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With the advent of digital technology, musicians can mix their own music at home. A plethora of computer programs gives you the tools that you need to make professional sounding mixes from at your desk. Curious about how to best do your own home music production? Here’s some information that will help.

Tools For Home Music Production

In order to produce music at home, you’ll need to have a high quality computer. Older machines are fine for Internet use or word processing, but music mixing puts some significant demands on many systems. Make sure that your computer has plenty of available memory, so that it doesn’t slow down or crash in the middle of production.

You’ll also need to have the right software. Exactly what you require will depend on the type of production you want, and the use of the end product. There are a lot of options available, including some quality free programs available through the GPL. However, as with many other things, you may find you get what you pay for with free software. For many people, it’s a good springboard, but they’ll end up buying a high end professional product later. Experiment with various programs and see what works best for you.

A CD or DVD burner that can reliably produce quality, playable discs is important if you want to distribute your music in that form. If you’re planning to do distribution online, you may not need this. However, you’ll find that many people still prefer having a tangible disc that they can own.

Having good speakers is a must. If your computer speakers are tinny, too quiet, or full of distortions, you’ll find it impossible to get good playback, or to tell what’s wrong.

Of course, you’ll also need music files. This means either creating your music on the computer using a program suited to that, or recording what you play in digital form, using a recorder capable of this.

Making Your Music Sound Right

Listen carefully as you work on your files. If something sounds “off,” you’ll need to work to correct it. Listen to commercial recordings that you like, and analyze what’s going on in them to figure out the kind of mixes you like. Watch the levels carefully for clipping, and be sure that recording occurs at a constant, even level. If you have the right recording software, you’ll be able to monitor and support your levels from within. However, other software won’t allow you to adjust the input levels at all, and others will expect you to have a sound card that can do so.

EQ is a popular effect, to the point of being over used. It can be used to enhance a mix and make it more attractive over all. However, if the mix itself isn’t any good, no amount of EQ will hide that fact. Remember that when using EQ to equalize portions of your mix, the general advice is that you should cut, rather than boost. Most people will want to boost the weaker portions of the mix. However, that can lead to overboosting. Cutting the parts that are too strong is the better choice.

If you do boost, remember that boosting also increases the amount of noise, which can “dirty” your mix. Also, keep an eye on the output meter as you work. Boosting EQ increases the gain, which makes it easy to accidentally clip output, creating distortion. Listen to all tracks that you’ve worked on in relation to the other tracks to make sure that they match in feel.

Compression is useful is you want to even out variations in volume and control sound attack. Fast attacks accentuate the body of a given sound. Slow attacks increase definition. The areas that benefit the most from compression are the bass, vocals, and kick drums. However, some other areas might do well with it as well. Be sure to listen to all tracks with and without compression to figure out what will work the best.

Pay attention to settings on the compressor. They can significantly affect the results that come out in the end. Compression can also raise background noise, just like boosting EQ, and can accentuate “s” sounds in vocals. You may need to use what’s called a “de-esser” after using compression, if there’s too much sibilance.

Home recording studios are becoming easier to set up and with the continual advances in technology and recording tools the use of a professional studio may not seem like a necessary step.

Quality is Key if You Want to “Make It Big”

However the use of a professional studio will compliment work done in a high quality home studio to produce a top notch product that record labels will take notice of. By doing the basics in a home studio, if you have access to one, and using a small professional outfit to put the all-important finishing touches in you can drastically reduce your financial outlay while still producing a recording of exceptional quality. By working together with a professional studio it allows you, the artists to concentrate on getting the sounds you want while the technical side is seen to by the studio’s engineer.

You Can’t Achieve Everything you Need at Home Unless You Have Mega$$$

Using a home studio alone will not give you a polished finish worthy of a recording contract unless you invest a lot of money buying not only the basics but high-technology gadgets as well. Unfortunately even if you do splash out and buy everything you need to eliminate the need for a professional studio, you will still need technical support in the form of a qualified engineer before your songs sound producible. A good engineer can listen to out for irregularities such as tonal imbalances and distortions. Buying laptops and a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) doesn’t make an artist into an engineer and this will show in your work.

Mastering and Safety of Finished Product

Professional studios have a set of guidelines regarding master tapes and their contents. These have evolved through necessity along with the industry and are used with every artist and band to ensure that the contents of their master tapes are labeled correctly and backed up. In the event of an accident your professional studio will be able to replace your work. Without the support of this asset management bands have been known to send blank tapes or incomplete rough work to record labels in place of their master tapes! Don’t laugh…it really does happen and as production companies are only interested in the master recording, safeguarding it is imperative. Professional studios will not only save your finished project they will save each individual track and archive them for up to ten years or more.

This is a resource that a home studio cannot offer an artist with complete reliability and in the long term it could prove to be very cost effective; rerecording your entire master tape would work out to be much more expensive than paying to archive your material.

Master tapes can be produced in a home studio and depending on your experience and technical ability they may be decent quality but in order to achieve a product that is superior to those of competitor bands you really need the services of a professional studio; after all, they really know what they’re doing.

Videos are exploding all over the Internet. Some go viral, and some, let’s face it, are viral. A lot of us are making our videos public for the very first time… while wild video camcorder work attracts attention, it’s good to have some control over when it’s wild and when it’s not.

Sound, or “audio” is another story; if it’s bad, it’s just bad. If your audience can’t hear the person who’s talking, they’re just going to click “next.” When people using a camcorder get involved in what they’re shooting, (even those with some experience), the first thing they forget about is sound. Audio that accompanies video has a major impact on the perceptions of the audience, but when you are capturing a scene, you are part of that scene. Your brain tends to block out sounds that appear as normal until you watch the playback later. Then, Ooops!

The following article is excerpted from our book “How To Shoot Better Home Videos – Help From The Hollywood Pros.” We hope it helps stamp out bad camcorder video!

Shhhhhhh! The audience is listening…

No Talking!

It might seem that it “goes without saying,” but… don’t talk, laugh or gasp while recording, unless you’re deliberately commenting on the scene. Your mouth is two inches from the on-board microphone. Anything you say can, and will, be used against you. Once you have learned to curb your enthusiasm enough to shoot in silence, you can begin training yourself to hear the sounds that are going on around you. It’s not just enthusiasm that can draw attention to the camera operator – shuddering sighs of boredom can bring the viewer’s attention to a standstill, especially if it is accompanied by an unexpected camera movement that feels like a huge wave just rolled under the boat.

Hearing your surroundings

If there is a loud air conditioner and you have control over it, turn it off. If there is freeway traffic outside the room where you are shooting, get a “cutaway” shot of the freeway, through a window. (A “cutaway” is a shot of an element that may or may not be part of the scene but contains information helpful to the audience). Once the audience knows why the sound is there, they will find it less disturbing.

Example:

You may be shooting a wedding outdoors and crows suddenly start making a ruckus. Get a shot of the crows and you’ll be less likely to have to spend futile hours trying to eliminate the screeching of the crows from the “soundtrack” (the audio track that accompanies the video), once you start editing the ceremony.

Microphones

The “microphones,” those instruments capable of converting sound waves into electric current that are built into consumer camcorders, are very good for general sound. They are particularly reliable. If you’re getting picture, you’re getting sound. However, they are very limited when it comes to interviews, acting scenes, and important conversation.

The further away you are from the person whose words you are recording, the more general audio the microphone is going to pick up. It will also pick up air conditioners and any motor that may be humming away, including a desktop computer.

When you purchase your camcorder, make sure your camcorder has an external microphone jack. That is, an input, usually a “mini jack” that takes an external microphone, if you intend to use it to record clean audio such as interviews or narration. Many camcorders are now being built without these, and audio capture is restricted to the built-in microphone. This could really limit the usefulness of your audio. If you have one of these cameras, try to shoot as close to your subject as you can to eliminate unwanted ambience (general sound being generated by the location in which you are shooting).

Camcorders and other electronic devices do so many things; a person is inclined to assume it’s going to do the simple things, too. When we visit the sales associate in the camera department we always ask, “What is it that this camcorder doesn’t do?”

Besides the on-board omnidirectional mic (which captures sound from all directions), you will want two types of additional microphones in your home video arsenal, assuming you bought a camcorder with a microphone jack. The first and most important is the shotgun. This is a unidirectional microphone and the cardioid version (with a heart-shaped pick-up pattern) is designed to reduce feedback. This means that the pick-up pattern of the mic will pick up the on-camera subject at whom it is pointing, but sounds occurring at right angles are greatly reduced. This results in much higher quality audio.

The second type of microphone is known as the lavaliere (lah vah leer), it attaches to the speaker’s clothes and is perfect for interviews, so having a pair of them is a good idea. The cordless “lavs” or “lav mics” are the most useful, but it’s important to listen for occasional radio interference. The corded type is much cheaper and okay for sit-down interviews.

Headphones:

Now that you have some control over your audio, you will want to “monitor” it with headphones. Any will do, but the better the quality, the more useful they will be, and those that block noise coming from anywhere but the camcorder are preferred.

Once you’re monitoring the sound with a headset, you’ll be listening for air conditioners, dogs barking, radio interference, and any other noises that distract from the audio that you’re capturing. It’s good to remember that there are at least 2 sound recordists on any serious movie set (the boom person, and the actual recordist). One catch-phrase in professional video production goes, “If you didn’t get the audio, you didn’t get the scene.”