Pro Recording VS. Home Recording
14/07/09 01:20 Filed in:
Music
Production
Pro Recording
In a professional recording situation you have three separate and
distinct groups of people working to create a finished product. You
have the technical element, the recording engineer and assistant
engineers. Then there is the production staff who oversee the
budget and organize the personnel and are usually there to
represent the client whether that be the band itself or the record
label to which they are signed. Lastly you have the most important
group of people, the musicians, songwriters, in short the
talent.
Home
Recording
In the home recording setting in many cases YOU are all of the
above! You are Engineer, Producer, Talent AND Client! In order to
produce the best possible recordings you must master some of the
skills in each of these areas. This especially true if your goal is
to eventually open your home studio to the public or build a more
professional studio for profit. When you are deciding what
instrumentation to use, what equipment to buy, what the order of
the songs will be on the finished CD and how everything will be
paid for you’re in “Producer Mode”. When you’re deciding what mic
to use to best capture an instrument, which frequencies must be
boosted or cut in order make a vocal cut through the mix you’re in
“Engineer Mode”. While you’re writing the songs and playing the
instruments you’re in “Talent Mode” . If you think about recording
in these terms as you develop your own personal process of
recording, you will begin to see the process as a whole and this
will enable you to anticipate how what you do in the planning
stages of your recording will effect the tracking and mixing
process.
A
Studio Setup
What you need to create is a controlled environment, a control room
if you will. There are 2 reasons it’s called a control room. The
first reason is that where all the controls are housed, your
computer, mixer and other recording equipment. The second is more
scientific. In science the concept of a control is a known quantity
to be used as a basis of comparison. In this case your control room
will be setup so that there is an even balance of low, mid and high
frequencies. This will allow you to more accurately judge the
characteristics of the sounds that you monitor before you record
and the sounds you playback once they are recorded. You need to do
this so that your final mixes will sound the way you intended them
too when played back on other systems in other places. This very
important step is overlooked by many home recordists and this is
why many home recordings sound unprofessional.
The other room in a typical studio setup is referred to as the
“Live Room” or “Studio Floor”. It is a good idea for this room to
be treated with materials that absorb sound. The reason for this is
that it is ideal for microphones to capture the direct sound from
what you are recording with as few reflections as possible. This
sound dampening material also serves to minimize outside sounds
from finding their way into your recordings.
By isolating these two rooms from one another you are able to use
tools like compression and equalization to get the sounds close to
the way you want them to be in the finished product right from the
word go. For this reason it comes in handy to have an accurate idea
of what the final mix will sound like. It also comes in handy to
have a track sheet where you map out exactly what instrumentation
you are going to record, in what order and which tracks will need
to be recorded in stereo as opposed to mono. Not everyone has two
rooms to work with and so the recording and mixing method must be
altered a little but some people may prefer to record in a single
room.
Tags: Home, Recording, Digital