THE BUDGET STUDIO GUIDE
Until relatively recently, home recording centred around all-in-one 4-track cassette recorders. While it’s certainly true that plenty of people managed to make astonishing tracks using such devices, they’re better used as sketchpads, useful for demoing ideas and preparing yourself for a trip to a fully fledged recording studio. They’re not meant to serve as a stand-in for the studio itself.
Today, things are different. Where once home computers had to be high-end machines, exponential year-on-year increases in computing power mean that even the phone in your pocket or laptop in your living room are likely capable of release-quality recordings. You can spend a fortune chasing perfection in a professional studio. Alternatively, you can achieve now similar results at home – with surprisingly little outlay.
STUDIO SPACES
You may have this vision of the recording studio as a dimly lit womb of creativity, stacked high with shiny boxes next to desks flush with knobs and flashing LEDs. In reality though, the studio is little more than a setting for the recording and production of music. It needn’t be an intimidating space. You could set up a studio in the spare room of your house, the corner of your living room or the shed at the bottom of the garden. Given the ubiquity of powerful handheld devices, you could even do studio work on the bus on your way to work.
The type of music you intend to produce will have a bearing on the sort of studio space you will need. If you intend to work entirely in-the-box – that is, using only sounds, instruments and effects that exist within your computer – then all you need to make music is a computer and a pair of headphones. This can be an exceptionally portable setup, especially if you’re using a laptop, tablet or smartphone.
If you need to record live signals from vocals
