Tool: Recording an Album - an Airtable Template

A NEW TOOL FOR CREATIVES:
This is a template of the Airtable base we use when recording a new album. You can keep track of your list of songs, add a chart, lyrics and demo for each song, store info like the key, tempo and length, as well as any other notes on the status of recording. There’s also a Punch List tab, where you can make to do lists for each song. In the Players and Credits tabs, you can keep track of who played what on what song - so that when the time comes, you know just where to look to write up your liner notes. And lastly, in the Budget tab, you can keep track of your budget - from session players to studio time to food per diem and hard drives, everything can be recorded in one place.

One of the great functionalities of Airtable is linking. You can link between tables, so that, for example, all the info about one session player is all connected. Information such as their day rate, what instruments they play, what songs they played on, all of that is interconnected throughout the table, and you can reference it in whatever location is handy.

When using this template, as with any template, you can use it as is or you can use it as a starting point and customize it to suit your own needs. Say for example you recorded drums at three different locations and need to mark which songs have which drum sound, so the mix engineer knows what templates can be applied where - you can make a custom column for that information. Or, if you primarily want to use the players and credits tab, but don’t need to do the budgeting, just get rid of that tab.

And furthermore, you can share any base with anyone else with an Airtable account, so that members of your team can all be looking at the same info.