You love music, and you had great memories of playing with your friends in high school. But your parents have other ideas about where you should take your life as a professional. You studied economics because the path that they wanted for you was in the financial sector. You agreed, but as a concession, they allowed you to take a master’s degree in music because you wanted to.
After working for a few years for an investment house, you’re now working for a big media company, where you’re nearer to music because of the work environment and the various artists that you meet now and then. You have no regrets.
A bandmate from high school who’s visiting from Sydney is your house guest. Music, jamming, reminiscing, and fun naturally happened. Then, your friend said that you still have it and that you should make a home studio just as a hobby. You never thought about it, but somehow, it makes sense. There’s a shack in the backyard. Could you and how should you do it? What kind of fastener will you use to hang speakers? Which supplier should you contact for the other equipment?
Here’s what you should consider if you’re creating your home studio:
An Overview of Studio Recording
You’re probably aware of this, but New York alone has some 275 professional recording studios. But being the entertainment hub of America, LA tops the list with 366.
Reel-to-reel tapes were the costly method used to record sound back in the late 1970s. Then the 1990s came, and analog tapes were converted into digital recordings that we now find in media such as hard discs, flash drives, or compact discs.
Getting Started
You’re looking for other gears that you’ve stowed away. That’s an excellent place to start—find out what you have so you don’t spend buying new ones. Here are other things that you should consider:
- The room. The shack at the backyard is the perfect dedicated room to make it happen because you can make adjustments to have better acoustics. The first step about using your space is where to locate your system. The guide is to imagine an inverted equilateral triangle where you, as the listener, are at the bottom, and the two top corners are the speakers. Experts advise that you should always avoid placing speakers in corners.
- Acoustic. You’ve cleared out your room from unnecessary items, like things hanging on the wall. Once that is done, you need to add acoustic treatment. The goal of acoustic treatment is to manage or control how sounds travel within a room. Controlling these reflections results in a higher quality recording of sounds.
- Equipment. You need at least a digital audio workstation or DAW, a PC, Computer, studio monitors, speakers, microphones, mic stand, and headphones. If you have some of these items, then you can repurpose them instead of buying new ones.
- Organize the room. Typically, there will be two areas: one for the engineers and one for the musicians. If you have a large room that you can divide, then that’s ideal. If not, others are creative enough to set-up both stations in one area. Research what you can find in terms of the best way to maximize space without sacrificing sound quality.
You’ll find others who recommend, for example, the best bit rate to record your sound. Add them to this list. But these pointers will get you started.
