well
First dude, what kind of tunes do you have? Are they well written? What style? I wouldnt listen too much too what other people have to say, i mean, some of the advice here is correct, but there is more to it than just regurgitating the last 5 lines that everyone knows.
Listen to your tunes and think long and hard about what type of emotions are really in there. Is it sad? IS it happy? Is it sad and happy together? Is it dumbass done to death rock? Whatever it is emotionally you should strive to represent it that way in production. Because although all these guys here will tell you the professional method and all this professional advice, the general person who is a non musician doesnt care about any of that. All they want is to be entertained, taken to a place in their mind for a moment. Im going to let you in on a big secret:
people dont care about audio quality, only audiophiles and people in the recording industry.
Awhile back i helped out in a project that had strong songwriting but nearly zero atmosphere as far as production goes. I have almost no experience as a recording engineer. I decided to give the recordings character that suited the emotion rather than suited the "state of the art" in fidelity. I cut MASS high end. I cut MASS bass. I turned everything way down until you could barely hear it just "feel" it (except for voice). I didnt even use a high quality mic. When i miced instruments i pretty much just pointed the mic at the sound source with nearly zero time spend moving it around for different "tones". I did everything technically wrong. But you want to know what? The tunes went on the internet, people heard them, and now the musician who i recorded is being called a "genius" and "brilliant" every single day. People are begging, not asking, begging for him to release the album so they can put it on their ipod. Reviewers so far have called the project "instant classics" "neither old nor new" and "guaranteed to be big soon." Younger guys in bands ask us all the time how we got it to sound so good and who we are listening to that is influencing us to sound like nearly no one else thats out currently. I am not making this up. Im actually UNDER stating the compliments we have recieved. People from all over are requesting mp3s so they can play the tunes at lounges and on independent radio. THEY REQUEST US. There is no amount of selling needed if the tunes are strong and the production is creative.
If all of this was simply my opinion then i would be just another dude like all the others. But i say this to you not to stroke my own meager accomplishment, its to finally break down the BS lies people spread about art and music and recording. People WANT something different. State of the art means state of stagnation. I always had felt this was true but now that people have recieved those songs so well i know it to be true. And we get people of all age groups from in their 50s to 15 year old little girls saying they cant stop listening to the songs and when is the album coming out. And all of that using a ten dollar dynamic mic, a half broken ribbon mic, an old teac mixer, a fake bass guitar, fake drumming, a completely ungrounded untreated room, cheap cables, monitoring over an old pair of consumer grade cheapy speakers from the thrift store, and a free digital recording program running on a crappy laptop. I didnt even try multiple mic positions and people are calling it brilliant and begging for the cd. So once again:
People dont care about how something sounds they only care about the emotional content of the song.
Dont spend even 500 bucks recording an album. Its BS. Spend your time working on the songs and make them memorable and stress over that not the fidelity. Everyone thinks you have to put out some million dollar sound just to impress teenagers and stuff but its a lie. You only have to entertain them for 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Save your money, use your creativity.
