Category: Home Recording

So just what can you do in a home studio? What is it, exactly, that you will be able to do once you have your studio set up? Even if you have no experience in this, you'll find that your natural talent and years of listening to wellproduced music have given you more tools than you thought you had. It's all about listening.

Recording

The most obvious thing you can do in a home studio is to record sound onto tape or disk. Whether you are learning to use microphones effectively or just plugging a keyboard in, recording covers the whole spectrum of capturing sound. For those who have never recorded before, the process can be very rewarding. Having the ability to come home from work and spend a few hours in your studio creating music is very freeing, and the icing on the cake is that you have total control. Whether you are making an elaborate multitrack masterpiece or simply singing and playing guitar, you need to know how to get a good sound. This is where you learn the basics of engineering: setting levels, choosing and placing the correct microphones for the best sound, and dealing with mixing. For the keyboard players out there, using MIDI (an electronic standard used for the transmission of digital music) is an important part of the recording process. All these elements fall under the umbrella of recording.

Mixing

Mixing is generally done after the initial recording sessions. Mixing is the art of setting the loudness and sound color of each instrument that you record. Mixing is a learned art, and like any other skill, it takes practice. Using faders to control the volume of tracks helps the instruments sound more cohesive and balanced. Equalization, which we will refer to as EQ, is the boosting or lowering of certain frequencies. EQ can transform a muddy bass into a clear sound, or turn a thin, lifeless guitar into a round, warm sound.

Effects are also a major component of mixing. Effects can help you achieve a more polished final sound. For instance, you can add reverb to give the illusion of having recorded in a large space or use compression to even out sudden changes in volume.

Editing

Editing can be considered cut, copy, paste, and whiteout for sound. In the world of editing you can cut a section and re-record it; you can go back and fix a note that sounds bad.

The most powerful editing options lie in the computer. Standalone, all-in-one recording units are capable of editing, but computer software takes it to a much higher level. Imagine that you are recording a song with a structure of chorus, solo, chorus. Suppose the choruses are exactly the same, and when you recorded the piece, the second chorus sounds better. Computer software gives you the ability to cut the first chorus and copy the second in its place. You don't even have to play repeat sections twice; you can just loop together small repeating bars of music. You can even click and drag sections of music around with your mouse. Did you decide after the fact that you want to record an introduction to your masterpiece? Just drag the original audio to the right, make room for the new, and paste it all together. This is just the tip of a very large iceberg…So now how do you get started? First, you've got to determine what your needs are.

As a home studio owner, or soon to be one, you should be aware of how the professional studios operate and what techniques they employ. In the end we are all trying to do the same thing: get sound onto a recording device, spice it up, and mix it to a final product. We all want to get the best sound possible. The differences in techniques directly affect the quality of the final product.

Why Your Favorite Recordings Sound So Good

Cue up your favorite recording, one that you think is recorded well. Sit back and listen closely. Notice how all the instruments blend together well, how no instrument sticks out of the mix more than it should. Notice how you hear virtually no background noise. All the instruments sound present, the drums don't sound far away, and it sounds as if you're in the same room as the band. The recording has a smooth and polished sound to it, no harshness to your ears. These are all qualities of good engineering, good mixing, and good mastering.

When you listen to a professional recording, realize that you are listening to months, if not years, of hard work recording and mixing the music. Big studios also have access to the finest equipment, the best microphones, acoustically perfect rooms, and most important of all, experienced engineers to run the sessions. Does this mean that your home studio masterpiece will sound bad? No, not at all! With some basic equipment, a little knowledge, and your inspired music, you can make professional-sounding recordings. Recording sessions are broken up into three main components: preproduction, production and engineering, and postproduction.

Preproduction

Preproduction involves everything that comes before the actual recording session. This can include selecting the right material to record, rehearsing the band, and getting ready for the recording sessions. For the home studio owner, this involves working out your material so that you can record it. It also might include purchasing gear to facilitate a particular project, such as buying a second vocal microphone to record a vocal duet for a new song. Basically, anything that you can do in advance to make your recordings go more smoothly is preproduction.

Production and Engineering

Production involves the actual recording sessions. At the sessions, the engineer runs the recording show. It's up to the engineer and any assistants he or she might have to set up all the microphones, place the microphones for optimum sound, get proper recording levels, run the mixing board, operate the recording device, and make sure everything sounds good. The engineer is the most important link in the chain (besides the musicians themselves) in getting a great-sounding recording. Engineering, like any other skill, requires a certain level of artistry and practice for proficiency to improve. An experienced engineer will be able to identify problems and quickly find solutions.

Editing and overdubbing might take place in subsequent sessions, but it's still considered production. In your studio, you will most likely be wearing all of the various hats needed to make a recording. It will be up to you to properly set up your equipment and the microphones, run the recording device, and engineer the recording. This can be a tall order to do all at once, but the chapters to follow will show you how to get started easily. With a little practice you'll be off and running!

Postproduction

Postproduction includes anything that happens after the recording sessions. Most often, postproduction involves mixing the tracks to a polished uniform sound. Mixing involves several key elements:

• Track levels: Loudness of each track

• Panning: Side-to-side placement in the mix

• Equalization: Boosting or cutting certain frequencies in the mix

• Effects: Adding signal processing such as reverb, delay, and compression in order to achieve a polished sound

• Mix down: Mixing all the tracks into a single stereo pair suitable for distribution or mastering

Even the most basic studio has the capabilities to do all these things. Remember that the basic sequence of events is always the same: sound capture, recording, and playback. Now that we explained a little about the history of the recording process and got you thinking about some concepts, it's time to shift gears and move into your home studio to find out what you need to get started.

We live in the digital age. Everywhere around us technology is changing the way we work, play, and communicate. The computer has become a fixture in the home, and it's hard to imagine life without one. The need to create coupled with advancements in technology are allowing even the average hobbyist the chance to create and share quality music without going into considerable debt.

The Advancement of Technology

Analog multitrack recorders capable of recording twenty-four or more tracks can cost a lot of money. Even now, though they are less popular, it is easy to spend $30,000 to $50,000 on a good one. Their prohibitive cost meant that for a while, home studios were available only to rich, successful musicians. Digital technology has brought the cost down considerably. Digital tape machines such as the ADAT, while not cheap, are nowhere near as expensive as multitrack analog tape machines. When they were introduced in 1992, Alesis ADATs went for around $3,500. These modular tape machines started showing up in professional studios, and more and more home studios were getting equipped with digital recorders.

As the technology and time advanced, recording studios turned to the personal computer. Digital audio can be stored on its internal hard drives, and the monitor and mouse take editing to a whole new level. Software provides an interface for laying out tracks and editing them visually in ways that were never possible in the analog or digital tape world. As we discuss in later chapters, digital audio uses nonlinear technology. This means that the audio is free to be placed anywhere in time, unlike a tape-based machine on which you record at a specific point in the tape. Unless you cut out that section of tape and splice it somewhere else, you can't move things around with analog tape. But with digital audio, moving audio is as easy as pointing and clicking.

Using computers in studios came with its own problems: The computers themselves were not able to handle the tremendous strain that digital audio required. To a computer's brain (the central processing unit, or CPU), digital audio is very complex to work with. The addition of signal processing was too much for the computers of the late 1980s and early 1990s to handle. The solution was to use add-on cards inside the computer to help process the digital audio signal. One of the most successful products is Digidesign's Pro Tools. Pro Tools uses a combination of hardware to perform digital signal processing (DSP) and software to arrange music. Professional Pro Tools and other systems like it are still very expensive. It's easy to spend $30,000 to $50,000 on a nice Pro Tools rig. Pro Tools was one of the first proprietary systems available, a combination of software and hardware for recording music in a computer. Today Pro Tools is the standard in recording studios around the world. Other systems exist today, but none with the popularity and compatibility of Pro Tools.

How Technology Made the Home Studio Possible

The home studio has followed a path similar to that of professional recording studios. In 1979, Tascam invented the Portastudio, a 4-track recorder that used standard audiotapes. It was priced around $1,000, which was very inexpensive for a unit of its type. It caused a revolution, and in one step created the home studio market. The unit was small and compact and could be taken anywhere. Four tracks could be recorded and mixed separately in the unit and later mixed down to a final stereo cassette. Musicians quickly began using the Portastudio for creating their own music and making demos. The Portastudio line by Tascam is still popular today and comes in many shapes and sizes, both digital and analog.

In the digital world, in the 1990s, the hard disk began showing up as part of standalone recorders, greatly increasing the quality of recorded sound. Because hard disks were able to hold more data, they became a viable solution to storing digital audio. Digital audio is very large: each monophonic track takes 5 megabytes of memory per minute. A typical ten-minute song consisting of eight tracks requires 400 megabytes of storage space. By today's standards that's not very much, but in the early 1990s most home computers shipped with 500-megabyte drives, total! As the computer grew in popularity and power, it became feasible for a computer with a simple audio interface to handle the demands of digital audio without the need for additional DSP cards. Computer recording software such as Cubase, Digital Performer, Sonar and Logic answered the call by providing MIDI (musical instrument digital interface) and digital audio in one package. Computer recording software is immensely popular because of its ease of use, relatively low cost, and the power of what you can achieve with just your home computer.

What does all this history mean for you and your home studio? Being able to layer track upon track is a critical part of the home studio experience, especially if you work alone. Many bands record albums one layer at a time for greater control.

Some of the easiest ways to improve your recordings are also the cheapest. In fact, the most effective techniques require no money at all.

Here’s a collection of tips you might find helpful the next time a pricey piece of gear stands between you and great recordings.

HELP FROM OTHERS

Have a friend perform:  Home recording, especially for singer/songwriters and electronic musicians, often involves a single musician writing and recording all the music. But artists in this situation can find themselves too close to the song, at mix time, to make decisions critically.

Working with other musicians might initially complicate recording and mixing. However, creating a great mix depends, in part, on your ability to remove unnecessary details, and most of us are more comfortable objectively critiquing someone  else’s  work. So asking a friend (or  some professionals ) to perform a track or two will ultimately make mixing easier,  and  more effective.

Get more ears on the mix:  With any task requiring attention to detail, it’s easy to lose the forest for the trees. And so it goes with mixing. A second or third opinion can draw your attention back to details you’ve glossed over.

And outside opinions needn’t come from other musicians and engineers. (Although the  homerecording.com MP3 mixing clinic  is a great source for free advice.) Often, regular listeners give the best feedback because they don’t think in technical terms about the production, and instead form their thoughts on how the song makes them feel. And some of the best mix feedback I’ve gotten has come from children, who are unconditioned by musical convention.

Listen on multiple systems:  Hearing a mix through different speakers is a little like getting a second opinion. And professional mixing engineers rely on this technique. Chris Lord Alge, for example, keeps a portable radio near his console  for checking mixes :

Avoid dogma:  Our hobby (or profession, if you’re lucky) is plagued with religious arguments, like “tube gear sounds better,” and “analog sounds warmer than digital.” Regardless of each argument’s merit, these dogmatic issues over-complicate the recording process, and distract us from the importance of technique – which, of course, costs nothing!

Cut. Ruthlessly:  As musicians, our egos push us to put everything we’ve got into every part we record. But virtuoso performances and great recordings don’t necessarily go together. The whole, as they say, is often greater than the sum of the parts.

In most song arrangements, over-instrumentation usually just leads to clutter. And along with being more difficult to mix, clutter rarely sounds good.

Make every part do work:  Ensure that every part competing for the listener’s attention is  supposed  to compete for the listener’s attention.

PRACTICE

Practice your performance before hitting record:  The benefits of practice should be obvious to all musicians, but home recording fosters a “write as you record” approach to song creation.

Practice takes time. But it needn’t hamper the creative process; and in most cases it will ultimately save time. Though the tracks may take longer to record, it’s far easier – and quicker – to mix a set of well-performed, polished performances.

Not only do the performances themselves benefit from practice, but the final mix will sound more professional.

Use reference CDs:  No single technique will do more to improve the quality of your mixes. Working with a  reference mix  is, in some ways, like getting a free lesson on mixing from a professional engineer.

Practice mixing when you’re not in the studio:  Every mixing engineer should spend time listening critically to professional mixes. Set aside some time every day, say 10 minutes, to immerse yourself in a mix someone else has done. Consider the panning, which instruments take your focus, and how the focus changes as the song evolves. Try to determine the effects in use, and why they were chosen. In modern pop and rock mixes, the interplay between the lead vocal and the snare drum is particularly important, as is the bass guitar/kick drum relationship, so spend some time analyzing these parts in detail.