Tips to succeed as a home studio producer or mixer
Songwriters often dream of having a good and decent recording studio. Nowadays, it starts to become a known trend of musicians starting their own home recording studio or becoming a home studio producer or mixer on their own, for the following reasons:
a. Commercial studios are very expensive and they need to cut production cost by starting on their own.
b. They like to earn some music production skills.
c. They have all the freedom they want with their music (as opposed to commercial studios where there are producers controlling your music).
d. No hassles and pressures in the home studio, you can work anytime you need.
I have mention some of the important aspects already specially on how to succeed with your own songwriting demo. Not all home recording studio aims to produce a demo, some will even use it for actual and commercial music production.
So how do we start?
Below are the best advices I can give , based on years and years of experience producing songs at home:
1. It starts with knowledge. I do not recommend to buy any equipment unless you are fully sure how to use it. Read first, understand then buy the basic sets of equipment you need first. Below are the topics I will recommend to gain knowledge pertaining to the audio recording aspect (by order of priority):
a. Understand the purpose of a sound card.
b. Understand the flow of signals from your instruments all the way down to your computer.
c. Learn how to use the mixer (very basic not a console like this!)
You can have something like a simple Behringer Xenyx 502 which is not big and expensive.
d. Get a recording software and understand how to use it. I recommend Adobe audition, Cakewalk and Sony Vegas (all are Windows based, Pro Tools is nice but could be expensive, since it is industry standard). Start learning first with basic loops provided by the software package. Do not ever switch to any music production software once you learn how to use it.. Stick with it, your mastery in using your software can be one of the major key factors of becoming a pro in music production for the future.
e. Learn what is compression, equalization, normalizing, noise reduction, clipping and other technical aspects of recording. I recommend reading my computer audio recording blog as it contains very important details on how to effectively use these recording techniques.
2. Prepare to produce crappy recordings and learn from it. More than 5 years experience, I believe it is a myth that your quality recordings are being hampered by your low cost equipment, no it is not. Instead what is likely the problem, is the failure of the home studio producer to accept/learn mistakes as well as failure to understand completely the technical aspect of recording (see e. above) and the proper use of the recording/mixing software. Have your song be professionally reviewed in MySpace, Broadjam,etc. Compare your work with the pro, then tweak and tweak using basic recording techniques such as compression, normalization and equalization. You will noticed as your accept mistakes, your produced song will start to hear like a professionally produced work.
3. Invest with good ears more than with a good equipment first. Take care with your ears, do not mix with loud volume always, and do mix for 3 to 4 straight hours, it makes your ears tired and incapable of producing good hearing judgment.
4. Love your completed work. Only if you have passion with your work , that someone will starts to love your work also.
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