Ok, I have a dream...and that dream is to produce and release my own CD. I have some recording equipment and instruments such as my bass, acoustic guitar and electric guitar plus drum machine. Is it possible to produce a polished demo CD at home with a fairly minimal setup or am I kidding myself. The cost to do all this in a proper studio would just be financially prohibitive at this point so I have to do it the hard way. Has anyone out there in TB land done this themselves? I'd be interested to hear any stories and advice.
Of course it's possible and many have done it, very well. I started out in a tiny bedroom with minimal gear, but I had great desire and a good ear. I made some recordings those days that still sound great!
The more you know about recording techniques, room acoustics, mics etc., the more success you will have.
A great starter book is "The Musicians Guide To Home Recording"
it can be done, and done very cheap too, but as prd004 said, it takes a good ear, so go into your project with as much as a full idea of what you want.
Of course it's possible and many have done it, very well. I started out in a tiny bedroom with minimal gear, but I had great desire and a good ear. I made some recordings those days that still sound great!
The more you know about recording techniques, room acoustics, mics etc., the more success you will have.
A great starter book is "The Musicians Guide To Home Recording"
Recording/mixing takes practice too, the more you do it the better you'll get.
Thanks for the reference. I'm insterested in learning recording techniques and of course, I will HAVE to learn them if I want to do this myself. I'm just wondering if you can come close to "studio quality" recordings at home and on a budget. I suppose it's possible (and myabe desirable) to do all the tracking at home and have the project mastered professionally.
I'm late for work right now, but when I get home I'll PM you some links to to recordings I did at home, either in my bedroom or a shed, garage, etc.
It can be done and done pro! I had a lust for knowlege, I read every book, magazine or article I could find on the subject and I got pretty good, pretty fast!
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Washington State Bassist Club #40, Wood Matters Club Member #18
"If ignorance is bliss, why aren't more people happy"
It's certainly not impossible. To get high quality recordings, an investment in gear and time will have to be made. A selection of mics (both condensers and dynamics where appropriate), And DI's, coupled with proper execution of their use will go a long way. Knowing your way around your DAW is something that is often overlooked. There's more to it than just moving faders up and down.
Ok, I have a dream...and that dream is to produce and release my own CD. I have some recording equipment and instruments such as my bass, acoustic guitar and electric guitar plus drum machine. Is it possible to produce a polished demo CD at home with a fairly minimal setup or am I kidding myself. The cost to do all this in a proper studio would just be financially prohibitive at this point so I have to do it the hard way. Has anyone out there in TB land done this themselves? I'd be interested to hear any stories and advice.
I've done it. I used a Fostex VF-16 to do the bed tracks. I imported them into Reaper and mixed it there.
We used some AKG CS1000 mics for drum overheads and vocals. I used SHS OM500's for guitar mics (they are clones of SM58's and sound awesome). I recorded my bass direct through my Zoom B2, and used Reaper's effects to add dirt and amp modeling if I needed more body to the sound. My drummer had a set of nice microphones we used for kick and snare. And we bought a pair of KRK Rokit 5's to monitor with and used a Presonus mobile interface to get the sound out of the laptop into the speakers. The laptop I used was an HP 8440p with 8 GB of RAM and 4 CPU cores, though I could have used a number of lesser-quality laptops. It would have just taken longer -- you can have Reaper render the effects and then listen to the output. Having a higher-powered laptop just allowed me to do more things in realtime.
And here http://soundcloud.com/maxgrant/master-wrappedupinyou
I have never been happier with a recording I've done. To me it sounds like I paid several hundred thousand to have it professionally recorded. The most important thing I learned during the process boils down to two key items:
Leave yourself plenty of headroom. There are dolts who seem to think that if you turn the gain up on a track you are using more "bits" for the sound and therefore getting greater dynamic resolution. These are people who flat out do not understand how technology works. Don't listen to them. I track at about -12 db, and I try to mix to peak at -6, and I still think next time I will do it even lower. More headroom means more options as you bring all those sound sources up to audibility. You can brickwall-limit the master recording (if you want to totally ruin it, that is) or use some gentle compression and limiting to bring it up to a reasonable peak. I ripped the .wav files from recordings that I love and admire, and I compared those to what I was doing in Reaper to make the levels sound normal.
Turn the bass down on anything that isn't a bass. This will take a lot of the unprofessional-sounding boominess and muddiness. Also while you are at it take out the 200-250k band on anything that isn't the snare drum. That's the mud frequency.
And, I know this is three things, but when you master your recording remember that what we associate with "warmth" is the mid-range, and the warmer the recording is the better it sounds. Let your listeners scoop-EQ the stereo when they're listening. You give them plenty to scoop out and the results will be quite tasty.
There are people there who record in massive, high end studios, and some with just a tape recorder. They all have a common goal - to make great recordings. That site helped me immensely in understanding a lot of things. Just going through the FAQs will probably get you halfway to where you want to be. Chances are that someone there will know exactly how to use the equipment you have to create a masterpiece. Honestly, they are very cool people over there. HRC and TB are about the best music forums I've seen. If you like the vibe on TB, you'll find a similar vibe there.
The most important thing to take from all 1098375 pages of that thread is that a finished track is always better than a perfectly mixed and recorded song that's only half finished. That is to say, try not to get lost tweaking mixes and looking for that perfect tone or mic placement or whatever, and focus instead on writing a good song and getting it down and 100% finished.
The most important thing to take from all 1098375 pages of that thread is that a finished track is always better than a perfectly mixed and recorded song that's only half finished. That is to say, try not to get lost tweaking mixes and looking for that perfect tone or mic placement or whatever, and focus instead on writing a good song and getting it down and 100% finished.
I had a quick look at the first couple of pages. Looks fascinating..I'll have to read more once I get home from work. Thanks for the link.
Hi,
Check out this site, TweakHeadz Lab Electronic Musician's Hangout
This has so much info on recording with a huge forum also. Pretty much any question you might have on recording from a home studio, it will be answered here.
Good luck!
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Acoustic club #243, Colorado Club #43, Ibanez Club #664, Hartke club #209
Ok, I have a dream...and that dream is to produce and release my own CD. I have some recording equipment and instruments such as my bass, acoustic guitar and electric guitar plus drum machine. Is it possible to produce a polished demo CD at home with a fairly minimal setup or am I kidding myself. The cost to do all this in a proper studio would just be financially prohibitive at this point so I have to do it the hard way. Has anyone out there in TB land done this themselves? I'd be interested to hear any stories and advice.
I did an Oktoberfest CD about 7 years ago. Total cost of production ( not counting my time)was $600.00. I used a Boss BR8, and sold all 200 ( 200 and under....no copyright fees) for a profit of $1400.00
The biggest tools for home recording will be your brain and your ears. All the rest is just a matter of what works best with your brain and your ears.
Ken
Well said. I'm not hung up on gear. I mean, I can't afford a $1500 microphone anyway so there's no point worrying about it. I have to use what I have or can afford and work within those limitations.
Well said. I'm not hung up on gear. I mean, I can't afford a $1500 microphone anyway so there's no point worrying about it. I have to use what I have or can afford and work within those limitations.
Microphones are my next cost hurtle. I will soon scour craigslist to have at least one condenser on hand here. But I managed to put together a good demo sampler with just dynamic mics recently. Final product not ready for public consumption yet but soon enough. I mean I would love to have an AKG 414 around, but that is an expensive mic, even though IMHO it is the ultimate swiss army knife of condenser mics.
I would also like to have a ribbon mic on hand but that is just dreaming.
I use an Arch Linux recording setup with Jack/Ardour/Jamin and many plugins and a Presonus Firepod.
Truth is the other big cost in a home studio is room design. I mean our houses are rife with very bad things from a studio perspective, like parallel walls, floor and ceiling.
Well said. I'm not hung up on gear. I mean, I can't afford a $1500 microphone anyway so there's no point worrying about it. I have to use what I have or can afford and work within those limitations.
LOL...I used a SM 58 for everything except the Drumms. The Drummer had his own mikes.
LOL...I used a SM 58 for everything except the Drumms. The Drummer had his own mikes.
You DONT need a 1500.00 mike !!!!!
Oh I know you don't need a $1500 mic. But that's what you'd be using if you went into a pro recording studio and were on the clock. I have just a Blue Encore 200 dynamic vocal mic and an Apex 435 LD condenser mic..total cost of both mics = $250 taxes in and that, folks, is what I will be using for this project.
Last edited by BulbousMoses : 10-12-2011 at 04:18 PM.
All good advice above but I'd add, don't wait for a whole CD worth of music. Do one song at a time.
There's many ways to publish these one by one in downloadable format.
You'll get a lot of feedback from people listening to your songs, song by song, and by the time you get to your 10th song you'll be an expert.
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"The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it." - Neil DeGrasse Tyson 2011
I disagree with the wait til you have a whole CD worth of music. Start right away, the more practice you get the better your mixes will sound. By the time you do your fifth or sixth song you will probably think the first three sound like ass. And that's the way it will go for a while as you get more skills.
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Washington State Bassist Club #40, Wood Matters Club Member #18
"If ignorance is bliss, why aren't more people happy"
