What You Should Know About Home Recording Before You Try It

One of my "Ten Commandments of Recording" is Thou Shalt Not Be Thine Own Engineer.

I'd like to expand on that thought, since home recording gear is undergoing yet another jump in performance and drop in price. Hard-disk recorders and work stations are now so inexpensive that it's more tempting than ever for musicians to try making albums in their bedrooms.

Now, I know what you're thinking. As a studio owner, don't I have a major conflict of interest here?

Well, just to prove my heart is in the right place, not only do I recommend that every serious musician own a recording setup, I recently accompanied some clients of mine to a store and helped them pick one out! Home recording is a great way to try out ideas, work out arrangements, and make rough demos. And I freely admit that it is indeed possible to make a well produced, professional sounding album at home: it's been done!

There's only one catch, but it's a big one.

You have to be really into engineering.

That is, you have to truly enjoy things like watching meters, positioning microphones, tweaking knobs, staring at computer screens, connecting wires, flipping switches, reading manuals, testing gear, tracking down problems, getting stuff repaired, and learning to use all kinds of devices.

If that's you, then by all means go for it!

But if you want to record at home only because you think you're going to save money or avoid the pressure of recording in a studio, then you're in for a frustrating waste of time, money and energy.

Before you start down the slippery slope, consider the following:

1. In addition to a recorder, you'll eventually need good microphones, good speakers, and an accurate listening environment.
2. Having to worry about both sides of the microphones will definitely interfere with your ability to concentrate on your performance. Think of it this way; if you have trouble performing in a studio where someone else is handling the engineering, what makes you think you'll do better when you yourself have to perform and engineer at the same time?
3. The fact that you can spend as much time recording and editing as you want without paying for it may seem to be a plus with no downside, but in fact it can sap the discipline you need to deliver a really good performance.
4. Soon "gear lust" will set in. You'll want better microphones, better reverb, better speakers, etc. Each new thing you buy will expose the faults in some other piece of gear, so that gear lust will be self-perpetuating.
5. After a year or so, stuff will start to break or wear, and maintenance costs will set in.

I could go on, but you get the idea. And this is not theory. I've seen it happen!

Much of the above can be summarized under a basic principle that applies not only to recording, but to every meaningful endeavor. That is, what it takes to keep something going until it achieves a goal is always much greater than what it takes to start out.

Bottom line: Don't be an engineer unless you really want to be an engineer. Otherwise, let us be the engineers. That's what we do. We'll make your album better, faster & cheaper than you ever could yourself.