Environmental Variables

The last blog I posted covered acquiring all of the various components for your studio system and this one is going to talk briefly about the environment in which you choose to record your tracks in. Not all tracks should be recorded in the same location so there are a few considerations still to make before you hit that record button.

Pick the Location

Before you can determine the best microphone placement for an instrument you’ve got to decide on the placement of the instrument itself. So before you setup and plug in your first microphone you should take a moment and look around your house, apartment or studio and use your ears for a moment to determine if you’ve scouted out the best location for recording your next track. Maybe there’s some spots that you haven’t thought of using that could serve a purpose for recording that perfect vocal or guitar sound. While your control room may remain stationary, your microphones should be allowed to roam throughout your dwelling.

What comes to mind first for many people, if you’re task is recording vocals, is the shower. This can indeed produce some interesting results and may be the sound you’re looking for on a particular track. I’d suggest you experiment with other areas. Maybe there’s an area of your home that has a large vaulted ceiling or a stairwell that could provide a more interesting effect. The other end of this spectrum is to place your microphone in a closet and make a vocal booth that has no reflections and a small tight sound. Just picking a part of your house with a different type of flooring to record in can make a huge difference in the sound that goes into the microphone. Experimentation is the key here, regardless of the instrument you are recording. All I’m saying is that you should listen around to your options before you end up sitting in front of your desk with the microphone. Although, sometimes that works just fine too. A couple of observations that I can share that are my opinion only, wood paneling warms up vocals unlike other hard reflective surfaces such as dry wall and acoustic guitars simply shimmer when recorded in a room with a tile floor.

Noises Out

We hear allot about sound proofing but there are concepts around this science that are not always immediately thought of or talked about as much. Typically when you hear someone talking about sound proofing they are generally talking about keeping the sound inside the room so that it doesn’t disturb the neighbors or even your roommates. Yet when I think of sound proofing, I’m generally more concerned with keeping noise from getting into the studio and not so much about the sound of the music getting out. The neighbors barking dogs, traffic, airplanes, and even bird noises can all find their way into a microphone that is plugged in and hot in the room. If you’re in the midst of recording a quiet acoustic guitar passage with two microphones on in the room, the dog next door can quickly ruin the entire session and you may have to wait until the noise stops before you can produce any results. Sound proofing windows, doors and any other openings then becomes a vital task.

I came up with my own solution for my studio. Since I didn’t want to permanently alter or close in the windows, I instead came up with the concept of sliding window treatments. These treatments help considerably with the noise from the outside world but they are still not as ideal as a properly built sound proofed wall. Let’s face it, most of us don’t have the luxury of reconstruction to that degree. The solution I came up with was to purchase barn door track from the internet and instead of doors, I hung plywood that I then covered with Auralex acoustical tiles. This solution still allows me the ability to open the windows and let in the natural light when I want or close them up and keep the room a bit quieter when I’m recording. It also provided some absorptive surfaces that keep reflections in the studio to a minimum. I essentially sacrificed complete silence for functionality of the windows, a trade off that I’m pretty satisfied with for my home studio. There are many ways to upgrade this type of construction and the more density you add to the structure the more sound that will get contained. Unfortunately, the more density the more weight that the track will need to support.

Don’t be afraid from time to time to let the ambient sounds from outside into your recordings. There was one evening the summer before last that the frogs were creating a huge noise outside. So much so that I stuck a condenser microphone out the door and recorded a few minutes of it. I recorded about four tracks of the frogs and layered them to make it dense and added some reverb to the tracks as well. This tracking session ended up becoming the beginning of the song “Chrysalis” on the Transformation CD.

Noises In

Other noise problems that can pollute your recordings that you’ll need to contend with, also come from inside your house. Refrigerators are extremely noisy and their hum will infiltrate any recordings that are done in their proximity. So before you get that great sounding acoustic guitar track on the tile in your kitchen; you may need to turn up the thermostat on the fridge. Just don’t forget you did it and ruin your groceries.

Your air conditioner or furnace is another major noise maker and unfortunately, the best solution here is literally to shut it off before you hit the record button.

It may seem like these noises wouldn’t amount to much but in a multi track environment, with ten different tracks running that have the same room, the noises gets multiplied and they end up on every channel. What you end up with is 10 air conditioners and 10 refrigerators playing back with your audio.

Temperature

Another thing that I’ve noticed, and this may sound fairly picky but the temperature in your environment can change the way things sound as well. I noticed a huge difference one summer here in Texas when our Air Conditioner went out and it reached temperatures upwards of 90 degrees inside my studio. I just had to get this idea down so I went on sweating it out. A few days later when the AC was running again, I went back and listened to the session, man was I surprised. The recording really sounded different, heavier, almost denser than usual. So if you’re looking for a certain heaviness in the air for a song, you may try cranking up the heat and see if you can tell a difference. Keep a close eye on your computer equipment when the room gets warm. It probably won’t agree with it.

Let it roll

All in all, home recording is a “use what you have” scenario so make sure you’re making the most of all of the variables that you can control and learn to be patient with those that you can’t control. It’s possible to get as creative as you want with where you decide to record an instrument but you may want to invest in some really long microphone cables if your control room is not portable or if your house is rather large.

Keep thinking outside the box and create some ambience without the need for artificial reverbs! – John!

Part 1 – Acquisition

I’ve seen and read many “how to” articles over the years about how to put together a home recording studio but let’s face it, this is not something you can really cram into one article. So I won’t try and cram such a broad subject into one blog. This blog instead is about my personal philosophy in terms of picking the right gear for your studio. I will focus on the major studio components and how you can get the most bang for your buck. It won’t be a “money is no object” blog because let’s face it, money is an object and you’ve got to spend it wisely. There’s a definite philosophy in terms of the recording studio as a collection of devices that, once grouped together, make up a recording studio. It’s a good idea to keep this in mind when you’re making your purchases.

I started assembling my recording studio around 1985. This first studio was a 4 track cassette recorder, a small mixer and a few guitar effects. It’s amazing to think about how many songs I wrote and how many hours I logged on that setup producing recordings. I must say as primitive as it was I sure had a blast doing it and the lessons I learned on that little rig helped me to this day with the fundamentals of the recording environment. If you get anything out of this blog, I hope it’s the understanding that a recording studio is not just bought and put into place over night. If you really are interested then you need to grow and cultivate your gear collection so that when the time comes; you’ll own and have mastered, all of the tools that you need. It’s not a good idea to rush out and make a major purchase on one piece of equipment that some sales man is telling you is “all you need” or that “you’ll never need anything else”, truth is, a real recording studio is a system of tools that work together and no one tool is any more important in the chain than the other. It is an overall system and the system is only as strong as its weakest link. There is simply no magic recording device that does everything you need to produce good sounding recordings, although, many marketing specialists are currently trying to convince you otherwise.

So where do you start now that you know this? Well everyone’s situation is going to be different and everyone is going to be at different stages of growing their recording studio, so all I can do is really advise you on the decision making process and hope it helps you to make the decision that is best for you. It truly depends on what you already have, in terms of tools and in terms of the skills needed to use the tools.

PC

For my money, by today’s standards, you need to start with a decent computer. Notice I don’t say you need a top of the line quad core Apple monster workstation. If you went that route, right there you’ve blown way too much money on one item for your studio system. The computer is pretty all encompassing but you do still need other items. A modest PC will do the trick and I would advise that you don’t spend more than $1000 on one if you’re just adding one into your studio. If you already have one and it’s in the 2 to 5 year old range, you should have a great start, you just need to learn how to streamline the system so that it can function in a recording environment. A critical rule for the computer in the studio, do not use it to check your email, surf the web or any other recreational activity other than recording. You shouldn’t even have Microsoft Office installed on this system! Right there you’ve eliminated the need for antivirus software and made your system run at least 25% faster! If you have a computer in your studio and it’s running slow, ask yourself what else you’ve been using the system for other than recording. I bet you could think of ways to clean it up and improve its performance just by streamlining its use. Take the money you saved by not buying an expensive system and get a second computer for your office needs.

Interface & Software

Next in the chain is an audio interface for the computer. Again while top of the line A/D converts have a great quality about them, you have many more items your studio that you need to purchase to complete your system, so spend wisely. $1000 and you’ve got a pretty great interface with some decent preamps. There are so many interfaces today it really depends on how many inputs you foresee using at one time. If you plan on recording a drummer then I would recommend a system with at least 16 inputs. While you probably won’t use them all you may very well need more than eight which is what most interfaces seem to have. If it’s more affordable, get one interface that has eight inputs and also has a digital interface that will allow you to chain another unit which will give you the option to expand when you need to. Make sure you go with an interface that already has software bundled with it. More than likely you will be starting out with a light version of the application but you should still be able to crank out quality work even with its limitations. Save the expense of a major software purchase for later.

Ears

Third is to make sure have some decent studio monitors. This is probably one of the most important investments you can make in your studio. Essentially you are buying your ears and you should expect to spend at least $1500 on a great pair of powered monitors. Head into your favorite music store and you’ll have many options.  Just don’t think you can get away with using a pair of speakers from your home stereo. Home stereo equipment is not professional recording equipment. In fact home stereo equipment is usually “enhanced” to make it “sound better” to the audiophile. What you really need as an engineer is equipment that does not color the sound at all. You must know what is really being recorded and if you are using speakers that color or alter the sound in an effort to “enhance” it; you will never know what you are recording in your studio. It’s almost the equivalent of being blind. You’ll take your mix out of your studio and play it on another system and it will not sound anything like what it did in your studio. If you’re having this problem with your mixes traveling to other systems and still sounding like it did in your room; check your speakers.

Microphones

Now you’ve got the computer, the interface and the monitors, the next critical device in the chain is the microphone. There are so many applications for using microphones again it depends on what you intend to record. You should probably start with a good large diaphragm vocal condenser microphone ($500) unless you intend to work with all instrumental material. If so then second in line would be a good pair of small diaphragm condenser microphones for recording instruments in stereo ($700) such as acoustic guitars, pianos, and drum overhead. For the guitar amp a ($100) shure sm57 dynamic always does the trick here, even in multimillion dollar facilities it is usually what ends up in front of an amp first. A well rounded mic collection for the various types of instruments you plan to record is a vital element in the recording studio system. Start growing the collection as you can. The vocal condenser you purchase first should serve many purposes until you can acquire more microphones in your arsenal.

FX

Once you have these basic elements in place it’s time to think about effects for your computer system. I highly recommend going the route of hardware based DSP systems. This is actually what allows you to continue using that aging computer system and still have great results. PCI cards such as the UAD series are an outstanding value and take the load off of your computer to process virtual instruments and the like. A pair of UAD cards ($1500) and you will have an arsenal of effects at your disposal that can be expanded by purchasing and authorizing more effects as you can afford them. Yep, you may have to grow your effects as well. There are many hardware options these days, just pick the one that seems most appropriate to your needs.

On a final note, what is truly vital in any recording chain is a quality musical instrument. In my experience, every instrument has its own unique sound and you really get what you pay for here. There are certainly times when a less expensive instrument will work fine and gets the sound that you are looking for, again it depends on your tastes and what styles of music you are recording.

Every studio should have some good Virtual instruments as well. Again this depends solely on your taste and the types of instruments you’d like to have in an emulated environment. Synths, Electric and Grand Pianos, there are many outstanding sounding applications out there that you can add and install as you can.

All in all, putting together a recording studio system is an adventure that takes time, money and patience. Every new piece of equipment must be mastered before you can appreciate it’s place in the chain. It truly should be a passion that you are willing to sacrifice some things for. In total I’ve recommended about $7000 worth of gear here and that’s not counting the musical instruments but if you pace your purchases, spend the money on the essentials, in time it will start to come together. It took years for my studio to become what it is today. Actually it took decades but I kept refining it and kept learning. The technology will keep progressing so to continue learning is critical. Now days it only takes a few years for things to change and you’ll quickly find yourself behind the curve if you stop absorbing. Staying on top of things also helps when you start thinking about the upgrade process and that’s probably a whole other blog in itself.

May your gear proliferate and may you manage to stay out of the pawn shops! Unless you are buying the gear of course! – John Orr Franklin