Home Recording

These days (2011) setting up a home recording studio takes very minimal hardware as compared to the old days. You can do it with just the microphone and sound card in your laptop! Just install a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) and you're on your way.

Being a drummer, percussionist, and composer though, I have to have a keyboard, a mic and an electric drumset. I have my studio set up in the noisiest place in our home: the garage. The air handler, fans, freezer, and window ac generate a lot of noise. Having four kids leaves me no room in the house to soundproof a room and set up in regular comfort. But by nature and necessity I have adapted. I will go more into this a little bit later.

It is very advantageous to use two screens while editing audio, or video. You can have your tracks in front of you and your effects, mixer, and browsers off to the side. I sometimes split my transport between the screens. Working like this improves workflow ergonomics.

As you can see DAWs can be very pricey. Listed above are just a few examples of the leading industrial ones out on the market. A good way to find out which one is right for you is to follow these guidelines:

1. Run a search in Google for digital audio workstations, audio editors, or recording software.

2. Visit the resulting manufactures websites and download a demo version so you can try them out before making your decision to purchase. They are not all alike and they don't all perform the same.

3. Visit Amazon for pricing and other details like customer reviews.

DAWs are not all the same. Some have extensive editing capabilities like the three I mentioned above. Berklee School of Music even offers a course on how to use Sonar X1 Producer.

There are also programs designed with loops as their focus. Loops are small one or more measures of music which can be dragged out (or looped) to create whole songs. They can be just a single instrument, or multiple instruments. One shots are just that, a single clip which can't be dragged out like a crash cymbal or orchestral hit.

What you choose to use for your DAW is like I said - a very personal choice. You will be investing a lot of money and time into your DAW, so it's worth it to take the time to research them to figure out which one works best for you.

When setting up to record a new song I like to keep a few important things in mind.

1. No matter what the instrument is, record it dry without effects and save it. If your software has the ability to auto save, turn it on. Make sure you associate your file tree with your save folder in your DAW. I usually start out by creating a song specific file tree. An example would be: create a new folder on the desktop. I put it on the desktop so that while I'm working I don't have to scroll through all the files on my hard drive. Also if you have an external hard drive copy this folder from your desktop to it so that in the event of a crash it will be somewhere other than a damaged internal drive. Within the desktop folder create a tree going something like this:

DRY INSTRUMENTS /Track 1...etc (if you use a drumset split the individual instruments into separate tracks) /Take 1...etc

PROCESSED INSTRUMENTS /Track 1...etc

MIXDOWN /1...etc

MASTERED

NOTES (Take extensive and detailed notes on processor settings and anything you do to your tracks. Doing this may seem like tedium, but if you play live and want that sound reproduced that you got in the studio, trust me, your memory can't be relied upon.) I have notebooks filled with stuff from years ago when I used to work on a four track, and those recordings could be reproduced if needed. This information is an invaluable tool to possess.

Always record dry first, then go back and add effects and processing. If the performer is inspired to play a certain way by using an effect, then route the effect just to them through headphones. In this way you capture the inspired performance and the dry sound in the case that the performance works, but the effect does not. Sometimes this only comes out in the final mix. Another way to do this would be to record two tracks at once with the original sound on one track and the effected on another.

Splitting a drumset into separate tracks sounds like a lot of work. It is. If you have already set up the mics to record it, then recording separate tracks for each mic (including the individual room and/or overhead mics) is not that big of a deal. Having total control over individual instruments is the final goal. Recording like this makes processing that much easier and should make the resultant drumset track have more umph. There's nothing more frustrating than to record a beautiful performance and to find out later that because it's just a single track of the whole set when you eq the overtone ring from a hi hat it makes a ride cymbal sound over gated.

While recording takes, processes, mixdowns, etc. it's always a good idea to save as and add the incremental number. Doing this will correspond to your notes, so that in every step taken you know what was done. Undo and History is not always there after shutting down for the night and restarting the next day.

You can always head over to my blog for more about me. Tim Moore. http://www.rockoetry.info