Recording

[Psyre]

My band is finally looking to record in a studio, and we have a couple really nice ones near us, I was just wondering, how much did you guys pay for your first studio session?? and price range should I be expecting?

[The4455]

My band went into just about the cheapest studio in the Chicagoland area, although it was nice, the quality was only okay. It was the second floor of one of our friends' garages run by his dad, so obviously not pro, but really nice equipment, and awesome dude too. It cost $20 an hour and $10 to master each song, we spent 8 hours in the studio and did 10 songs, so it cost $360 total, and then we bought 100 cds for $15 and 100 jewel cases for $60 and enough labels for 100 CD's which was like $15, sticker paper, we made our own labels, they're simple but who cares, the music is what's important.

So the whole thing cost $450 total, we ended up selling 91 CD's at $5 each, since each band member got one (5), one to my guitar teacher and bass teacher (2) and one to a battle of the badns thing and one to a promoter (2), 9 free ones.

So for a bunch of 16 year olds, we did pretty well, since we made a profit of about $180.

Now, you could easily spend $450 in a studio for one day. Usually you pay for the use of the studio, the engineer (theirs or yours), and some studios charge to use their equipment, like drums, amps, and stuff. So be prepared to spend alot to go into a nice studio. Also mastering is really expensive, most people go to a seperate studio set up just for mastering to master. So after you pay all of that, you have to get your CD's and perhaps fancy labels and boxes, which can cost upto $1000 for a really nice one with a little pamphlet thing and all.

So be prepared to spend ALOT, or atleast more than you think. Even those are Chicago prices, it's relatively the same all over.

Good Luck