Links

One of the best resources on the web for information on recording yourself is soundonsound.com. The web site has equipment reviews for the geeks and in-depth ‘how to’ articles on everything ranging from mic placement to building your own studio. To read the most recent articles you have to have a subscription but there is a wealth of information and tutorials available for free!

1. If you know nothing about recording then take time to learn before you start working on anything important. There is nothing that breaks the creative flow more than fighting with the computer to make it do something simple. Take an educational course or better still, sit in on some sessions with some fellow musicians or engineers and learn the ropes from them. Work on a few ‘dummy’ projects before starting the big one so that the creative process is as seamless as possible.
2. Don’t skimp on equipment, if you want your record to sound as good as your favorite album then be prepared to buy some decent gear. Don’t believe the adverts that say you can get professional grade recordings with a setup that costs just a couple of hundred quid. You want quality throughout your signal chain going into your recording device (good microphones, good pre-amps, good converters) and good software and hardware to mix with. If in doubt get some good advice from other musicians and engineer you know and trust, don’t believe the man in the shop who’s on commission from the manufacturers!
3. Spend as much time researching, setting up and treating your recording room as you do deciding on your equipment. The room is the key to a great sounding recording, even if that means just making it dead enough so that you can add on artificial room effects afterwards. 
4. Even though your ‘doing-it-yourself’ get other people involved whenever you can. This could range from just playing work in progress to a select group of honest friends with good musical taste to working with someone in a co-producer role. In the latter situation, the dynamic of throwing ideas around with the right person can take a record to a whole new level, it can push you when you get complacent and it can reassure you when you feel unsure about something that sounds awesome but you’ve heard it so many times that you’ve lost perspective. Getting too close to your project is always a danger and so having one or two people come in and give you some objective pointers and encouragement can be a lifeline.
5. Try and set a timetable and stick to it. Projects without finish dates can ramble on for years and lose all sense of creative momentum. Obviously spend as much time as you need to perfect the song writing and production but try to continually push yourself to get it done within a manageable time frame. That immediacy of a deadline can brings it’s own creativity to the process.

Recording With Professionals —>

Fast forward to the current day – digital technology and computing power has revolutionised the way we record music and transformed the music industry. The top studios used to pay hundreds of thousands of pounds just for their mixing consoles and spend the same again on top quality microphones, audio processing and speakers. These days you can pick up software that emulates the sound of these top vintage consoles and equipment for a fraction of the price, moving recording top quality albums from the studios into the bedroom and rehearsal rooms of today’s indie musician. The move has meant that most of the major studios have now gone bust and with them the loss of some of the greatest sounding recording equipment and rooms ever built. A loss that not everyone appreciates as the cold thin digital sound of many ‘budget’ releases these days testifies. 

Whilst so many of the new recording tools are incredibly accurate and faithful to the vintage equipment they emulate, it only takes a few days working in a great professional studio with an experienced engineer or producer to see that it’s not only the tools that are important. In our opinion so many of the greatest records ever recorded sound like that not just because of the awesome sounding gear but also because they were recorded by quality engineers with years worth of professional experience. The magazines, books and audio courses that claim to be able to teach you how to record a hit record in a matter of a few lessons are misleading; the technology is good enough today to allow you to record a pretty decent sounding recording but it takes years of working at it and learning the tricks to be able to make something that genuinely stands out from the rest of the crowd. 

The plus side is that as an artist you no longer have to sign your career away to a record company or compromise your sexual morals finding a sugar daddy to fund your recording sessions. It’s possible to go and spend less than a grand and pick up enough equipment to record a pretty decent sounding demo. If you spend a bit more then with a bit of practice you can actually record something that sounds pretty special. Indulging in the luxury of owning your own equipment also means that you can spend as long as you want to complete your masterpiece without a single glance at the studio clock, gone are the days of watching another hour and £100 tick away as the bassist screws up yet again!

In the following posts we’ll give you some tips on making that all important first album.

Tips for DIY recording —>