Home Recordist??

Lol. I remember that thread, and some others over at the purple site that covered similar discussions.

Here's 20 items that I've learned over the years.. Most of this is good for the home recordist, some only for those who get paid to record..



1: Gear quality matters. Better gear will allow you to progress faster, and without second guessing yourself.

2: You won't see the pros using consumer and prosumer gear for the most part.. They mostly use professional gear except for the odd application.

3: Gear has a bell curve of price/performance. Once you reach the peak of performance vs. price, you reach the point of diminishing returns.

4: Consumer/Prosumer gear does not have good resale value for the most part. You will lose money through the "upgrade cycle"/GAS phenomenon. Save your money until you can get something from the pro level.

5: Avoid buying cheap and "upgrading", you'll just spend your time wishing for better and wondering if you're improving, or if the gear is holding you back.

6: Buy what you need, not what you want. If you can't put it to use immediately to fill a need, then it's a waste of money.

7: Professional audio engineers always have the same gear in their studios. Buy that gear. It's proven itself over decades of use. Everything else has been left behind by the professionals for one reason or another.

8: Instrument quality matters as much as recording gear. Better instruments don't necessarily sound better, but they play better, stay in tune better and are more reliable.

9: New strings on guitars for every session, that's how the pros do it.

10: Tune between every take, every stringed instrument.

11: Tune snare every single drum take, toms every 3rd take, kick every session.

12: Spend an hour finding and fixing every single rattle, and noise on every amp, cabinet and the drum kit.

13: Create and maintain an easy to learn file system and then back up after every session.

14: Have a plan for what you're going to do, have a backup plan for that, and an alternate plan for the backup plan.

15: Always keep spares of every consumable item. Drumsticks, strings, picks, etc.

16: If something is not working in the session, stop. Continuing will only mean more to re-do later.

17: Monitoring and room tuning matter more than anything else. If you can't hear what you're doing, how can you place a mic correctly, or set an effect or EQ correctly?

18: When in doubt, record clean or DI and reamp or add effects later.

19: When recording paying clients, be factual and unbiased.

20: Above all, you're there to make the session run smoothly and capture the artist's best performance. Act professionally but find a way to connect with the artist. They'll feel more comfortable and you'll likely hear a better explanation of what they want from you and the session.

Not to get you down but you also need a frame of reference..

Because you are a home recordist, you see a statement like that as an affirmation that you can do the same with your home studio. That's because you have a desire to do well with little investment. 

However it's worth noting that a lot of gear used back in Motown days was generic gear to them but they had very little to choose from. There was only a few microphones of the time worth using, and the same with preamps and compressors as well as the tape decks. Today we have probably 100 times the amount of gear to choose from.

Due to their limitations of the time the Motown sound was inherent in their choices of gear. It may have been the best they could do at the time when they might have yearned for something more like what were achieving today. Back then a lot less emphasis was put on room tone then it is today because the resolution and fidelity was a lot less back then.

But you also have to look at the gear choices themselves. I can bet that most of their microphones started with the letter U, and the preamps and compressors that used now go for tens of thousands of dollars or more.. which still brings us back to point number one of my list professionals use professional gear..

The more I go on forums the more repulsed I am. Sweet jesus.

I completely agree.

The important thing to remember that home recording means compromise. You have to decide what compromises you will make.
However more and more what's heard on the radio sounds like it was recorded in somebodies bedroom, unfortunately it isn't the oposite.

There's a sub-group in the home recordist category I'll call Apartment Recordists. Some of us, namely me, are in a situation where the odds of getting a good sound are stacked way against us. I live in an apartment next to the mail room, so mailboxes bang and people chat intermittently, below me is a laundry room, the machines when in action hum loudly and mics pick it up. The elevator motor is also below me, (I'm on the ground floor), I wait for the elevator to stop before recording, and hope it doesn't start again. Outside my window is the garbage collection area, which can get noisy on pickup days. My building and the building next door are having brick pointing done, which takes forever, hammers, electric tools, guys yelling.

It's a wonder I ever get anything done. My takeaway and advice to any home recordist is this, find the gear with the tones you like. This isn't easy, I've had an API based preamp, a REDD 47 based pre, and borrowed a Neve style pre once. The Neve was the better fit for me, but it may take me a little while before I can manage to get one for myself. At least I know where to aim my sights now.

OK, once you're OK with the sound in general, track with low levels, and just forget about any of the gear you don't have. The performance is the only thing that can overcome those obstacles. Get in shape, ( talking to myself here ;-) , get the song together, and just find the soul of it and express that.

People will respond to sincerity more than sound quality. The best singer is the one you believe.

Oh yeah, I've been there too.  I've told the story many times over the years, but the short version is that I'm generally bull-headed and in my youth, nobody could tell me what to do, and that was certainly the case in recording.  I lived in a small town a couple hours south of the big city (Atlanta) and there wasn't much chance to go to a big studio.

So I recorded my band, and soon recorded others.. First with a tape deck, then with 4 track, then moving on to a mixer/computer, then to larger mixer/HDD recorder, etc.

I turned over so much gear searching for that elusive "pro" sound, all while only focusing on cheap gear.  I was going to be that guy who was able to churn out radio-quality mixes using only Behringer gear.  I just knew it in my heart that if I tried hard enough and practiced and read enough that I'd be that person to break that barrier and do something nobody else could do..  The money I spent on gear was ridiculous.  I could have bought a handful of good mics, pres and compressors for the same money I threw away over a decade of chasing perfection through the low-end gear market.

Needless to say, it never happened.  I wasted so many years just playing around while the gear held me back.  It's slightly different now, since the gear available today is overall much better, but the same rules apply.  you have to pay to play, and your gear better be good enough to compete.

Looking back on it, I had chances to really learn from some pros, but they told me things that were contrary to my beliefs at the time.. And my ego completely ignored their advice.  This was advice that would have saved me 5 years or more of languishing in studio hell.

But I was proud, and all the "work" I put in meant something, right?  It had to mean something, or else I would have been a failure..  So I persevered under my own beliefs, and never went anywhere.  

And by "work" I mean struggling to work around all the deficiencies of my studio.. Namely non-professional level gear, and gear that was generally chosen by desire, not by need, and generally ill-suited for the things I was doing.  I spent most of my time troubleshooting and working around issues, rather than mixing cohesive tracks..

As they say, mixing the life right out of the material.

Unfortunately I see it in this generation's recordists, and in musicians in general, but a lot of them are like I was back in the day.. Too proud to listen.

Life in general is compromises, CLA talks about making compromises in mixing and I'm sure other guys at that level would say the same. Go listen to the new Jimmy Eat World record and tell me that it sounds like it was recorded in their jam space. Sounds insane and they've done almost everything in their catalog in home studios.

definitely solid state drives...


although a tube drive would probably be warmer 

Can you turn up the RPMs on those? (LOL)