Its a great time to be an indie/record-at-home artist these days. Hardware and software prices are at a all time low. Information and tips are plenty on the net and youtube. All it takes is time and some good tips i picked up along my now almost 6 years of mucking around with studio software and home studios. Now one thing upfront, im not a producer by any means, or a audio technician, im just a guy writing songs and looking for a means to record that, still if you record at home, i hope some of my tips might be of use :) : MY WORST MISTAKES IN RECORDING AUDIO: 1: Use BAD equipment and software: using a low qaulity audio interface is a sure way to absolutely KILL your sound quality, usally better to spend a bit more. Focusrite has a good FireWire and USB series, prices ranging between 200 and 300 (euros / dollars , all the same anyway lol). Same goes for using a cheap microphone, a good mid ranged microphone (check out Rode) will set you back around 200, but makes a world of difference. Free or built in plugins are almost certainly not gonna cut it, good to get you started but no more than that. Check out some of the excellent plugins out there (tips: Scuffham S-Gear / Sonnox Oxford Reverb / VOG Bass plugin , these plugins provide top notch hardware like performance at a fraction of the cost). 2: Mixing only with headphones Just think about it , music always sounds different on headphones right? You hear all the small stuff and miss out on the big stuff (like pumping compression, or bass levels). ALWAYS mix using monitor speakers, i usually switch between a few different sets. Try to listen to you mix on different audio sets (or say in your car). Also, dont always listen to a loud volume, putting the volume up way high will give a false sense of the proper levels. 3: There are NO rules in audio, well actually there are .... Thanks overpaid studio tech for jamming this useless line in my head. Sure , MUSIC wise , there are no rules, but compression , good distribution of intruments, good reverb usage , avoiding the bad stuff (muddy mixes) require you to heed a few important aspects of sound in general. Take time to check out some of you tube gems out there. (this is a clip on reverb, but the guy explaining is really good check him out his name is Fab Dupont : ) https://youtube/watch?v=PWq0SaBPlw4 4: Take your time, and learn :) nuff said, recording takes time to do, and even more so when learning all the skills needed to record it in a good way. Take criticism in , but dont let it get to you. When mixing, stop for a day or two and then go back. Overlistenening while recording can be counterproductive (guilty). Got more tips? Just lemme know :)
Posted on: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 08:47:02 +0000