Why do you "home record" ?

  • Thread starter Thread starter grimtraveller
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I always record in the nude so ...... I have to record at home or I'll end up in jail. :p
 
kidkage said:
My environment tends to influence my ideas. Whether it's the sunlight coming in the windows (or lack of), or my neighbors with the chainsaw... or these new $30 led strips I bought. Or just being able to eat cereal at 4 am and spontaneously decide to record myself playing guitar or humming a melody into a mic. We all know how awesome it is when an idea just hits you, and we all know how terrible it is when you can't hit that idea back.

And my environment is also my own so my recordings have that going for them (good or bad as that may be :eek:).
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WoW Sunny. Those LED lights almost put to shame the lava lamp.

PM me a link on where to get them.
 
I write (and play most of the instruments when I record) - and it would cost a fortune to pay studio time. Naturally, it is a nice convenience to simply walk downstairs to record (vs. leaving the house and driving X miles to a studio. Candidly, I've learned to enjoy trying to record a sound, having it travel through numerous audio devices and actually come out on the other side (and although I scream and whine when the sound doesn't come out the other end - I actually gain satisfaction when I can troubleshoot and figure why.

I do record some select clients (so the equipment pays for itself) and do enjoy acting in the sole role of engineer - but that is not what started me down the home recording path
 
I've got no desire really to do anything in a professional studio. I've got too many hangups about my technical abilities and the number of times I screw up to ever get anything other than an overbearing sense of dread at having to get good takes while a bunch of pros are watching :laughings:

I also tend to use my DAW as a tool for writing - messing about with the song structure and looping bits over and over until I get an idea of where they should go etc. Not quite sure about how anything like that would work anywhere other than on my own in our spare room with as much time as I need. I'm quite happy with my heath robinson setup - it's basic, but it just about gets me what I want eventually...
 
Recording is part of the writing process for me, too. It would be extremely expensive if I went to a pro studio with half an idea for a song.
Plus, a home studio is available when I'm ready to write/record, not the other way around.
 
For me, it's budget. Budget, budget, budget. As in, "I ain't got no moneys." ;) I've sold off a big chunk of my camera collection (a former obsession...I won't go into that right now) to fund the purchase of mics and a pre-amp and assorted gear; I put gadgets on my Christmas list as well.

And it's not about the music, because my home-studio is for the spoken word: audiobooks and old-time-radio style audio plays. Before I got the vintage mics I'm using now (Shure Model 51's, which give a beautiful warm tone to the voices), it was cheap mini-mics housed in old microphone shells, packed in foam. What a difference, what a difference.

But I digress. The 2nd reason is time. I don't like paying for a space to do my mixing and editing, when I'm already paying a mortgage. That's why we bought a house with 4 bedrooms, so we could use the smallest one as an office. We didn't anticipate that it would be perfect as a recording studio, but sometimes you gotta embrace the serendipity, baby!
 
For me it's necessary. I sing and play piano/guitar live, but have no band. I started out doing the MIDI thing with a computer and bringing it along as my "Band in a Box", but now I found that I can get a lot better sound by playing my own stuff into Reason and mixing it down to where I am happy with the sound. Started doing this in the 90s with Cakewalk and a 4channel TEAC with a Yamaha computer card that could read sound fonts and did direct in/out.

Anyway, the necessity wasn't the equipment, but that you can't buy vocal tracks without an instrument. You can't get the singalong track for a song and have it missing both the voice and the piano or the voice and the guitar. So I started recording all the parts I couldn't do live in "studio" and then playing (and singing) the missing parts live. It's a lot easier to use MP3s live through a PA than it was to try to patch a computer into different PA systems wherever I went.
 
Best reason would to be to stay away from all of those "get rich weasels" out there that are scamming so many now.
 
Hey everybody, I'm new to this forum, but I couldn't resist this question. My first response is to just say "yeah, what they all said!", since all of the above are reasons I home record.

Then I realized there is at least one more reason: I am a control freak. That's not to say I'd never let someone else help with mastering, or other musicians contribute. After all working with others helps stimulate creativity, and heaven knows I need all I can get. But I really value having no one to breath down my neck, not worrying about letting someone else get their two bits in.

Great question, great answers!!
 
In addition to many of the comments already made, I do it as it is a challenge. It is something new to learn and improve with. Each time I record something, I learn something. it may be something about the process or the software or maybe my standard of playing, but there is always something new to learn.

I think mostly though, I am comfortable at home. There is no pressure on time or money. If I need to do the same guitar part 20 times or experiment with multi tracks or differnt guitars, I can, I don't have anyone else looking at their watches or 'tut tutting' because I need to 'go again'.
 
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