Home Recording's Dirty Little Secret

What were your home recording expectations vs commercial high end studio recordings?

  • I was not expecting from the get go I could make high end commercial studio recordings.

    Votes: 529 40.1%

  • I had not considered the question of home recording quality vs commercial quality when I started.

    Votes: 287 21.8%

  • I expected I could reasonably equal the quality of commercial recordings.

    Votes: 502 38.1%
  • Total voters
    1,318
Lists of the top 200 guitarists in the world actually span a long time period so the good ones are very rare. 200 guitarists in a population of 6 billion is not a big number but when they are all you get to hear, it becomes easy to criticize most ordinary guitarists. Doesnt change the fact that you have to be extremely good to be noticed. Yep, 99% of musicians are pretty ordinary but they give us something to work with :)
 
Yep. No bitterness from me, just amazement when a truly precious musician is there to work with. It makes everything seem effortless....

Of course, then I make no money to buy more gear if the musicians are too good! lol!
 
Oh for sure, but I still think there is a lot of teamwork there. Great performer with a great producer, can you go wrong? There have been some awesome performers with mediocre recording facilities that beats the hell out of poor performers being made to sound better than they are (and I might be showing a touch of bitterness there, lol)
 
Yeah, we are in accord there man. I am not likely to call any of my work crap, but some projects are definitely harder than others. I do work for others, and sometimes collaborate and play on them, but I get the most satisfaction when it just works effortlessly. When magic just seems to happen....

I would be lying if I said it happened on the tracks that I play on. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. When something special happens, and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up without the help of synthetic compounds, that is what drives me. I may be kind of old school (whatever that means), but that is what drives me to record, spend money to improve my gear, and make music. The times when shit just moves me, is what keeps me going forward.
 
HR's dirty little secret?
well. this isnt confirmed. but i hear we have a few closet juggalos around here :o
 
Well, thanks man, I hope I am moving in the right direction. Every day brings new things. I keep learning with every project, as well as from members here. No where near retiring from my day job though.

Oh lord, you didn't make it as far as the 'Swift Recovery tune did you? lol! Actually, that was for a good cause, so I shouldn't even comment, but the girl was 11, and I really learned how to get the most from Melodyne on that one.

I really need to update that website. I haven't updated the pics in over a year. The Mexican blanket thing is gone, I added a 26'X15' treated drum room, a bunch of gear, and a new lava lamp. I don't really use the site to advertise, so I'm a bit lazy there.
 
jimmys69 said:
Well, thanks man, I hope I am moving in the right direction. Every day brings new things. I keep learning with every project, as well as from members here. No where near retiring from my day job though.

Oh lord, you didn't make it as far as the 'Swift Recovery tune did you? lol! Actually, that was for a good cause, so I shouldn't even comment, but the girl was 11, and I really learned how to get the most from Melodyne on that one.

I really need to update that website. I haven't updated the pics in over a year. The Mexican blanket thing is gone, I added a 26'X15' treated drum room, a bunch of gear, and a new lava lamp. I don't really use the site to advertise, so I'm a bit lazy there.
Click to expand...

Yep I heard that one. Nice voice, and great work all round. Kids are pretty scary sometimes. This link is to a recording I made of a 14yo girl. She is doing her own harmonizing, thats me on the guitars

Sherry - Kiss Me
 
Yeah, you know then. I have a soft spot for kids. The girl that I did that for I met through this site. Her dad asked for someone to produce her song. It was to raise money for cancer research. Haven't heard back since. Hopefully they did something good with it.

Nice tone man.

Maybe we should do some collab covers and make superstars out of crap like that girl with the 'Friday' tune? lol!

Anything but that, and I would be willing to collaborate on something. :)
 
Funny that you dont hear back from a job well done... still, its part of your resume now :)

That would be great, I am not new to collaborating. Have been doing that since about 2004 when I produced a recording of myself and 3 other international guitarists. I got them to record their part and just send me the guitar track so I could mix it into the original backing track. Sounds like everyone is on stage together so I added crowd noise and the spatial effect of a moderate club

International Jazz Jam
 
Nice! I have quite a few things going on with projects in other countries. Strange how small the world is now.

Someone is going to tell us to get a room soon, so I'm gonna beat them to it. lol
 
I think it is more than possible to surpass commercial recordings in quality.
Quality is a rather floating decimal spot. All of the technically accurate organized noise you can make isn't very good if it isn't creative.
You can get clean , clear , crisp recordings on home gear with fat bass and great overall sound. I have been doing it for years.
I used analog 8 track through analog boards originally, and I like that sound better than most of what I hear coming from "major" artists now.
I have a studio now with 2 ADATs through a RAMSA board with various outboard effects and I can get a huge sound.

I haven't sat down to figure out any of the digital studio in a box recorders I have, but what I have read about them and in the manuals is that they are somewhat limited in what they can do.
As an example , my Ramsa board has pans for the returns. I can pan a reverb to the exact spot where the guitar is rather than it being in generic stereo. I can use 4 different outboard reverbs and delays at a time, and can pick and choose them. I can also do a lot of trickery and experimental stuff with analog by how I connect and route things that I cannot get in the digital world.
Just being able reproduce wide quite frequency range isn't all there is to sound.

So, yeah, you can get great sound in home studios.
Another can of worms I can open is that you can also program a drum machine to sound like a real kit. I do it and cannot tell the difference between my SR16 and my acoustic drums once it is mixed. It is all in thinking outside the box.
Sadly , too much of the digital world is contained inside the box. But I intend on finding ways to get some of it outside the box too when I get into it.
 
Nice read! Yes it's all about a good song. Let me work with any sound card any reel to reel -any- stereo mic BUT a great room, killer 40 piece orquestra and I am good to go!
 
I guess I've never really thought about it but good thread.

I suppose I'd expect home recording to never be able to deal with that kind of thing in terms of price. But I'll need to listen more closely and see what the difference really is.
 
Not I too old to be good just trying to record to torture my children later down the line. Doing a lot of 50/60/70 :drunk:
 
If were talking about a basic home studio $1000-10k price range, then there's not really anyway it can surpass the quality of a good commercial recording studio. But in saying that if your only recording up a demo mixtape or music to use as a stepping stone then you don't really need that commercial quality.
 
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