Are you a songwriter or musician who wants to record their music quickly, easily and cheaply? Want get your ideas in a fixed format such as an audio CD? This short guide to setting up a cheap audio home studio should help. It’s about using what works for you. You will learn how to multi-track using well-known and simple methods to get your music to tape, er waves.
And how much will it cost? It varies. I have supplied an equipment list with various suggestions and prices. But you are not going to pay a lot for this studio.
Will your recordings rival those made in professional studios? Probably not. But I think you will be pleasantly surprised at how well your music will sound. With a little effort and a small outlay of cash you too can record songs of sufficient quality to sell your music and amaze your friends.
The Equipment List
I have listed the generic products you will need and also specific items. Does this mean the brands I’ve listed are the best? No, of course not. It is equipment that I have, have used or know someone who has. I’m sure there are better and worse products out there. This is meant as a guide to help you get the equipment that best fits your budget and expertise. I have based the cost of each item from information I’ve gathered off the net.
Home recording and general music posts archived from the Recording Website. Some of the info here is outdated but many of the audio recording and home studio tips are still good.
Archives 1 thru 12 contain home studio and audio recording tips from 2000
Archives 13 and 14 contain home studio and audio recording tips from the first two months of 2001
This archive covers home and audio recording posts form February, March, April, May and June of 2001.
It is also when the Freedom Exchange first became part of the Recording Website so quite a few songwriting posts are in this archive as well.
Recording Website Archives late Feb. 2001 ro early March 2003. This was the second big move after changing from wwwboard to yabb. Yabb was based on cgi/pearl and the new forum software, yabbse was php based. Also, these posts were before RID (the Recording Institute of Detroit) took over the site.
There are two archives: Recording Website Archives from late Feb. 2001 to Late October 2002 with 27955 Posts in 4792 Topics Recording Website Archives from October 2002 to early March 2003
with 13294 Posts in 1760 topics
The precursor to the ‘Can We Talk’ and ‘It’s All About The Music’ boards.
Some very interesting discussions about music, performing and musical artists.
If you want your music on the net you really should have in the mp3 audio format. Here’s a brief explanation of what an mp3 is. The name mp3 is an abbreviation for MPEG Audio Layer 3. MPEG stands for the Motion Picture Experts Group. These people have developed video compression systems which includes such formats as DSS, HDTV and DVD. MPEG Audio Layer 3 or mp3 is an offshoot of the video compression technology.
The compression used in an mp3 file is based on 3 things;
Sometimes, one sound will mask another.
We hear some sounds better than others.
There are some sounds we can’t hear.
By eliminating these sounds from the original song file the mp3 format is able to shrink the file size down to about a tenth of the original. So does the sound quality of the music suffer? Of course, but I believe the size savings is well worth it. And of course, the quality of the original recording will help determine the quality of the mp3 song file. But remember, we’re talking about putting songs on the net for others to download. If you are streaming your audio you will have to consider bandwith, which can add up pretty quickly. And if you have your song available for download which song file do you think folks would rather download, a 3 minute wave file which is about 30 meg or a 3 minute mp3 which is about 3 meg.
In the end the most important thing is that you get your music recorded and on the internet.
