Do You Really Want to Record Your Music Artistry in the Garage?
by Fane
A funny thing happened to the recording industry in the 1990s. The advent of Digital Audio Workstations teased aspiring musicians and novice audio people into thinking that for a couple thousand dollars investment in equipment they could create a great CD in their back room or basement project studio. For those musicians interested in creating a demo so that they can get the attention of a record label this is a pretty good deal. The odds are probably 1 in 10,000 that any hits will result from a personal studio recording. It just won’t be a great recording. Most home or garage studios were started by artists to record demos to further their own careers.
The three most basic purposes for recording a demo are:
- Demo of a song to showcase songwriting skills to producers and artists.
- Demo of a song to showcase the performance of a band or artist to get label attention for the band or artist.
- Demo of a song to showcase the performance of a band or artist to get live gigs.
It is very difficult to perform and record yourself at the same time. Part of the recording art is the expertise and experience of the engineer and producer. Not often do you get that expertise in a project studio. That is what professional engineers are all about. You should expect the engineer to make it easier, not harder, to record your song. Let the engineer worry about technology, so you can think about the music. In some cases, you might be fortunate enough to find an engineer who can also help you with your music.
It just may be that a soundproof, acoustically treated room, thousands of dollars worth of mics, preamps, signal processing, and a quality recording device under the operation of a skilled person is worth the money. Then again, maybe your do-it-yourself spirit is indomitable and you must proceed to home multi-track recording. Just beware—to rival a decent recording studio’s arsenal of gear and knowledge is going to cost you a bundle. Believe it!
When you look at all the inexpensive electronic equipment advertised in the music magazines and music centers, you may wonder why on earth anyone would ever want to rent studio time ever again. You can do it all at home. How’s the reverb decay time in your bathroom? How do you think your Shure SM57 stacks up to a Neumann tube mic? Do you think the mic preamps in your Fostex stack up to a Calrec or a Neve?
Let’s say you go out and spend $3,000 on a Neumann. What is left in your budget for the guitar part of the guitar/vocal recording? Oh yea—where are you going to set up the drums? What about miking up the acoustic piano?—oops, don’t have one….
Truth be told, there is no end to the amount of money that can be spent on acquiring audio equipment. But money is not the whole story by any means. Okay, so explain the function on each of the controls on your compressor. Try to EQ the nasal quality out of that vocal. Why is there 60-cycle hum on the keyboard track? How do you punch in on this thing? Why does your mix sound so lousy on the car sound system? How much is too much bass? There are people trained to tell you that and a proper studio environment will let you hear that…accurately.
Digital or analog? The new guys in the business gravitate towards digital, having never experienced analog. The veteran producers and engineers will usually go for the musical sound of analog but may choose to record on digital once the signal has passed through an analog chain, which means preamps, compressors, EQ, and mixer. Why have a 10-foot monster mixing console when you can have a tiny digital mixer? What about a Mackie? When I began mixing live acts at Future Studios I was forced to use one of these relatively inexpensive brands of mixer, a mixer that is not totally uncommon in a home studio. It seemed I was always playing with the EQ to get the vocals to sound right and it never did sound right! Then we got the big 40-channel, 8-foot-long Soundcraft 8000. The first thing I noticed was that I didn’t have to EQ the vocals. They usually sounded great flat. When I did use the EQ it sounded wonderful. This is all the result of great British preamps and EQs, something the low-buck units don’t usually have.
In the Future Studios Global Change Music Recording Studio we have an SSL 4000 mixer. Now anyone aware of the recording industry knows that this hulking monster of a mixer and others like it were involved in recording most of the rock-and-roll hits of the last several decades. It has the sound of rock and roll, and yet can create any sound texture you could need in your next CD. The movie industry utilizes 96-channel SSLs to mix the soundtrack of your favorite film. When you sit at this console you know it means business.
So why would you use a full size, traditional recording studio with the huge mixer and all the bells and whistles? The sound! It sounds real, not synthetic. With this sound also comes the expertise of the people recording that sound.
Elliot Scheiner, a highly acclaimed audio engineer and an advocate of analog recording and using commercial studios, talked the very sonically obsessive, Grammy-winning, Steely Dan boys—Walter Becker and Donald Fagan—into analog recording a song for their new album. They are very technology-oriented, and for the last 20 years they have been recording mostly digitally. Elliot says they were blown away by the analog. They had forgotten how good it sounds. Elliot even did an A/B test between analog and digital and the analog was far better even using the high resolution 24 bit/96Khz digital. They are now tracking most of the album in analog.
I find that one of the annoying characteristics of digital recording and the small digital mixer/recorders is the transient response that is noticed in the upper midrange and highs. This is the reason for the apparent crispiness of digital. It is not always musical and certainly not natural, but it does sound digital, if that’s what you want.
There are the unavoidable issues of knowledge and expertise, even in the current environment where technology has proliferated to the extent that almost anyone can afford a good quality multi-track recording system. Sure, dabbling with these toys is fun. But, this is not a hobby. It’s a vocation and should be your passion. Those in positions of authority with experienced ears know these differences and expect you to also.
Editor’s Note: Fane is a professional musician and recording engineer at Future Studios with 27 years of experience as a TV Producer/Director for PBS and a national series on The Learning Channel (TLC). For more information or to make an appointment with the Global Change Music label, call (928) 282-9139.