April 30, 2008...12:46 pm
Make your musical mark – at home!
Record the next top ten hit with the help of your PC
By Fiona Wagner
Over his 20-year career, Kelly Pettit went from recording his first song at age 17 in a studio, to recording his fourth and latest CD, Fuel, “all over the place.”
Drums and bass were recorded in a Vancouver studio, vocals were recorded in his apartment in Japan, and a friend recorded fiddle in his hotel room while on tour with Kelly Clarkson. Pettit even mixed his songs over the Internet (he was in Japan; his editor, in Vancouver) and used his computer to design the CD jacket.
“People can create amazing music from their home studios,” says Pettit. “A lot of gear that used to be in the studios is now a software plug-in that only takes up space on your hard drive.”
Live the dream
Technology has made recording music at home cheap and easy. Every day, Jason Johnston, owner of Revolution Audio in Mississauga, Ontario, meets hobbyists and wannabe professionals who want to set up home studios and live out their music dreams. “It really is a revolution right now because people can finish up with a professional product that could easily run neck and neck with anything produced in a larger studio,” Johnston says.
Larger studios can be intimidating to people who just want to record a song or two but have never performed outside the shower. Other people are turned off by the cost of studio time. When you’re paying between $60 and $100 an hour, you focus more on watching the clock than on creating the sounds. Home studios give you the best of both worlds—the artistic freedom of working at your own pace and a professional sound.
Hardware and software
There are a lot of hardware and software options for recording at home, but your choices depend on your music and budget.
Whether your budget is $400 or $10,000, you need the following basics for your personal studio:
- software to record on (for example, Cubase and Sonar for mixing synthesized music, and ProTools for live-off-the-floor recording and collaborating with larger studios)
- an audio interface (such as a stand-alone USB box or a PCI card that goes inside your desktop) to connect your guitar, speakers and microphone to your computer
- a PC with the recommended system requirements (that is, at least one GB of RAM, a P4 or AMD 2-GHz processor, and a second hard drive with at least 7200 RPM)
- a good microphone, quality monitors and the right cables (that is, a USB or FireWire connection)
Getting started
Before you record your first track, you might want to brush up on your technique or even learn new skills. Berklee Music offers online courses in subjects such as music production, song writing, arranging and music theory. Trufire.com offers online guitar instruction through downloads, streaming videos and CDs. Songwriting software MasterWriter features various dictionaries to help you capture the perfect rhyme, phrase or idea.
If you want help putting it all together, Emusician.com offers home studio musicians information on music production technology and techniques. The Studio at Home forum has product reviews, helpful tips and tricks, and tons of postings on everything from recording voices to mixing sound on your computer.
It’s important to have enough hard- drive space. If you plan on capturing and archiving everything you record, you’re going to need lots of internal or external storage space.
Most computers bought within the last year come with a CD and/or a DVD burner. While a single standard CD can hold up to 700 MB of data, a standard DVD can hold up to 4.7 GB which is important when you’re backing up data. DVDs are pricier than CDs but hold much more information.
Sharing your music
Once you’ve played with your sound, recorded some music and burned your first CD, the Internet gives musicians direct access to their fans and distribution networks, cutting out middlemen.
If hosting your own Web site seems too daunting, launch your online presence with Windows Live™ Spaces. By adding the Microsoft Windows Media Player module to your space, you can play a clip of your music for visitors. If they like it, they can contact you for more information about your tunes.
A site like InDiscover also helps musicians get noticed. It uses “collaborative filtering” to recommend independent artists and their music to new listeners based on how listeners previously rated other songs. The more often your music is rated, the more likely it will be recommended to other visitors.
You can promote your music online and sell songs as digital downloads on popular indie sites such as Broadjam and Soundclick. Then, when you’re ready to hit the road, you can use an Electronic Press Kit (EPK) at sonicbids to connect you with promoters and help you land gigs.
“I don’t think anyone can survive by solely relying on the Internet. Performing live and getting good reviews in newspapers, TV and radio offer very strong exposure,” says Pettit. “But the combination of everything is pretty powerful.”
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