Island Studios - Upptökuhljóðver - Recording studio - Hljóðver

If you’re in a band, you need a home studio. In fact, every musician needs a home studio. But if you are in a band and you’re reading this, then you my friend need to be the “recording guy/gal”.

Every band needs one. That special someone who has some equipment, some knowledge, and drive to organize recording sessions for the band. My guess is that the rest of your bandmates (like most musicians) don’t want to be bogged down with the technical stuff, so that simply leaves you.

Record Your Rehearsals

The best thing you can do is starting this week, record your band’s rehearsals. Whether you multi track it or just get a stereo mix of the band, make sure you get your practices on “tape”. These recordings can be rough of course and will mostly be utilized for arranging, writing, and demoing.

Last week one of my readers, and great friend, called me up to ask my opinion on the future of Pro Tools as a viable recording platform. He was referring specifically to the recent re-branding and dissolving of the Digidesign name and how that might affect future releases and the overall direction and vision for Pro Tools.

In case you are not aware (or interested), Digidesign Pro Tools has been around since 1984. Much of Pro Tools has evolved over the past 26 years, especially in features, power, and popularity. But up until now it has always been a product of Digidesign. Now it is officailly being rebranded as Avid Pro Tools.

There is much debate in the audio recording world over using a Mac or PC as your DAW computer of choice. I personally try to avoid those conversations as I believe they are a distraction to actually making music. I wrote about this in more depth in my ebook, The #1 Rule of Home Recording, which you can download for free here.

But if you are in the market for a new computer and you use a cross platform DAW such as Pro Tools, Cubase, Studio One, or Propellerhead’s Record let me give you three brief reasons why if you havne’t gone Mac yet, I will suggest you consider one.

1. Macs Just Work

It is a well known fact that Apple only manufactures a small line of personal computers (3 desktops and 3 laptop models). This allows Apple to focus on these core products and make sure they are built to strict standards and are satisfying the demands of both the casual and the professional user.

To be honest, so much of what makes up a good recording is working with a great song. Simply, you can’t go very far in the studio and expect a great result if the actual song writing isn’t stellar. On top of that I’ve written about how a solid arrangement takes what could be called “demos” to “professional” status much faster than people believe. But honestly what’s even more important before you dive into the arrangement and the studio tricks is this: can your song hold up when stripped away to just an instrument and voice?

Don’t Forget Your Acoustic Guitar

As the leader of a worship band at my local church I try to stay in tune with what some other wise and Godly bands, musicians, and worship pastors say on the subject of music. One website I follow is TheResurgence.com (a ministry of Mars Hill Church in Seattle). There was a recent article posted by Mars Hill’s worship pastor, Tim Smith entitled “Don’t Forget Your Acoustic Guitar.” In this article Tim talks about the importance of being able to strip away all the flashiness of instrumentation and effects and still have a song that is authentic, passionate, and moving.

There are many studies out there citing the evolution of our music industry (whether big label or local indie circuit) and artists can make money. They say that people no longer want to have to pay for music. Instead bands should giveaway their music for free and then sell other “experiences” (private shows, autographed merch, extra content, etc).

There is definitely a lot to be said for this new model of money making in music. But a recently released study from media selling giant Myxer reveals some encouraging news for us musicians…people are still buying a ton of music.

Now I’m not sure how many of you out there make a living (whether full or part time) off of your music, but this study is encouraging nonetheless. According to the study, “74% of Myxer users still buy CDs. 65%  attended a live music event in the past year and 55% of them bought something from the artist at the venue.” This is amazing news. Myxer users are people who download digital content all the time, and what we’re seeing is that a majority of these music lovers go to live shows, and half of those people drop cash at the venue.

Until you have had a hard drive failure or “accidentally” deleted your Pro Tools sessions where all your hard work is lost, tips like proper session backup seem boring and a waste of your time. If you haven’t had issue with lost recording then pay attention to this post because I don’t want you to ever experience that!

My hardest lesson learned was thinking that I actuallay was backing up my sessions properly. What I would typically do was record everything, and then when we were finished for the day I would simply close out of Pro Tools, find the session on my hard drive and physically drag a copy of the session folder to my backup drive. I figured “I know have two copies of the sessions. No problem” The problem arose when I actually lost some files and needed to access my backup only to find that despite having the audio saved to another drive, it was still looking for information from my old drive and the session was confused as to where each audio region was supposed to be in the timeline. This became a major headache very quickly.

What I’m going over real briefly today is the officially sanctioned procedure for file backup (and even prepration for session transfer to someone else) by Avid themselves. It’s super easy, so there is no reason NOT to do this:

1. Save Copy In

With the desired session still open in Pro Tools, simply head to the FILE menu and choose FILE – SAVE COPY IN.

Today I want to hit on a practical bit of advice. For most of you out there reading this blog (myself included), recording, mixing, and songwriting probably all happens in one room. It may even be a room shared with a a spouse, roommate, or perhaps your bed. This poses a challenge that many traditional studios do not face: inevitable clutter from daily life in your house.

From Coke cans and coffee mugs to stacks of paper and mail, to even kids’ toys and clothes, your home studio environment can quickly become a mess of everyday things. This is just life. If your studio is at “home” then it will easily blend in and become just as messy as the rest of your place. The problem is that a messy, cluttered studio does not lend itself to creativity or productivity. That being said, here are some simple “rules” I suggest you begin implementing right away.

We’ve all done it. We set our hearts on that one piece of gear that will make our music sound shiny and new. So we buy it, crack it open, use it for a few months, and then a year later we find ourselves looking for something else to replace it. If we don’t sell said piece of gear to afford something new, we’ll justify keeping it around by telling ourselves “It’s good to have options.” or “I’m adding to my arsenal or tool kit in the studio.” But in this sad process of always needing something new, we are loosing out on an opportunity to garnish real value from the studio gear we spend a good chunk of money on.

Audio Peer Pressure

Think about it, we home studio people are living in a whirlpool of advertising and brainwashing that bombards our minds with thoughts of newer, better, more vintage, more professional, etc. There is always something new to buy. And somehow these companies (and the subsequent online forum lurkers and fanboys) convince us that our once awesome audio interface or channel strip is no longer what we need. In fact, there is something very wrong with it. “The A/D converters aren’t good at all,” “That mic pre really colors the sound in a bad way”, “You’ll never get pro results with that.” You get the idea.

Many times when recording you feel that each track sounds great at first, yet once all the pieces are in place (drums, bass, guitars, vocals, keys) the mix becomes “muddy”, is lacking clarity and just overall doesn’t have the vibe you were hoping for. If you’ve run into this problem, you’re not alone.