5 Things to Prepare Before Your First Studio Session

Walking into the studio unprepared is the fastest way to burn both your money and your session. We see it every week. An artist books a three hour slot, spends forty minutes deciding on lyrics, another twenty warming up a voice they haven’t touched since the night before, then rushes the last hour trying to save a vocal that started tired two takes ago.

This guide covers what every artist should do in the day or two before stepping into Studio 56 KE. None of it requires money. Most of it takes under an hour the night before. All of it pays off in a cleaner final track.

1. Know your song cold

By “cold” I don’t mean you can mumble through it while distracted. I mean you can rap or sing your song over a random beat at the matatu stage without breaking a sweat. Most artists think they know their song because they’ve heard it back a hundred times. Knowing it and performing it are different things.

The night before:

• Record yourself on your phone running the full song twice. Listen back without flinching.
• Mark the lines where you hesitate. Those are the ones that will eat up studio time.
• Print your lyrics in a large font. If you forget a line mid take, you don’t want to be squinting at a phone.

If a section isn’t working, change it now, not in the booth. Re-writing lyrics on the engineer’s clock is expensive.

2. Pick two or three reference tracks

A reference track is a song you want your finished record to sound like, roughly. Not in melody or lyric. In feel: the vocal weight, the low end, the space around the drums, the overall loudness.

Bring two or three. Put them in a folder on your phone. Share them with your engineer at the start of the session. “I want vocals sitting like this” is a hundred times faster than “I don’t know, just make it hit.”

Practical examples, by the genres we record most:

• Kikuyu benga or mugithi: Samidoh, John De’Mathew, Mike Rua, Gatutura, Waithaka wa Jane. Listen to how the lead guitar sits up front, the bass is tight not boomy, and the vocal is close-mic’d with just enough room behind it.
• Kikuyu gospel: Sammy Irungu, Ben Githae, Ruth Wamuyu, Muriithi wa Kirigo, Phyllis Mbuthia. Clean vocal, controlled dynamics, backing choir panned wide but never drowning the lead. The low end stays out of the way.
• Lingala or soukous: Koffi Olomide, Fally Ipupa, Awilo Longomba, Papa Wemba, Werrason. Bright guitars, punchy drums, layered backing vocals that feel stacked but lived in.
• Broader benga: D.O. 7 (Daniel Owino Misiani), Queen Jane, Osogo Winyo. Warm but never muddy. The bass and rhythm guitar carry the groove; the vocal rides just above.

Don’t pick a Nashville country record as a reference if you’re cutting mugithi. The engineer can’t bend the laws of physics.

3. Warm up the night before, not five minutes before

Your voice is a muscle group. You wouldn’t do squats without warming up and you shouldn’t cut vocals without warming up either.

The simplest routine:

1. Hum a siren up and down through your full range for five minutes.
2. Do lip trills (the motorbike sound) for another three.
3. Gently sing your song’s hardest passage three times at half volume.

Do that the night before plus again an hour before you arrive. You’ll be clear, your pitch will land, and you won’t blow out on take four.

Also: no alcohol, no dairy, no iced sugary drinks the day of the session. Warm water with lemon and honey is what actually helps. Zero cost, works every time.

4. Bring your files ready

If your beat came from a producer, bring it as a WAV file, not an MP3. MP3 sounds fine to your ear on headphones but loses detail that matters in mixing. If your producer only has an MP3, go back and ask for the WAV. If they can’t provide it, that’s a red flag.

File checklist:

• WAV or AIFF, 24 bit if possible, 44.1 kHz or 48 kHz sample rate.
• If you have stems (separate instrument tracks), bring those too. The engineer can balance things way better with stems.
• Send the files to the engineer a day before, not during the session. Google Drive, Dropbox, WeTransfer. Don’t try to AirDrop at the console.

If you’re unsure what format you have, send what you have to the engineer the evening before so they can tell you if anything’s missing. Most pro studios accept WAV and AIFF without conversion headaches (Studio 56 included; we run Cubase and Adobe Audition).

5. What to actually bring to a session

Forget the generic “studio bag” lists from blogs that don’t record in Nairobi. This is the real list, and it applies to any studio you book.

• Water. Room temperature, not ice cold. Cold water tightens vocal cords. Bring a bottle or confirm the studio provides it before you arrive.
• Phone charger. Your phone is your lyric sheet, reference library, and feedback recorder. It can’t die on you mid-session. Ask if the studio has chargers for your phone type; carry your own cable as a backup.
• Studio-grade headphones (optional). Most pro studios supply their own. The industry standard is Sennheiser HD 280 Pro: closed-back, good isolation, honest frequency response, comfortable across a three hour cut. If you’ve spent months mixing in a specific pair at home, bring those for familiarity.
• Lozenges that aren’t menthol-based. Menthol numbs the throat, which feels nice but dries you out. Strepsils Original or Honitus suit most voices.
• A light snack. You’ll be there three hours. Hunger affects performance. Skip anything heavy or dairy-based; a banana or a granola bar works.
• Your phone, already charged, with your lyrics and reference tracks in a folder ready to go.

What you don’t need: a crew. One person to give honest feedback is gold. Five people hyping every take is noise. Leave the rest of the group outside.

Recording with Studio 56? You can walk in with just your phone and your voice. We keep room-temperature bottled water on every session, have iPhone and Android chargers plugged in and ready, and use Sennheiser HD 280 Pro headphones as our standard monitoring. All you really need to pack is your lozenges, a snack, and your lyrics on your phone.

What happens if you skip all this

Honestly, you still get a song. But you’ll spend a good chunk of your slot on problems that had nothing to do with the actual art. That’s money and energy you could’ve put into an extra take of the chorus, or a second song entirely.

The artists who come in prepared finish early and leave with a better record. Every single time.

Ready to put this to use? Book your next session here.