Think about the last song you heard from your favorite artist. Got it? Good!
Now, think about the best song you have ever written. How does it sound in comparison?
If you’re like most of us who lack the funds to hire a team of professional producers and engineers, it probably sounds… flat, to put it lightly. Or perhaps, you’ve never had the opportunity to hear it yourself – after all, you are always the one performing it.
Well fortunately for you, all that is about to change.
It’s about to change because you’ve made the decision to go down the rabbit hole – you have decided to learn about recording music. Specifically, recording music in a home studio.
In this guide, one of several Home Studio Alkemy guides on the art of music production, we will walk you through the crucial equipment and necessary steps to create a viable recording that stands up alongside your favorite artists – from the comfort of your own home.
Table of Contents:
- The Art of Recording – Then and Now
- The Affordability of Recording Equipment
- Key Pieces of Equipment
- The Microphone
- The Computer
- The Preamp
- The Audio Interface
- Setting Up Your Home Studio
The Art of Recording – Then and Now
The art of recording dates all the way back to the 1800’s with the invention of the phonautograph by French inventor Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville. He used his device to record a woman singing a verse from “Au Clair de la Lune,” an old folk song.
This is the first audio recording in human history. Listen to its eerie warbles below:
Not the best quality, to be certain, but still a significant milestone in the history of music.
And a lot has happened between then and now. The music industry has turned itself inside out time and time again, and the technology once reserved for multi-million-dollar production companies now literally fits in a backpack.
Gone are the days when record industry executives decide who will win and who will lose. Gone are the days of, “Let’s make a demo for the record companies!”
With the drastic reduction in cost of the specialized equipment used for recording music, the biggest barrier to entry – money – has all but been obliterated. Nowadays, you can create your own private recording studio for a few hundred dollars.
The Affordability of Recording Equipment
Largely due to advancements in computing, the cost of recording equipment has dropped drastically in the 21st century. In an age where you have HD cameras on cell phones, it’s not a surprise that crucial recording equipment has become more affordable.
It is less expensive to manufacture than it used to be, and there is more competition in the pro audio market. It is still possible to put together a multi-million-dollar, cutting edge recording and production studio, but the price of entry-level equipment has gone down substantially since the day of the mammoth recording studios and all-powerful record labels.
There is an important distinction to make with the affordability of gear. It’s not that there are cheap products of poor quality, although those types of products are out there. It’s that high-quality products are now available at affordable prices. This is good for us, and it is a major factor in the rise of independent artists and record labels. It has directly influenced the state of the music industry today.
Key Pieces of Equipment
But what pieces of equipment are really necessary to get started? The amount of gear available is staggering – some of which is so specialized, a beginner may not even understand its function (what the heck is a “sonic maximizer?!”). But fortunately, the list of essential pieces for a recording studio is surprisingly short.
The Microphone
When it comes to recording acoustic instruments, there are two essential components: a capture device and a capture medium. The capture device, the microphone, will translate sound waves into an continuous, fluctuating electrical signal that can then be “printed” to the capture medium. Microphones come in all shapes and sizes, and with a wide range of specializations, so it would be beneficial to you to read our more in-depth articles on microphone types and recording applications before settling on a specific microphone.
The Computer
The capture medium can be anything from a magnetic tape strip to a digital .wav file, but let’s be honest – in this day in age, it is very likely that you already own a laptop or PC, so your capture medium will most likely be digital files in your digital audio workstation (DAW) of choice. A computer has many advantages over magnetic tape – audio is mind-bendingly malleable within the confines of a laptop, and save states are useful for coming back to a project after taking a break – or going to work the day-job.
The Preamp
Microphones translate sounds into electrical signals. But there’s a big problem – the electrical signals produced by microphones are weak – too weak to be printed. This is where a special piece of gear called a preamp comes in. A preamp’s job is to boost the voltage of the electrical signal produced by a microphone to a line-level signal. This is essential for a microphone signal to be heard – especially in the case of special microphones called condenser microphones, which require additional power in order to boost the meager electrical signal produced to a line-level signal.
The Audio Interface
So we have our microphone, our preamp, and our computer. But there is one final challenge. While microphones convert sound waves into electrical signals, electrical signals are still of an analog nature. Analog means relating to information conveyed by a continuous physical signal. This is our electrical signal. It would be fine if we connected the preamp to an analog medium, such as magnetic tape, but this is the digital age – we want to connect the microphone to our computers.
Computers think in a completely different language. They think in digital – or more specifically, in binary. While they can think in high resolutions that may look or sound continuous, they are in fact made up of separate bits, frames, or samples. This is incompatible with the analog nature of a microphone, so we need one more device to translate analog signals into digital signals. That device is the audio interface.
Using a process called AD/DA conversion, audio interfaces effectively translate continuous analog signals – like the electrical signals produced by a microphone – into computer-friendly digital signals.