Service · Berlin
Full bands, recorded together across up to four rooms — three dedicated tracking rooms plus the control room when needed — with eye contact and individual headphone mixes or even headphone-free. The energy of a real performance, captured in real-time.
What it is
Live tracking, or live-off-the-floor recording, is one of our favorite ways to work. Drums, bass, piano, horns, strings and even lead vocals run through a take together, listening and interacting with each other. The result is a recording that breathes the way the band does: the time breathes, dynamics happen naturally, and drums and bass push and pull organically.
Overdubs and edits absolutely have their place — they're often part of the plan from day one. We use them to serve the performance, not to assemble one piece at a time. The bed is built from a take the band can stand behind; the rest is colour on top.
THE ROOMS
Our main room was designed around the geometry of a band that needs to see each other. Open sightlines from the drums to the piano to the upright bass, an isolation booth for amps, horns or lead vocal, and a separate drum room when bleed needs to be tighter. Headphone mixes are independent and adjustable from where you stand.
Process
We work backwards from the recording you want at the end of the day. A short call before the session covers instrumentation, references and the realistic shape of the day — how many tunes, how many passes, what gets bounced for reference and what we leave for mix.
Who it's for
Live tracking is the right call when the interaction between players is what makes the music move. We do a lot of it.
Sessions in motion
A few moments from sessions tracked live in the main room.
Best studio in town! Big daylight-filled rooms, great vibe, great equipment and sound. Rob is an amazing recording, mixing and mastering engineer — your place to record in Berlin in a cool, relaxed environment.
Up to a seven- or eight-piece band can track live in the main room at Hot Milk Studio in Berlin, with full sightlines intact. For larger ensembles, we combine the main room, drum room and isolation booth — tell us your lineup and we'll map out the setup.
Yes — recording lead vocals live with the full band is common practice at Hot Milk Studio, especially when the performance lifts from playing together. The isolation booth keeps bleed manageable, and we typically punch in or overdub only a few phrases afterward rather than replacing the whole take.
Yes. Overdubs, comping, light timing edits and tuning are a normal part of live tracking projects at Hot Milk Studio. The live take is the foundation the production is built on — not a rule we treat as sacred.
Every live tracking session at Hot Milk Studio ends with rough mixes of every take you want to keep, plus a complete session file. Final mixing and mastering can happen in-house afterward, or we can deliver stems to an external mix engineer — your choice.
Live tracking follows Hot Milk Studio's standard day-rate: €500 per day (plus 19% VAT). For larger projects spanning recording, mixing and mastering across 3 or more days, a project rate of €400 (plus 19% VAT) per day applies. Most live tracking sessions run a full day to allow time for setup, soundcheck and multiple takes.
A typical live tracking day at Hot Milk Studio runs a full 8 hours: pre-production planning, mic setup and soundcheck, several takes per song, and time to review and select takes together. Larger lineups or more ambitious repertoire may need more than one day.
Let's plan a session together.
Tell us about the music, the players and the sound you'd like to hear back. We'll come back with a plan.
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