience of studio work. I still hear talk in the rehearsal studio of "running an idea past the producer" or asking the producer if it's ok for us to change this, that and the next thing. It'll take some effort to clear up the misconception that he's somehow in charge of us and get him back behind the sound desk, but I'm confident we'll get there.

A Lesson in Second-Guessing Yourself; how doubt can be like a boner in a strip club.

I thought I'd kick this thing off by sharing my opinions with you on how doubt can be your worst enemy and your best friend in the world of music. Your worst enemy is probably a good place to start; it's something I wish I'd realised much sooner and I'll use some personal experiences to show how deep it can run.

When I was a youngster, one of my first experiences of working on a collaboration with other artists came at university. The lecturer assigned us groups of what I suppose he thought was equal weighting in terms of skill selection. I remember only one person who was assigned to my group that day; a much older student who was twice my age and identified as a "producer". I really didn't know what he meant by this but I soon came to learn it was his misused, glorified label for a DJ. He always carried a laptop on him, although I only ever saw it used for taking notes on Microsoft Word or playing the occasional CD, and he played no instruments or had any knowledge of Pro Tools, Logic, Sibelius, etc. Our task was simple; we were to work on writing a piece of music together, that fitted some shaky guidelines our lecturer had set.

I was really into using Cubase (the digital audio workstation, for those of you who aren't techies)  at the time; I found it quick and easy and the piano sound was realistic enough for me to scam my way through composition assignments. So, the group and I decided the quickest way to get the job done would be to throw together some drum loops for this "producer" to run some "beats" over the top.

The following week, disc in hand, I turned up for class and Mr Producer popped my Cubase export into his infamous laptop. I expected him to at least just give it a listen and then maybe start with the beat-running-over-the-topping - but no. As the other members of the group gathered round (contributing nothing, by the way) he began to mock the track.

"OMG, the drums are flat! Listen to this, those drums are well flat!" His face twisted into a grimace as he tried to show how terribly out of tune these drums- these drums created using a software program set to perfect pitch with not a single live instrument in use - sounded.

"Urgh, listen to that!" He continued, gesturing for the rest of the group to get involved. One by one, they began exchanging looks with each other and nodding. He'd won them all over.

He'd won me over. Much older, much more dominant and much louder than me, I didn't dare question him. The logical part of me was sure it was impossible for this standardised electronic signal to be out of tune. The experienced musician in me knew that a drum kit was not an instrument that required 'tuning' in the conventional sense of the word, but more of a toning process through tightening heads. The band-mate in me was scanning back through images of drum keys and socket wrenches, but failed to find a memory of a tuner or any kind of pitch-measuring device.

But there it was; the smothering feeling of doubt and the constant questioning that popped up every five minutes like a boner in a strip club. Assuming there must be something I just didn't understand, I took back my disc, melted into the peripheries with the onlookers of the group, and let Mr Producer submit his beat track as our collaborative assignment; for which we all scored abysmal marks.

It wasn't until a few years later, when the b*llshit in the music arena finally wore too thin, that I was able to see the truth. I was backstage at a music festival in Australia on a day so hot I could see a bushfire in the distance and was checking my tuning in case my bass strings had expanded in the heat. At this point, another Mr Producer type walked over to me and stated loudly on front of the entire crew that I was doing it wrong. "Don't bother tuning that thing," he said. "It's too hot, you'll go flat. Just open it up." I couldn't figure out what he meant so I said nothing and just looked at him, confused. "It's got something in it, it's called a truss rod," he continued, speaking slower this time. "You'll need to give that a couple of turns".

I thought he was joking and laughed while he stared at me blankly. "Seriously, adjust that thing. I give mine a few turns every time I play it". And with that, he walked off. We can discuss what's wrong with this entire example another time, if need be, but it served a purpose for me. What he said was absolute crap and I knew it. But still, that familiar feeling washed over me and for a split second, my brain went on auto pilot as I felt my hands go to turn the bass over and see what kind of Allen key would take the truss rod cover off.

And at that moment, the foot came crashing down! I just couldn't do it to myself anymore...

Like hell was that a good suggestion! Like hell had I been tuning my bass wrong after nearly thirteen years of playing! Like hell was I supposed to adjust the neck before every time I played my bass since the day I started! And like hell was that drum track flat!

You may or may not have your own moment when you just snap and can't take any more of it. I'm happy I had mine, but wish it had come sooner. After years of second-guessing myself, some of the theories I've entertained have been ridiculous. A particular peach came from another former classmate of mine who had me believing that if I took a guitar on an aeroplane, the air pressure changing in the cabin would snap the guitar neck in half (???????????)

Ultimately, all these silly little things people have had me believing over the years have been counter-productive. There comes a time when you have to accept that you may not know everything, you may not get it right 100% of the time, but that if you've worked hard and earned your stripes chances are you do know your stuff and can stay grounded on that. Hold that ground, you're going to need it in this business for sure.