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In today’s age, where technology gives people the opportunity to do things they never dreamed of doing before, many people are given tools to build things without knowing anything about how to use them. Music production is high on the list of new technologies that allow people to make music literally anywhere they want. With iPhone apps literally giving people a studio in their hands, many music enthusiasts are investing in home recording studios without knowing what to buy and how to use the studio equipment.
Let’s first take a look at the idea of a recording studio and how it can be made to live in the hustle and bustle of today’s modern family.
A recording studio is a highly controlled environment that is typically treated for sound isolation and optimized for recording multiple instruments at the same time. Most people won’t be able to set up their homes to have multiple instruments recording at the same time effectively, but it is possible to set it up to have multiple instruments record one at a time in a way that allows for high quality recording.
For this example, let’s say we’re going to record a typical pop band with drums, electric guitar, bass, and singer. Though with the addition of soft synths and MIDI, you may never need to use a real microphone in your home studio other than for recording vocals.
The most difficult to record is the drum kit. It will require multiple microphones and a room in your house that you can modify with acoustic treatments. These acoustical treatments don’t have to be anything more than blankets draped in front of windows and pillows tucked into corners to absorb sound. What you’re trying to do here is prevent sound from bouncing around the room and back into the microphones that are set up to record the drum kit. In an ideal setup, you’d have one mic for each drum in the kit, as well as a pair of stereo mics for the cymbals or overhead. Each mic in the drum kit should be a dynamic mic that allows for close placement without the concern of the mic picking up too much sound from the other drums.
However, overhead mics should ideally be condenser mics and are very good at picking up subtle cymbal details. Each microphone will need its own input to your recording interface which will be either USB or Firewire and will of course feed the input to your computer. So for the drum kit, you’ll need a mic for each drum, plus two mics for the overhead, a mic cable for each, a mic stand or mic clamp for each, and an interface that can handle multiple tickets, probably up to eight. Also, your interface will need to have phantom power in order to power the condenser microphones you will be using for your overheads.
Electric guitars can be tricky in this type of setup because most high-quality guitar amps sound best when played at a high volume. However, it is easy to solve this problem in several ways. The first is to simply clear out the back of your closet and stick your guitar amp in it. Microphone placement is important, but start with the microphone (a dynamic microphone like a Shure SM57, Audix I6, or Sennheiser E609) pointing directly at the front of the amplifier and work your way up from there. If you don’t like the sound, just move the mic a bit to the left or right and don’t point it directly at the speaker. Try turning the microphone head a bit at an angle and you’ll immediately notice that you get a different sound. The other way to negate the loud volume of an electric guitar is to run it directly without an amp using an amp modeling device. This is a very popular technique and can give you fantastic results without disturbing your neighbors. An amp modeling device like the Vox Tonelab or Line 6 HD500 sounds great and you never have to use an amp. The guitar is connected to the modeling pedal, the pedal is connected to the interface, the interface is connected to the computer. The only thing you will hear is the guitar playing through the monitors in your recording studio.
In a home recording environment, bass is recorded almost exclusively through the use of a direct box. also known as a DI box. There are many to choose from and each one will give the tonal qualities of your bass a different sound. I recommend and turn DI on with eq and other parameters so you can tweak the sound of the bass before it actually goes into the computer. It is very important to make the sound of your instrument sound as good as possible before recording it. Using a direct box is very similar to using a modeling amp like the one we talked about for an electric guitar. A direct box simply sends the bass directly to the recording medium without the use of an amplifier, but does so in a way that preserves the quality of the original audio signal.
The following is the most important element of any song, regardless of genre; the voices It is very important that when recording the voices you are in a very quiet room. A converted closet can work very well. Get everything out of the closet and put a blanket around the walls to prevent voices from bouncing off the drywall and back into the microphone. It is also very important to make sure that the air conditioning or heating is turned off while recording. Believe it or not, that condenser microphone you should be using to record your voice can hear the air coming out of the vent, even if you can’t. That air noise will end up in your recording and will ultimately be one more problem you have to deal with during the next part of the process, mixing. Another way to get a great vocal track at home is to record in the living room or if you have a vaulted ceiling in the dining room that can also work very well. Sometimes allowing the natural reverberation of a room to be part of the vocal recording can improve audio quality and performance dynamics.
In this example, you just need to walk around the room singing out loud. Be sure to listen very carefully as you walk. At some point as you move around the room you will hear what we call a “sweet spot”. This should be where you set up your microphone for the vocal pickup.
So now that you have a very basic understanding of how to effectively use your home as a recording studio, what kind of equipment is really needed? Well, there are some absolute essentials and then some “I wish I had”.
This is what you need to make all of this happen.
A computer. I highly recommend a Mac, but a PC will work just the same. Max it out with as much RAM as you can afford or need.
An external hard drive. Recording to your computer’s internal drive will fragment the drive very quickly. The use of an external drive is STRONGLY recommended.
A recording interface. Either USB or Firewire. An interface acts like a digital converter that converts your analog audio signal into something the computer can understand. The more inputs and outputs your interface has, the more versatile your home recording studio will be.
Microphones – You will need dynamic and condenser microphones. If you outfit your drum kit with a drum mic pack from Shure, Audix, or Sennheiser, you’re sure to have everything you need. You can use the snare mic for your electric guitars, and you can use the overhead mics in the mic pack for acoustic guitars, hand drums, tambourines, or any other instrument. Then you’ll need at least one large-diaphragm mic for your vocals.
Pop Filter – Should be used with your vocal microphone to ensure that sibilance and puffs of air from vocal performance do not enter your recording. It also protects your condenser microphone from moisture that can damage the microphone.
Direct Box – This is used to get your bass into your recording interface. It can also be used for keyboards. If you have keyboards, make sure you have at least two direct boxes so you can record your keyboard in stereo.
Mic Stands: One for each drum mic you have space for
Headphones – You should have headphones so that the recording musician can hear the music you are recording. You can’t play it through a loud speaker or the microphones will hear it and it will leak into your recording.
Studio Monitors – Traditional computer speakers or using speakers from your home entertainment system won’t cut it. Critical listening speakers are absolutely necessary and don’t skimp on this.
Recording Software – The interface you purchase may not come with the appropriate recording software. It is important that you understand the ins and outs of the software you purchase. Some are better at different types of music genres than others.
The last thing I’ll talk about here is the use of what are called “soft synths”. A soft synthesizer is a virtual instrument. In a nutshell, virtual instruments are most commonly used by controlling them with a MIDI keyboard. MIDI is a digital protocol that allows you to play an instrument from a controller surface. A MIDI keyboard can trigger sounds in a software package that will allow the user to simulate the sound of a drum, guitar, bass, piano, trumpet, or any other instrument. Thus allowing the user to add elements to music production that would otherwise be nearly impossible in a home recording studio environment.