Home recording / mastering tips

[echoraven]

Skully uses GarageBand for a lot of his stuff and it always comes out sounding super rad.

Cool! Not gonna lie though; mine is going to suck.

[D.o.S.]

The trick, I think, is to suck incrementally less every time.

[odontophobia]

The trick, I think, is to suck incrementally less every time.

If you suck the same amount every time then there's something to be said about consistency.

This thread and others like it always make me want to try our hand at recording ourselves instead of paying for it. It may take way more time but we would spend way less? How valuable is your time? For certain things my time is far more valuable (should I take a new job if it adds an hour and a half of travel time total for the day? I don't know) but this is something that I "could" enjoy doing. It may frustrate the shit out of me, though.

[echoraven]

The trick, I think, is to suck incrementally less every time.

If you suck the same amount every time then there's something to be said about consistency.

This thread and others like it always make me want to try our hand at recording ourselves instead of paying for it. It may take way more time but we would spend way less? How valuable is your time? For certain things my time is far more valuable (should I take a new job if it adds an hour and a half of travel time total for the day? I don't know) but this is something that I "could" enjoy doing. It may frustrate the shit out of me, though.

Sucking consistently...

Whether it's worth it to you to try it would depend on your goal. In my late 40s, and not really good at playing I'm not going to wind up in a band with fuzzed out guitars. If music is your career, then it's probably worth it to have a professional do it.

[PeteeBee]

See for me, (ridiculously busy with 50+ hr work week, family, other outstanding commitments) i'm lucky if I get to jam with the same guys 2 times a month. We have a couple songs we're looking to record soon, which will realistically probably be at least 6 months from now. It's worth it to us to have some one else do it. That being said, I would much rather have more time and do it myself. I just know that if I did it myself it wouldn't turn out as well and it won't be done until an entire year from now. By then I would be so sick of the songs haha

[Timm Grimm]

We recorded the EP (in my Sig)ourselves and I'd say I was super impressed with the results. I can't speak to much of the details or techniques because all of the magic was done by Robby (gp/vocals). I know he uses FL studio. We just picked up a Tascam 1800 us. Haven't got to try it out yet. (Soon enough) Unless we we're going to record with a specific producer, we'll probably always just record ourselves. If you have the means/know how to diy, I'd say it's really not worth the money for recording time. That money can go to merch or album pressing.

My thoughts.

[oscillateur]

We recorded the EP (in my Sig)ourselves and I'd say I was super impressed with the results. I can't speak to much of the details or techniques because all of the magic was done by Robby (gp/vocals). I know he uses FL studio. We just picked up a Tascam 1800 us. Haven't got to try it out yet. (Soon enough) Unless we we're going to record with a specific producer, we'll probably always just record ourselves. If you have the means/know how to diy, I'd say it's really not worth the money for recording time. That money can go to merch or album pressing.

My thoughts.

Recording and mastering are two very different things...

[rustywire]

The trick, I think, is to suck incrementally less every time.

[Timm Grimm]

We recorded the EP (in my Sig)ourselves and I'd say I was super impressed with the results. I can't speak to much of the details or techniques because all of the magic was done by Robby (gp/vocals). I know he uses FL studio. We just picked up a Tascam 1800 us. Haven't got to try it out yet. (Soon enough) Unless we we're going to record with a specific producer, we'll probably always just record ourselves. If you have the means/know how to diy, I'd say it's really not worth the money for recording time. That money can go to merch or album pressing.

My thoughts.

Recording and mastering are two very different things...

Agreed, but nonetheless, we did our EP diy. I didn't do the heavy lifting so I can't comment. Really just stating my opinion on DIY vs other. But thanks for pointing that out for me though.

[oscillateur]

I'm not trying to be a dick, it's just that people often do not see the difference between the two .

If you can record you music properly and cleanly, without doing any kind of destructive processing on it (i.e. no compressor all over the place, etc.) then even if you decide to do the rest by yourself, keep the original data. Because if you want someone to properly work on it later they will need that and not stuff that's been messed with already...

[conky]

I've been busy recording / mixing the last bit of our full length and going to baseball practice with my kid that I haven't gotten to post in here since the OP the other day. Lots of great info in here. I wish I had the money / time to send this album off for mastering. I used Dan Randall at Mammoth Sound for our 7" split and he made it sound great. My shitty recording / mixing skills are what kept that from sounding even better but he polished that turd as shiny as he could get it. We took our time with this full length and I didn't do any "mastering" to this one aside from putting a little top and low end and then experimented with a limiter to bring up the overall volume just a tad. Not pro, but I'm happy with it and I think it represents us in a realistic manor. I'll post a clip as soon as these .wavs are done uploading.

I really like the recording side of things, but everything is self taught. I always like hearing how other people do things and then apply those things to what I'm doing. I can tell from listening to past recordings that I'm getting (somewhat) better. One thing I learned is that less is definitely more and don't fuck with things for more than an hour at a time or your ears will get severely burned out.

[conky]

If I'm doing it by myself i'll get the song worked out before I even record and then program the drums and then record everything to that. Or I record myself playing drums to a click and then do everything else after that.

[maggot]

I record drums without a click and hope for the best. It's more fun that way. There have been times when after I've recorded the drum tracks and other tracks where I've realized the drum track doesn't fit, and I've re-recorded the drums using the other tracks with the original drum tracks as a reference. This is not what you'd call a best practice, however, especially since I don't have perfect time.

[whiskey_face]

*comes into the thread ready to learn*
*reads Cory's post*
*starts "mastering fund" instead*

that's what I heard....

[Kacey Y]

There's nothing wrong with doing it yourself really, but most people don't have any realistic idea of what they're getting into or what their realistic expectations should be. Like how I build a bass body (which is totally in my skill set), but then I decided I would paint it (zero knowledge/experience). I bought HVLP spray guns, filters, hoses, paint, prep supplies, did tons of research, set up everything, spent a few days doing the base coats, color coats, then totally botched the whole thing terrible doing the clear coat and realized I tried to jump into learning a whole new skill/trade expecting to be able to get a real result the first time. Then I thought about how I've been doing the things I consider myself "good" at for over a decade at least and felt kind of stupid.

So if you're getting into it because you want to learn a new skill and really devote time to sucking and slowly getting better, through hard learned lessons, bitter failures and small delightful victories, go for it. If you're doing it to save money or thinking it would be easier or more convenient to do it yourself, skip the torture and just spend money on someone else who's already gone through it.

I'm a glutton for punishment, so I've picked up and honed a lot of DIY skills, but now that I'm in my late 30's and have a kid I'd almost always rather spend money than time on things I'm not already skilled doing. I spend time and save money on the things I already know how to do myself.