Home recording basics - part one

Why choose home recording for your musical efforts? Going to a commercial recording studio right away can be expensive (though not necessarily as expensive as you think..) and you will only have limited time in which to get your tracks. Home recording needs an initial outlay of cash, but you can tinker around to your heart’s content. Music techie Graeme Allen looks at your options.

So you can play a musical instrument?

Then there’s no doubt that you’re the next Jimi Hendrix, Daniel Barenboim or Craig David. However, nobody else yet knows this fact, and if you’re going to achieve the fame and fortune that Mr. David is currently revelling in you’re going to need to start creating that Number One album.

There are three basic stages to recording, whether you’re doing it in a professional studio or the cupboard under the stairs:

1.    Recording (or tracking)
2.    Mixing
3.    Mastering

The recording stage is when you record all your parts and instruments to different tracks in your entire song.

Mixing is when you set all the volume levels, pan them left or right (or anywhere in between) and add any effects you want. This is where a lot of the intricacies of music production come into play. It can take a very long time before your mixing starts to sound professional - mostly it comes down to practice, but in the near future we’ll be posting some tips on how to create a great mix.

Mastering is the final stage. Subtle effects such as EQ and compression are added to the entire song rather than individual tracks to basically ‘polish’ the whole thing, and to make it all sound like a nice, loud commercial recording. Mastering is seen as a bit of a dark art, and not something you will need to worry about if you’re just starting out with home recording.

When you’re  getting started you can just deal with recording and mixing all in one, adding effects and sorting out your volume levels as you go along. In fact this is actually a method used by a few professional producers, so you won’t be in bad company.

What do I need?
In this day and age it isn’t really practical (or economical) to record to tape any more. Most top studios do in fact still use big, expensive tape machines in the final stages of the mixing process, but, until you get your deal with EMI, a laptop will suffice. Either a Mac or a PC will do at this stage. I’ll go into the software you’ll need a little later on.

You will also need something to get the sound in and out of your computer. This can take the form of a soundcard or an external box, known as an audio interface. There is a vast array of these devices out there, ranging from big consoles covered in faders and knobs with 32 inputs and outputs to USB stick sized devices with just a couple of inputs and outputs. Naturally your computer will already have its own soundcard, but plugging something straight into its line input and recording is generally seen as a bit of a rubbish idea. The specialised soundcards or audio interfaces will have the necessary electrical gubbins (pre-amps, connections etc) to get a decent signal from whatever you’re plugging in.

Below are a couple of shots of a typical, budget-priced home recording audio interface, the Edirol UA-4FX:

Top view of the Edirol UA-4FX home recording audio interface. Sockets for jackplug line-in are on the front. Around the left-hand side, just out of sight, is a three-pin DIN connector for a studio-quality microphone.

Rear view of the Edirol UA-4FX home recording audio interface. Stereo input/output is on the right. There are MIDI inputs for data connections with a digital instrument (typically a keyboard). On the far left is the USB-out socket for connection to your PC or Mac.

What you need next…

… depends on your instrument. If it’s some kind of acoustic instrument (acoustic guitar, oboe, didgeridoo) then a microphone is needed. Again, there is a massive range of microphones out there. The two basic types are dynamic and condenser. Dynamic microphones are more rough and ready and good at dealing with loud noises. They will not generally yield as detailed a recording as a condenser mic, though. Condensers are a bit more fragile and require what’s known as “phantom power”. This is just a power supply that’s sent through the cable you use to plug it in. If you go for one of these make sure your soundcard or interface has a phantom power option (it may just say ‘48v’, which is what phantom power is). For home recording I would personally recommend getting a large-diaphragm condenser microphone such as the Rode NT-1 or Se Electronics SE1. These will be great for any acoustic instruments and vocals.

In the next post, we’ll look at electric and VST instruments and headphones/speakers.

Graeme Allen is the MD of Amati Studios, a company that works with some of the best mid-sized recording studios in the country.

In addition to his technical skills, Graeme is a first class musician in his own right, playing rock, blues and jazz guitar and classical violin. Visit his website at www.amatistudios.co.uk.

Tagged as: edirol, home recording basics, mixing, soundcard