What Goes Where? Setting Up A Recording Studio

Your first attempt at recording a song or even just vocals at home will likely include the built in microphone and soundcard of your computer or even a webcam.  It’s a confusing task to even understand what all pieces of studio gear are required, let alone how they must be connected to operate properly.  Newcomers become intimidated almost immediately, but think of these factoids…

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Recording Professional Quality Vocals At Home

If you’re a singer or a rapper your goal is to record your vocals at the highest quality possible. Ideally you’ll be recording in a million dollar studio with top-of-the-line mic & preamp, high-end room treatment and a professional engineer that has spent years honing their craft. Unfortunately this is not always possible, so here are a few tips that will help improve the sound of your vocals if you’re recording at home.

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5 Signs You're Ready to Release Your First Full-Length Album

This article originally appeared on the Sonicbids blog.

The first album you release sets up the rest of your career, and it can help you gain a lot of fans… if it’s any good. Timing the release is important, because if it comes too early, not enough people will know who you are, but if you make people wait too long, the perfect moment might have passed you by. Here are five signs that it’s the perfect time to release your debut album.

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Protect Your Sound Studio

Sound engineers spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on their equipment. This quality equipment is a hot target for thieves and burglars if you don’t have adequate security. Whether you have a professional or home sound studio, make sure it’s protected from dishonest people. Here are some tips to get you started.

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Religiously Recorded: Why The Studio Is Still Relevant

This piece is sure to be the enemy of home studio manufacturers, yet it’s something that must be said.  Call me orthodox, but I still find the process of constructing a studio record to be imperative to superior quality music production.  While the digital revolution has made it possible for recording technologies to be made available to the masses, there are so many reasons why producing a top notch album can only come from hours spent in the live room.  Artists who take the studio experience seriously will find that the ritualistic nature of this process adds an enormous amount of non-tangible value to a record.  

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Tips for become a recording studio session musician

A session musician typically plays for multiple bands and artists. Many musicians dream of becoming a session musician, sitting in on cool gigs, travelling with different outfits and generally being respected by their peers.

As you can imagine, session musicians need to be able to play many styles of music and need to be proficient in all of them. But what does it take to be a session musician?

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Tech: The Importance of a Recording Timeline

We’ve all been there. The drummer overslept, the guitarist is late, and the bass player has to leave early to hang out with his girlfriend. None of us enjoy being in this kind of a situation, and that is why having a planned out recording schedule can help improve session flow and save you time (and money). Assuming your band is well rehearsed and prepared for their recording session, there are several steps you will want to take to prevent the session from coming to a screeching halt. The key factor to preparing for a productive recording session is a Session Schedule.

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Kill Your Plug-ins and Up Your Music Production Skills

I love the fact that my sample library is enormous, the presets are wide, varied and bountiful, like Harrods at Christmas time. I can press just one key and a whole world of beautiful sound comes pouring out of my monitors, and every time I use it I always think; ‘wow, I could do something really interesting with this’. And then I don’t. I might spend a few hours mucking around with Omnisphere, but when it comes to working and finishing my projects, I don’t use it. And that’s nothing to do with Omnisphere itself, there’s nothing wrong with it, I genuinely think it’s the best software synth yet devised. But it’s vast; I haven’t had the time to get to know it well at all.I find I always return to the instruments I know well to get the job done.

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Preparing For The Studio

So you’ve finally saved up the money to record your masterpiece. You’ve found the perfect producer that “gets you” and you’ve set the date to start recording. Life is good! Now what? You know there is more to it. But what is it that you should be doing from now until your project starts? Do the people who make amazing albums just get lucky? No they don’t. Being prepared means everything. Football player and Super Bowl champion Ronde Barber has this to say, “There is no such thing as luck. Bounces go either way. Every day and you have to take advantage of those situations. You call it luck and I call it being prepared”.

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Give Your Fans The Experience They Crave

There is no doubt about it; social media has taken the sweet and innocent fan, and has created a monster.

A transparency-seeking, interactivity-craving, empowerment-hungry monster.

Ok so maybe fans aren’t these terrible things that goes bump in the night, but the point remains the same. Today’s fans desire something more than just music and the occasional Facebook or Twitter update.

Today’s fans desire an experience! 

But creating this experience can be a bit tricky. It has to cater directly to the needs and desires of YOUR fans, or else you run the driving them away. 

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