Classic albums recorded at home?

[SouthSIDE Glen]

I am only interested in what you think of using a house as a shell for a recording project.

Well, if you're going to distill it that far, the question answers itself. What kind of exterior walls and roof the building has and what the local zoning comission says the purpose for the building is are both irrelevant. State of the art studios have been made out of lofts, barns, garages, bedrooms and basements. I know a guy in my area who make a "home project" out of buying an old church and convering it into a studio (the mixing console is located exactly where the altar used to be ). he turned it into a *great* space to record

So, assuming all else such as engineering talent and available gear, sure you can make a world-class recording in your home, if it has the proper acoustics and/or the engineer knows how to work properly with the available acoustics.

But none of that matters. If the performing talent is really worth recording, the quality of the recording is 100% irrelevant. OTOH, if it's just an average act, recording it at Paisley Park does not make it any more worth listening to.

G.

 

[jmorris]

john lennons "imagine"

 

[Monkey Allen]

The RHCP recorded BSSM in an old mansion didn't they?

Regurgitator recorded an album at home.

 

[Robert D]

I am very keen on creating music that is filled with air and ambience.

This to me reads high cielings and a good amount of cubic feet. Do you have a room that supports that, and can be acoustically treated?

 

[j-boy]

Instead of trying to make a *professional-grade* release and being disappointed, aim for making a *very good demo* and be pleasantly surprised.

 

[jmorris]

kind of relaated...maybe I am re-building my studio in my basement.In addition I am remodling my breezeway just up the stairs from said studio. I plan on running some mic cables and headphone jacks to use it for tracking once in a while,acc. gtr. and vocals. It is 10x13'. It will have all pine walls, cathedrial ceiling and stone/slate floor. I am wondering if this will be a decent area for above mentioned?

 

[Beck]

Classic albums recorded at home?

It’s been done by countless people over the decades. The tools and knowledge to accomplish the task are in abundance.

If you have good rooms that’s great. If you don’t you can create space with signal processors. These are the two basic approaches.

One really can’t answer the question based on odds and statistics. It depends on what you have to work with, what you can do, who you are, and even those unquantifiables, like destiny. Some people are naturals. Others couldn’t pull it off if let loose for a month at Abbey Road.

Yes it can be done, but only you know if you can do it.

 

[thediscoking]

My two cents

In my head, there's a pretty big seperation between records like Dylan/The Band's Basment Tapes and modern home recording. Sure, Basement Tapes wasn't recorded in a professional studio, but I would bet that they had more recording gear at their disposal han most of us (modern home recorders) do. (I haven't researched the album, so don't kill me if I'm wrong. Gentle correction is enough )

Another thing, widespread digital recording is a pretty new toy considering that music has been recorded since 1888.

In a nutshell, home recording in 2006 and in 1976 are two very different animals - it's hard to compare to two. I don't know if home recording has been around long enough for one of it's products to be considered "classic". However, a lot of damn good records have been made at home, IMHO.

The newest Hank Williams III record was recorded in a "good sounding room" with a Boss D1600. (The mixer overcompensated waaaay too much by adding endless delay and other effects.)..... The record sucked, but Imogean Heap's solo record was done at home and it sounds great. Iron & Wine's first (and best) record.... Devendra Bandhart... Mike Patton has done home recording records... A lot of Low's Great Destroyer was done at home and, then, was souped up by Dave Fridman... Broken Social Scene's early stuff... Magnetic Fields... Shit, White Stripes record at Jack's house! Brian Jonestown Massacre... Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was largely recorded at their loft... Elliott Smith.

In my humble opinion, if you have descent gear, someone that has the engineering chops, if you mix in a *real* studio, and have it professionally mastered, it's well within one's reach to create a recording that will stand up in today's market. It will have a different sound than Pink Floyd's --insert album name here--, but it can be done...

Of course, it makes a big difference if your audience is people that listen to top 40 records as opposed to "indie" records.

I say "go for it." The worst that will happen, you waste some time, loose a little money and learn some lessons. That ain't so bad.

-Jacob

 

[SBax]

The Band - Music From The Big Pink and Bob Dylan and The Band: The basement tapes They're not the greatest sounding albums fidelity-wise, but classics for sure.

Undoubtedly Big Pink was probably a full-fledged recording studio, but it was home too!

If you have this kind of talent, it doesn't really matter where you record.

Big Pink was recorded at Capitol Records Studio in NYC. The Basement Tapes were really recorded in the basement although several of the songs on that album were actually recorded at The Band's Shangra-La Studio in Calif (Dylan was not there for those sessions). For the true basement songs Garth Hudson did the engineering and used Neuman mics and an Altec tube mixing board (I forget the tape deck).

 

[bigtoe]

My band's first CD was recorded on 4 track cassette in an apartment and the 2nd CD was recorded in a basement. Between the two of them, we've literally sold dozens of copies!!

awesome.

exile on main street...nice house tho!

Mike

 

[Halion]

Then again, if you record the tracks cleanly and decently, they can be taken to be mastered somewhere else, right? The mixing and the mastering is where home recording falls flat isn't it?

In my opinion, you couldn't be more wrong.

Bad acoustics, lack of micing knowledge and cheap frontend gear (preamps) are IMHO the biggest cause. A decent pc with some powerfull plugins and good monitors can be used as an excellent mixing and even mastering machine, but you are never going to get the "bedroom" sound through behringer preamps out of your recordings, not even with an SSL board.

So, no, I don't thinks it's very realistical either. But you could just try

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Bad acoustics, lack of micing knowledge and cheap frontend gear (preamps) are IMHO the biggest cause.

Halion's got it right. You're only as good as your tracking.

Great tracking requires the least in the way of mixing and mastering (really great tracking require none!). But average tracking will never come out the other end sounding anything better than average no matter where the mixing and mastering are done.

I've used this one before, so excuse the rerun, but it fits. You can wash and polish and pinstripe a rusty old '72 Ford Pinto as much as you want with the finest quality detailing kits and hand-rubbed carnuba waxes and so on; it will come out the other end looking like a finely detailed rusty old '72 Ford Pinto.

G.

 

[osus]

this just made me think of another question, or maybe a better way to phrase the original question in this thread:

is it more realistic to think that you can do usable or even very good tracking in a home-recording situation than it is to think you can do good mixing in a home-recording situation? i.e, is the learning curve for tracking not as sharp as it is for mixing? similarly, would you say that the investment needed to get to a decent place tracking-equipment wise is less than the cost to get to a decent place mixing-equipment wise?

i don't know--i'm less than even a hack (what is that, anyway, a whittle?). but it seems from what i've read that if you have a pretty-good sounding room, you can track in it and come up with a workable result. but unless you have a really well treated room, mixing is an uphill battle. similarly, it seems like there are lots of cheap, versatile tools for tracking--the sm57s--but that low-end monitors are largely derided by the more articulate veterans on this site.

i think, from what i've seen of the process, that the further you get away from the actual making of the sound, the more the engineer's set of skills become crucial, and that often these skills are very different from the skills that musicians focus on.

to this end, it does seem to me that focusing on learning tracking first and foremost is both the most logical step and the most practical step towards developing home recording skills. and that if you have a space that you like the sound of, recording in that space is a bright idea.

not that chessrock needs any backing up, as he certainly knows how to weild a stick, but i have to say that the original post in this thread left me clearly with the impression that this was to be a home-engineered operation, as the focus of the post seemed to focus more on the equipment proposed than the nature of the space, and i think that's what prompted chessrock's answer.

i've been reading a lot in the studio-building section of this site, and there's loads of answers there about acoustics and what a given location will do to your sound, as well as tons of highly knowledgeable people on the subject. i don't understand any of it... yet. and while it is interesting seeing posts on the subject of successful albums tracked in a house, without knowing the dimensions of the rooms, the materials of walls, floor and ceiling, how it was treated and how the mics were used, it seems like the differentiation between recording in a house and recording in a studio isn't so very helpful.

sorry, i didn't really add anything to the debate there. just mouthin' off.