My experience in a "real" studio

Armistice:

You've got a great girl there. THat was a great gift, at least the thought of it was.

In either case, this was a learning experience. Go back for the second go around knowing what to expect and YOU call the shots. Let the engineer know beforehand(in a polite way) that you were unhappy with the first session because of this, that and the other thing. This way he will know that you are not a schlub and that you know from whence you speak.

This should earn you some respect from this clown and I would even ask for some more studio time on the house because of your hardship.

What a great learning experience though, No! If everything went off smooth and clean that would have been good, too I guess, but you should walk away from this experience with something.

Good Luck!
 
Armistice:

You've got a great girl there. THat was a great gift, at least the thought of it was.

In either case, this was a learning experience. Go back for the second go around knowing what to expect and YOU call the shots. Let the engineer know beforehand(in a polite way) that you were unhappy with the first session because of this, that and the other thing. This way he will know that you are not a schlub and that you know from whence you speak.

This should earn you some respect from this clown and I would even ask for some more studio time on the house because of your hardship.

What a great learning experience though, No! If everything went off smooth and clean that would have been good, too I guess, but you should walk away from this experience with something.

Good Luck!
 
That's exactly what I'll be doing, knowing the limitations of the set up. Had another listen to it all last night - the "room" mic contains most of the thump crash of the rehearsing bands, so I can keep that down.

The other thing I realised was, upon listening closely, I'm not really happy with the way I was playing either - I mentioned it was difficult to play in there - small timing errors, mis-hit notes etc. Sure you know what fingerstyle acoustic can be like - it's rarely perfect.

I've learnt lots from it.

I actually have the gear to do everything else I need to do to a quality I'm reasonably happy with - just acoustic guitars hold me back. Hardest thing I've ever tried recording - just getting a decent tone.

This guy set up a KM84 about 4 in from the neck / body join and (I think) and AKG414 (don't shoot me if that's wrong) 4 ft from the guitar and that was it. He also EQed on the way in, I realised later.

Listening to the KM84 on its own, it's not that far removed from sounds I can get with cheaper mics - so maybe that SD condenser sound isn't what I actually want if this is a great mic - or maybe it just wasn't deployed to best effect.

Back to the drawing board!
 
smellyfuzz said:
Although I am generally unhappy with my final quality of songs, do to the limitations of equipment, space, money and most importantly experience, I find that using my own gear at home gives me other things that if I were to pay someone, I could not do.

First and for most, writing creativity. With my cheesy little analogue and digital set ups, I am only limited to my imagination. With Cakewalk or Cool Edit Pro, I can do what I want to music. Do my songs sound like shit, absolutely, but I’m getting better at tracking, recording and mixing everyday and I have no illusions as to the quality compared to the real guys. Plus, I have heard some very surprising quality in the Clinic on crap gear.

Second are time constraints. Being a working man, my time can get quite short. With equipment in my bedroom I can use it everyday, or once in a blue moon.
Click to expand...

Those are all valid points but what you are really talking about IS preproduction like Chess mentioned. It's all about your goals and expectations for your project. Home studios are perfect for writing and preproduction arranging. You could take all those tracks to a pro studio and dump then into their system and you would have all your scratch tracks and maybe even some keepers ready to go. Just overdub drums, vocals, etc and mix. You would have a killer album and probably save thousands.

Just recording the scratch tracks on your home studio can save you a day or two of time. That's where the $2000 home studio pays for itself.

I have some killer stuff at my home studio but that is because I want to produce a pro quality product and to be honest I still have a long way to go. I don't even attempt to mix a project at my studio if the client wants a radio ready production. It would just take too much time to be practical for me or the client.

Go with your strengths and know your limitations.
 
also....i didn't notice if this was covered by someone else but ......pro tools has a click track built in. i haven't figured out how to use it, but i know it's there. It tells you how to use it in the instructions, but i can no longer find the instructions. sucks for me i guess.
 
Armistice said:

This guy set up a KM84 about 4 in from the neck / body join and (I think) and AKG414 (don't shoot me if that's wrong) 4 ft from the guitar and that was it. He also EQed on the way in, I realised later.

Listening to the KM84 on its own, it's not that far removed from sounds I can get with cheaper mics - so maybe that SD condenser sound isn't what I actually want if this is a great mic - or maybe it just wasn't deployed to best effect.

Back to the drawing board!
Click to expand...

How much time did he spend getting the right mic position? I get the impression he just slapped some mics up in generic positions and checked levels. If that IS the case, then impress upon him the need to spend 20 min. or half an hour positioning the mics and recording a few test bars until you get something approaching the sound you're looking for.
He's just the engineer (and perhaps not a very good one) YOU are the producer for the session - take charge!

Scott
 
Praising the home studio...

I did not state that with 2k it was possible to get a pro setup at home, I'm not so foolish.

What I meant was that with 2k to start off someone can get up and running with a reasonably good method of producing some pretty good sounding demos.
Either using a top of the range multitracker, or using their PC, with a condenser mic, external compressor and effects unit, etc, which would all be available for within a 2k budget.

With this setup, plenty of time, AND KNOWLEDGE with how to get the very best results from this limited equipment (this last point is VERY important part of my argument), then it should be possible to get some great sounding results.
Of course they will not be 'radio' ready, but they will be good enough to hawk around as demos, which is what most bands at my level are going into studios and paying good money to try to achieve.

Add to that the artistic freedom of being able to track whenever you are in the mood, or fit and well, or inspired, the freedom to experiment without worrying that the meter is clicking away on your studio budget, the freedom to try things which you would be scared to try in a studioo because they are deviating from what you planned in rehearsal,
and the case for spending the cash on a home studio, rather than a one-off demo, becomes a strong one.

As I said earlier, I'm not opposed to pro studios at all, I'd love to be able to use them all the time, but I can't afford it and I believe therefore I get more bang for my buck by investing in home equipment and investing TIME learning how to squeeze the best out of it.

I know this is trrue, because I have heard some superb stuff produced by people on limited home equipment because they KNEW how to use it properly. I have also heard some crap produced in a pro studio because there was insufficient time/money and the engineer didn't give a toss, etc. etc.

The ideal of course IMO is to do both, do your demos on a home setup and then when finished take them into a pro studio, but I can't afford that.
 
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