The Future of Home Recording
Hi,
We wanted to share a great article written by one of our very talented friends, Dave Johnstone. Dave really knows his way around recording studios and has great insight on the future of home recording. Dave knows what aspiring home recording enthusiasts need to do to help make sure their music is heard. Whether that means helping you choose the right equipment for your studio to avoid wasting money, or providing you with great tools and tips to help you take control of your music and promotion, Dave is the go to man.
If you don’t know who Dave is…
Dave Johnstone is a professional sound engineer and a Home Recording Studio enthusiast. He has been working in studios since the age of sixteen. With the recent leap ahead in quality of affordable recording equipment he has seen the need of millions of people around the world to have access to understandable information about all aspects of the Recording Studio. In response to this he has developed a set of websites that are aimed to make starting a home recording studio much easier by making all the information available in one place.
http://indie-musicnetwork.com/ProduceMusicStudioEbook
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Home Recording Studio Article
What?!? You mean you’re still paying to record in a pro studio?
I love music, I’ve played it since I was 4 (the keyboard, badly to start! Then the cello, slightly better. Then the saxophone, which I actually got quite good at!).
Then I discovered the Atari ST. It had begun…
Very quickly my little studio evolved into what it is today. A Home Recording Studio capable of recording mixing and mastering at a very high level of quality. I picked up an acoustic guitar, strummed a few chords and I suddenly found myself writing and producing half decent songs!
The explosion in the number of people writing, recording and producing at home these days forces everybody to take a look at the state of the industry. Many of the big recording studios are shutting down all over the world as more and more people buy their own studio and start to create in there.
In fact, when many artists get their advance from the record company to make a record, instead of spending it on studio time they spend it on a studio of their own that they can use to create as many albums as they want.
They suddenly find that they can spend as long as they want, make as much noise as they want (Baring in mind the neighbours) and generally enjoy themselves a lot more as a lot of the stress associated with the recording studio environment is gone.
Anybody who is remotely interested in music now has a home recording studio. Songwriters, producers, engineers, bands, teachers, composers, solo performers and more use their home recording studio.
It is cheaper. People have more time and therefore are able to be more creative. It is more relaxed. You can design the most suitable environment for you.
It is not necessarily all good news though. People now tend to record anything and everything.
This means that rather than waiting until they are sure they have a great song, they just hit record and go with it. The result is a lot of rubbish and one good one that is hard to find.
The key is to not get carried away and record everything just because you can. You still need to spend the same amount of time working on the song as you used to.
At the end of the day, a professional recording studio will still make your track sound better than if you do it yourself, but with the quality of equipment available at home these days fewer and fewer people can tell the difference.
Having said this, my friend who is a professional songwriter uses his own studio to write, record and produce, but then hands it over to a professional sound engineer (like me) to mix and master it.
He also gets a pro sound engineer to record some instruments that are more complicated to record like some drums, string quartets, orchestras, choirs, other ensembles and any other less straight forward instruments.
I think this is something that the industry will see more and more. Since Apple bought Emagic, Logic Audio has been made easier to use, with the launch of Garageband and Logic 7 Apple is lowering the entry point so that almost anybody can fairly easily make music.
This lowering will mean that there are more and more people recording and therefore more and more competition so the best will be better and the ‘less able’ will be churning out some pretty useless stuff.
The industry is changing forever; The Hit Factory New York recently announced its closure as they are moving to smaller premises in Miami as they are no longer getting enough work. This was once a world famous studio where the world’s top musicians recorded.
The studios that survive will be the big studios that are owned by the film, television and gaming industries. Also, the studios that are owned by independently wealthy individuals or that have other streams of income will survive.
Some of the biggest artists who have owned their studios for years will find them called on for work. The music that is made in the bedroom and small studio will get better and better. With the legal downloads industry taking off the online marketing of your music will become a vital part of any musician’s game.
The way to get your music heard will be by playing gigs and by having your music available for download.
Make sure you keep learning all the time, learn your instruments better, learn your equipment better and learn your promotion better. Gone are the days when you sent your CD to record labels and hoped they’d be listened to.
Welcome in that new era where you take control of your music and of its promotion.
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Thanks for checking out Dave’s great article. For assistance choosing the right equipment to meet your needs, we also encourage you to visit the following URL:
http://indie-musicnetwork.com/ProduceMusicStudioEbook
To your music success,
Traci Crowley
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