Its possible to make great sounding masters at home, but its a lot harder than having great rooms and tools available to you at a great studio. I bounce back and forth from small projects in homes to some of the most expensive studios ever built and I gotta say that its a real joy to work in a great room and makes the job so much easier. There are a few big mistakes/hurdles that tons of home recordists deal with that can really hold them back from making really cool masters on their own.
1)They buy the wrong gear. They spend money in ways that does not really help. For instance they will buy a ton of low end mics instead of 2 or 3 really good mics. If you have a great mic like an AT tube 4060 (about $600 used) and a decent mic pre you actually have to work at it to get a crummy sound. The gear does almost all the work. Or they will spend more money on plug ins than mics. It all starts with the mics!!!! If you do not have $600 for a mic, spend $75 on a Shure SM57 and start building up a good quality collection. I am not a mic snob, but it’s a reality. If you actually get a chance to A-B a really good quality mic against cheap mics like the MXL, CAD, or Studio Projects you will hear why great mics are so important. The mic does most of the work for you and cheap mics can actually work against you. I am not saying that cheap mics do not have their place but a Studio Projects mic sounds like a good “project studio” mic and a really good mic from AT or Neuman or Shure sounds like a pro mic.
2) They do not have the chance to learn how to do stuff. This is not a criticism, but a reality. Its too bad that the old system of people learning to record by assisting others has pretty much gone away. You can learn more from working with a great engineer on one album, than spending months on a message board or reading books. A great engineer can make a great sounding master with a four track cassette, a few Shure SM57s and a good compressor.
3) They try to match the sound of records done by great engineers in the best rooms. This is a good exercise, but not the best way to go if you are trying to make masters. The best home recordings are those that embrace the environment they are in and try to make records that could not have been made anywhere else. You may not have the live chamber at Capitol, but Capitol does not have your bathroom or your garage. Ocean Way might have a great Hammond B3, but they do not have the funky organ your gramma left you after she died. The best home recordings are those that sound truly unique, and have original sounds and arrangements. If the sounds and arrangement are really unique there is a fine line between crappy and genius. The great producer Brian Eno said something to the affect of “The more conventional the music gets, the harder you have to work, because its gets more bogged down with expectations and standards.
4) They live in studio bubbles cut off from the outside world except for things like this forum. I can not overstate how valuable it is to bring people in to help out with recording. I am not necessarily talking about other engineers, but other musicians to come in play on stuff. Musicians bring with them tons of expertise, for instance an acoustic guitar player might come in an say “when I worked with this great engineer, he did this trick with my guitar mic and it sounded amazing” Other players can also give you feedback on your work and bring in arrangement ideas. A great arrangement will make your recordings sound better than buying the best mic in the world. Also if you have a little bit of a budget, and are really trying to make a serious release, think about hiring some one else to mix. First off you do not have to spend all the money on mix gear, and as long as you have not screwed up the tracks with dumb processing, a great mixer can bring your home recordings up several levels. Its funny, one of the best sounding records I have ever worked on was a record I mixed for a guy in Canada who recorded his whole album with Mackie Pre Amps, one AKG 414, and a
Shure SM58 recorded to
a Tascam DA-88 in his bedroom. I put in on my demo reel next to stuff I worked on at Real World or top LA studios.
5) They worry more about having more emulation options than real stuff. For instance rather than buying a real Fender Rhodes, they will spend more money on sample based emulators, or instead of buying a real amp they will buy a Pod. Emulators have their place, but they do not work as well in mixes and contrary to common belief they are often more limited that their real counterparts. If you want a record that will stand up with your favorite records, you will have better luck with a real Fender Rhodes (which has a huge range of sounds when mixed with pedals) than a whole set of Vintage key emulations.
6) This one is probably the biggest and many people will disagree, but people get into computer recording way too early. I think there are few things that will slow down an engineer’s learning curve than buying a computer based recording system. Using simple tools will help new engineers learn about recording on a much deeper level and help them learn much more about getting things to sound right at the source, and help them learn to commit to decisions. Also many people that get into computer based recording end up spending more time dealing with the computer than the music and micing etc. I am not against computers in music. I started doing music with computers in the 80s, but I see it over an over again that people get bogged down dealing with computers instead of learning the art of recording. If your experience varies than that is great. But I would bet that a new engineer with a small mixer and some ADATs will learn more in a year and probably far more productive than an equal engineer that starts with a computer based system. ADATs get bashed a lot (some of it deserved), but they sound as good as many of the cheap audio interfaces and the 33 million people that bought Alanis Morisettes breakthrough album did not seem to mind.
Wow, I did not intend to rant on this long…..
