Totally new to home recording! :(

[Eros]

Hi my name's Austin and I'm about 17. As soon as I finish my last year of high school, I'm going into the open world, and I need some advice and help on how to start my own studio. The type of music I'm producing/composing is emotional and melodic, and so I'm going to want some good mics for acoustic instruments like acoustic and flamenco guitars. For some of the melodies, I'm looking for some decent but fairly cheap or inexpensive synthesizers. And I'd also like to record my vocals as well, and I'm trying to keep this as inexpensive as possible, but I haven't had much luck; so I'm posting here in the Newb section for some advice and help on getting started on my own.

Thanks,
Austin

 

[DJL]

Hi my name's Austin and I'm about 17. As soon as I finish my last year of high school, I'm going into the open world, and I need some advice and help on how to start my own studio. The type of music I'm producing/composing is emotional and melodic, and so I'm going to want some good mics for acoustic instruments like acoustic and flamenco guitars. For some of the melodies, I'm looking for some decent but fairly cheap or inexpensive synthesizers. And I'd also like to record my vocals as well, and I'm trying to keep this as inexpensive as possible, but I haven't had much luck; so I'm posting here in the Newb section for some advice and help on getting started on my own.

Thanks,
Austin

You'll most likely need a pair of SDC mics, a LDC mic or two, and maybe some dynamic mics... which ones depends partly on your mic locker budget. The first thing you might want to do is checkout some good books from your library or book store... there are also some helpful on-line websites like the DPA microphone university webpage and etc.

 

[Eros]

hmm

Thanks for the mic suggestions. Now I need to find some good deals on synthesizers and electronic instruments on a budget.

 

[radiorickm]

bad guy

ok, Austin

i am going to be the bad guy here....

GO TO SCHOOL

Study music theory, electronics, business

While you are doing that, learn about bands and beging to develop your skills and an engineer and composer.

Don't try and go full blown studio to start with.

Then, with some of those experiences, you will be ready to jump out into the real world.

 

[tedluk]

Austin- One option is to use your computer, it's a little more complicated since you'll need a controller of some sort (there are a number of inexpensive keyboard controllers out there from M-Audio, Fatar and Studiologic), a soundcard, and monitors, but you can find all sorts of soft-synths for little or no money online.

If you decide to go the hardware route, consider used instruments. If you're careful, there are lots of great instruments out there you can find for reasonable prices. Personally, I usually don't like buying the latest and greatest as you pay a premium for it. There are plenty of serviceable keyboards out there from the last 10 years that will give you a good starting point to work from. Do some research. The best place to start is by finding out what people whose music you like are using. If someone you like has been around for a while, try to find out what instruments they were using 10 years ago. Chances are, they'll be a bargain now!

Ted

 

[Alejo]

This is only one of the thousand of configurations you can have. I tried to go to the lowest range of price with a reasonable quality.

Check all of this:

Pc: anyone 5 years old.
Soundcard: Audiophile 2496
Mic: Shure SM58.
Mixer: the cheapest Phonic or Behringer (It will work as a preamp)
Headphones: AKG K240.
Free sofware for drums, bass, orchestral background and synths.


This is already a REAL HOME STUDIO.

Welcome to school.

Regards,

Alejo.

 

[Alejo]

I forgot the keyboard. .. You are right, Ted. Anything that has midi out will work, no matter how old it is.

 

[Cloneboy Studio]

ok, Austin

i am going to be the bad guy here....

GO TO SCHOOL

Study music theory, electronics, business

While you are doing that, learn about bands and beging to develop your skills and an engineer and composer.

Don't try and go full blown studio to start with.

Then, with some of those experiences, you will be ready to jump out into the real world.

I have to agree, and also be the bad guy.

If you need to ask people WHAT you need in the most basic sense to start a recording studio you aren't even close to being ready to open your own studio. I mean--WHAT DO YOU OFFER THAT WILL MAKE PEOPLE PAY FOR YOUR SERVICES? Without *years* of knowledge and study you won't have the necessary skills to record. Your stuff will sound bad. You will go out of business. You will make a lot of enemies from people that feel you ripped them off.

Opening a recording studio has been a dream of mine since I was about 17 when I first started recording. I'm now 33 and next year I'm opening a pro studio becuase I feel that I have the *beginnings* of knowledge and experience to record on a professional level. I did home recording for about 7-8 years on my own, then started recording people for free, then I worked for about 2-3 years underneath someone at a studio in my spare time (for no money), then I started mixing and producing bands for about 3 years for cheap, then I started getting a local demand and could charge more for my services, now I've quit my white collar job to work full time in a medium sized local studio. I've recorded *tons* of bands of many different styles using gear ranging from crappy to above average and got consistently decent results. Locally my demand is starting to increase to where I am busy a lot of the time by people calling *ME* instead of the other way around.

I also have a lot of experience in the business world, as I was the director of marketing for a restaurant chain. I'm familiar with how the financial side of business works, networking, and how to get things accomplished. I'm also able to create my own graphical arts and web pages myself, incurring no cost for most of my marketing.

I've also played guitar for almost 20 years, and can play keyboards well. I can quote MIDI bible and verse all day long, as well as sequencing, sampling and other necessary skills. I can program any synthesizer, and get great guitar tones on almost anything. I'm competent enough to know about bass and drum equipment as well so that I know what to expect when someone says they have 'so and so' piece of gear or setup. I also used to teach guitar lessons and am intimately familiar with songwriting, music theory, etc, etc, etc....

Now I'm not trying to brag myself up... but consider what I said earlier: I HAVE THE BEGINNINGS OF THE KNOWLEDGE TO RECORD PROFESSIONALLY.

You are not ready for this level of committment.

Go out there and get your feet wet, get an education on the subject, make contacts, learn your instrument (musicians respect audio engineers more if you can play at least one instrument well), do a lot of free pro-bono work for up and coming bands to get experience and your name out there, try to hang out at a local rec studio and absorb knowledge. Build up a decent home recording studio to practice on. The important thing is to work on music and recording every day, all day if possible. Eventually you will get to a point a few years down the line where you can start making MONEY off recording... and you use that to buy better equipment and so on. I went from a pretty iffy setup a few years ago to one that is halfway decent solely from money earned by recording/mixing/mastering people.

After a few years of this... you *might* be ready.

 

[Alejo]

You both are right, but I believe Austin has only received frustrating advices to put his feet on this cruel and nasty world.

The advice of start building a little home studio has been only suggested only in one of your sentences, and I believe that this shoud be the point. The overall advice has been another one. I believe he wrote to the right forum, and he deserved this initial info, regardles of his experience on this issues. Let him get involved on the terminology, on the gear, on his music, and then he will decide where to go.

Cloneboy, your career is impressive and I would really love to end up like you.
My case is less glamorous, but I feel proud of it. Nobody would have told me that I would end with the gear I have now, and enyoing the evenings as I do. Two years ago I couldn't difference between a SPDIF connector and the clutch of my car. Now I got some background, thanks to the answers I got in these kind of forums.

I believe this is the feeling we shoud transmit to an ambitious 17 years old guy that posts on the "Newbies" forum.

Austin: you are going to be so motivated building your little home studio, setting everything and composing your songs that you are not going to have time to think about building a pro studio. Besides, this is funny as hell, and the natural way to become pro.

Of course. Go to school, if you can. But then, come back here. I will have a complete set of technical questions for you.

Regards,

Alejo.

 

[tubesrawsom]

a fostex vf80w/ a cdburner a 57 and 58 cable and heaphones should start u off with a great push

 

[tedluk]

I have to agree, and also be the bad guy.

If you need to ask people WHAT you need in the most basic sense to start a recording studio you aren't even close to being ready to open your own studio. I mean--WHAT DO YOU OFFER THAT WILL MAKE PEOPLE PAY FOR YOUR SERVICES?

When did he say anything about wanting to open a studio and trying to charge people? He wants to record his own music as far as I can tell. He's got to start somewhere and given the low cost of equipment these days there is certainly nothing wrong with putting together a rudimentary studio to learn how to do this.

Cloneboy- Yours is the prototypical approach to learning how to record and produce. That's how it used to be done by most everyone. But, times have changed and we're in, for better or worse, a new egalitarian world. The tools have dropped in price and the quality has gone through the roof.

This, as with most revolutions, has its good results and bad results. With a minimal amount of training and a lot of practice, it is certainly possible to produce better than demo quality tracks at home. Unfortunately, EVERYONE now thinks they're a producer and recording artist! So, we have more people making better tracks and more people making terrible tracks.

Austin- By all means learn everything you can. It's never a bad thing to have knowledge, but the idea that somehow you shouldn't start recording because you don't know enough makes no sense to me. I didn't know enough in high school either, but it didn't stop my band from trying to make recordings. Poor though they might have been. And I learned more from those experiences than almost anything else I've ever done.

Ted

 

[Cloneboy Studio]

When did he say anything about wanting to open a studio and trying to charge people? He wants to record his own music as far as I can tell.

It sounded like he did. If he only wants to home record that's fine--go for it.

Cloneboy- Yours is the prototypical approach to learning how to record and produce. That's how it used to be done by most everyone. But, times have changed and we're in, for better or worse, a new egalitarian world. The tools have dropped in price and the quality has gone through the roof.

And yet most of the stuff I hear done SUCKS. Because of lack of knowledge. My post was more about *knowing* than *buying*.

 

[mu5icman]

yeah yeah yeah!

i just turned 18, and now i'm in college.

all the above posts say go to school and get sm57s and this and that...

which is good advice...


until you get a lot of expensive equipment and recording software that don't work so easily
it's cool to get a bunch of audio gear and get it working, but through personal experience, you have to know how to use all that equipment if you want to use the full potential of it. i just say, start small and learn big.

good times

 

[Eros]

Wow

Alright, I'm going to try and clarify some things here that seem to be debated in this thread.

I forgot to note I am actually interested in either Full Sail in Orlando or a few other music/theory colleges. Also, I hope to become an intern at a local studio and learn as much as I can about engineering.

Now, I do want to have my own studio for me alone. I will not be charging anyone else, it'll be my studio for my music and compositions.

I'm not aiming for anything extremely professional, but I am looking for a few good tips of advice for starting equipment and the like. As you said, start out small and work your way up. I just need to have a few ideas on how to start it all out.

Your responses are all helpful, negative or not, and I'm trying to learn as much as I can. So bear with me because as I've proven, I've posted in the "Newbie" section and obviously my knowledge of equipment, engineering, and music theory are small, but with college coming up in months, I hope to change all that.

 

[Cloneboy Studio]

my knowledge of equipment, engineering, and music theory are small, but with college coming up in months, I hope to change all that.

Hrm... don't get the hopes up too high. Word on the street is that recent AE graduates can barely fetch coffee, much less record anything, or be of any use on a session without some major in-studio experience.

You will probably learn more and faster in a studio interning--but in order to do that you need to have some basis in recording. Sort of a catch 22. Right now we are working with a recording school (started 2nd year) student and we won't let him near anything but rap voiceover/overdub work. The rock sessions he is ONLY allowed to observe... and hold his questions until off the client's clock.

However he is brilliant when it comes to fetching pizza, Mt. Dew and smokes necessary to the recording process.

 

[manning1]

eros - cloneboy is right.
heres what i think is important criteria.
1. intern under a chief engineer . that lets you do more than wipe his shoes.
2. find a london,LA or NYC or nashville studio(eg) with a track record of producing records.
3. read,read,read
4.experiment and record as many people as you can for free and get
hands on experience with a small least cost set up.
you can do it for under 1500 bucks if you shop around for equipment.
note....due to tech change even some big studios have revenue problems,
due to home recording.

 

[Eros]

However he is brilliant when it comes to fetching pizza, Mt. Dew and smokes necessary to the recording process.

That is absolutely NOT where I want to be after graduating. At all.