Recording

Like most of you reading this, I do not have an acoustically treated, dedicated recording room like you would find in a pro recording studio. All my recording takes place in a small, ordinary room in my house, that is also used for many other activities. This can throw up a few challenges when recording,…

I have recorded a lot of rock music in my home studio, and I almost always want my guitars to sound big and wide. To achieve this, I very often double-track my rhythm guitar parts. But this does not mean that double-tracking is something you should do automatically without considering your particular song. As a…

When I first started recording guitars digitally, I would set the level far too high. This caused my recordings to not sound great, and caused problems with a lack of headroom when mixing. I have since learned that the correct level to record guitars at is a lot lower than I originally thought. As a…

In a home studio today, you can do what 30 years ago would have required a professional recording studio, and many hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment. Yet pro recording studios still exist, and offer some benefits even with the technology widely available today for use at home. So realistically, do you need…

The technology of today enables many musicians to produce high-quality recordings of their own music in the comfort of their own homes, with little more than a laptop and an audio interface. In our homes, however, we have to choose a place to perform our recording activities. As none of our rooms have been designed…

It is possible to get a great recorded acoustic guitar sound using just one microphone. This is something I have done many times over the years in my home studio. But it isn’t quite as simple as just putting a microphone in front of the guitar, pressing record and hoping for the best. To record…

The world of high-quality home recording of your own music is open to almost anyone today. For a relatively small amount of money, you can achieve results that would only have been possible in a professional recording studio thirty years ago. However, the process of recording your own music at home, while not difficult, can…

Two of the most common things to record in both home and professional recording studios are electric guitars and vocals. But suppose you wanted to record an electric guitar and vocal at the same time as one performance. How would you go about it? The best way to record electric guitar and vocals at the…

Nervousness and anxiety are very common when going into the recording studio, particularly when recording vocals. Usually you can sing well, but as soon as that recording button is pressed you forget everything about how to sing, the song you are supposed to be singing, the melody, even how to breathe properly. This article contains…

So you’ve written a song, and you’ve arranged all the parts you think you need. You’ve rehearsed to the point where you can play those parts well, and you’re ready to capture your song on disk or tape. Now, just how much time will it take to record the song? A song typically takes 3…