This is Spencer Miles, the owner of Spencer Studios in Lancaster, PA and we
are your local recording studio. Today we are diving in on how to make your
home recording a success. Yes, you can absolutely record at home however,
there is a lot to consider. Recording at home is extremely common. Taylor
Swift's last three albums were recorded at home.
If you want your home recordings to be useful towards your musical success,
consider the following:
- The recording space: quiet, neutral, dead
- Use of a low noise microphone, interface at correct gain staging,
and use of a DAW
- Removal of any plugins and exporting correctly in time with
labels
The Production Space
In the studio we have gone to great lengths to create a quiet environment
where the only sound being recorded is the intended sound. The two studio
spaces commonly used are a vocal booth or a live room depending on the type
of sound source. When recording at home make sure to eliminate as many
external noises as possible from traffic to children, even noises in the
kitchen. Having any of these noises in with your recording can ruin your
mix. Try to select a neutral acoustic space. That tiny closet is probably
not going to cut it as it will likely have a boost in bass due to the
physics of the room which as a result will boost the bass frequencies
recorded in your voice. The bathroom shower is also going to be a no go. The
same amount of reverb that makes your voice sound good when you sing in the
shower will make it very difficult to blend your track with the rest of the
mix. Try to find a space that is quiet, neutral, and doesn't have an
excessive amount of reverb.
If some of the above goals seem out of reach don't worry, we at the studio
have you covered. The vocal booth at Spencer Studios is an acoustically
isolated room within the room of the studio, has been acoustically treated
to be neutral with an appropriate reverb time and ran at a cost of around
$15,000. This space is the perfect environment for recording vocals and
numerous other sound sources.
The Gear
A common question I get is "what microphone should I use" and the answer is
yes? A microphone is like a paint brush as they all hear sound in a
different way, depending on factors such as transducer type, frequency
response, polar pattern, distance and axis, recorded results could be wildly
different. At the studio we have an entire microphone closet for different
scenarios but that may not be feasible at home. When teaching audio
engineering I spend between three and five lessons discussing this topic.
The answer to the above question is really "it depends." If the goal is to
record vocals at home let me give you a cheat sheet that will work in most
cases.
Use a large diaphragm condenser (make sure to turn phantom power/48v on) and
use a pop filter with the microphone. Place the microphone 6-8 inches away
from you at nose height tilted about 15 degrees to the left. This type of
microphone requires phantom power so you will need a preamp and interface
combo to get the sound from the microphone to your computer, Focusrite and
Presonus are popular reputable interface brands. Adjust the microphone gain
on the interface so at your loudest in your DAW or on the interface control
you are not passing 60% on the meter. This setting will avoid any sort of
distortion due to clipping aka the red light you might recognize.
The DAW (digital audio workstation) is where a lot of the magic happens in
the studio. It is how we as engineers interact with your music. It is
important that we are using a DAW with a sample rate of at least 44.1khz and
a bit rate of at least 16bit, 24bit and 48khz or higher is preferred. The
industry standard in the studio is Protools however, free programs like
garage band and audacity will work just fine for the purpose of home
recording. At this point it is time to export your files. Please remove any
reverb, eq or compression you have applied to the track. If you are tied to
any special effects such as autotune or delay those can be left in however,
know that most studios have 1000s of dollars' worth of software. Spencer
Studios has a reverb plugin called Altiverb that costs 700 dollars alone. It
is best to send us dry tracks and leave the processing to us and our
resources. It is not uncommon to send both dry and "wet" (plugins left on)
tracks to be referenced during the mixing stage, just make sure to label
them as such.
It is imperative that when you export each track individually, you also
export any silent space with regard to say the instrumental track or other
voices you may have been singing to or with. Failure to do this will make it
near impossible to use in the studio without you coming in and manually
lining things up. If you are not sure how to do this just ask, as there are
likely already videos online that we can send you which show how to export
properly. Lastly upon exporting please label your individual tracks for
organizational purposes.
If you want to know more consider scheduling a free session with us,
Spencer Miles Spencer Studios 313 W Liberty St, Lancaster, PA 17603
spencerm96@comcast.net
7176348955
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