- Use a condenser microphone with a pop filter for vocals
- Use 2 matched condenser mics for acoustic instruments, separated by twice the distance to the instrument, pan them left and right
- Use a dozen cheap foam panels to reduce unwanted room sound (placed closer to the vocals/instrument depending on situation). I tacked mine to a sheet of plywood so that it could be moved around.
- Eat a banana before singing to help improve vocal quality
- It will never sound as good as you want, but the most important thing is the performance. People will put up with imperfect recordings if the performance is good.
> - Use a condenser microphone with a pop filter for vocals
As an old engineer and record label owner I actually say NEVER use a condenser microphone unless you have great acoustics in your room and specific reason for using them. Use a dynamic mic instead. They are great sounding used on millions of songs and they are forgiving for bad acoustic areas. People just assume that condenser are better for all vocals. My 1" condensers that cost thousands sound amazing but a lot of times I just use a SM58 instead because it was a better sound for it. SM7B is my go to mic for vocals but that would be out of most people's budgets. Also no need for phantom power is also a plus.
SM7B from Shure $399
Sennheiser e945 $219
SM58 from Shure $99 (This is a tank of a mic that just rocks)
Sm57 all the way for me. $150 condenser mic I got at Guitar Center was terrible.
As a back in the day old time recording engineer, I had access to Neumanns and AKG mics worth thousands of dollars. But 60% of the time, a sure 57 ended up sounding better.
Hi, sorry for hijacking. I'm a bedroom producer noob and I'm currently using an NT1-A for vocal stuff although I've recently been working with a female vocalist who's got a very strong (and pretty bright-sounding) voice. Would you recommend giving the Sm57 a go for this sort of thing?
Absolutely. Condenser mics often don't work well with the kind of voice you're describing. They end up sounding shrill and a bit clippy even if they don't officially hit the clip level.
Mics like the 57, or the old re20 that you used to see in studios have a warmer, analog sound that's more forgiving and softens the harshness that you can hear in condenser mics.
As a bedroom producer, I’ll have to disagree. My $300 Rhodes condenser mic sounds way better for vocals than my e906 Sennheiser dynamic mic. I don’t have an optimal space, and haven’t even looked into the acoustics of the room.
Your e906 is designed primarily to be stuck in front of guitar amps, I'm not surprised that a Rode LDC would beat it. That does not mean that everyone recording in their bedroom will do better with a condenser microphone vs a good dynamic.
Using two mics for recording acoustic instruments (in this case, guitar) and mixing two sources later in the DAW is explained here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww-cH29IGeM
> Use a dozen cheap foam panels to reduce unwanted room sound (placed closer to the vocals/instrument depending on situation). I tacked mine to a sheet of plywood so that it could be moved around.
This is a good suggestion. Acoustic panels can be made really cheaply and simply. Here's a couple of examples.
I like the first video because he does a bit of minimal testing with a tone generator. I'd be interested to see more testing, using more realistic frequencies, in a room.
> Use a dozen cheap foam panels to reduce unwanted room sound (placed closer to the vocals/instrument depending on situation). I tacked mine to a sheet of plywood so that it could be moved around.
You're talking about bass traps. They're an essential for recording in most every room. Here's a great video for how to build some quite effective ones for cheap. (I'm not affiliated w/ this guy or his channel). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZV-gxVpkGk
If you want to eat a banana before you singing go for it.
Things you eat or drink don't touch your vocal folds, so they aren't going to coat or otherwise mess with them.
My recommendations are drink plenty of water, avoid alcohol, and practice.
Another thing to avoid is extensive speaking. Normal speaking is surprisingly detrimental to ones singing voice.
Other folk remedies for voice include flat, room temperature Coca-Cola. I don't think anyone has demonstrated efficacy of any of these techniques, but another big factor in effective singing is mental state. If a placebo ritual helps get you in the correct frame of mind to sing, then it might just be worth doing. The destructive alternative is to get intoxicated before a performance.
While eating a banana should most certainly not result in a banana-grease coat on your vocal cords, it will be all over your throat. Might just be a little bit like hand lotion for it.
1) Since record labels generally haven't given an advance to a new artist for a decade, almost all albums and Youtubes are now done "in your room."
2) The Yamaha AG03 is a mixing console more intended for live gigs. If you're mainly doing home studio recoding, then most people get a Focusrite 2i2 or Yamaha/Steinberg UR22 and do mixing in the DAW (computer program.) The UR22 has MIDI-in and out.
Synths often have a built-in audio interface for microphones or guitars, though sometimes without phantom power.
Otherwise, the how-to is pretty typical of how it's done. Note that the author was already quite a musician, having been in a band. YMMV!
> almost all albums and Youtubes are now done "in your room."
Hm, not exactly sure if you meant to qualify this somehow but this isnt broadly true in a literal sense.
Sure, with 1-2 musicians or DAW-heavy productions you can put together a whole album in your room (ideally with more professional mixing and/or mastering), but tracking a full band or a group of instrumentalists still generally requires studio work.
1) Interesting note, I hadn't thought much about it - I don't know much about labels, the only one I follow is 4AD and what they post, I listen to. However, they're not that talked about.
2) I'll have to look into these - thanks for telling me!
3) Unfortunately I think playing simple chords in a band, when you and the two other musicians are 17, doesn't really qualify as being quite the musician ahaha thank you still!
I don't think you'll see any appreciable difference in conversion quality by switching audio interfaces at this level, particularly with the style of music you are making (which is great by the way, well done!). It all comes down to workflow, and it seems you're getting it done just fine with the Yamaha. I'd look to upgrade if you find yourself needing more inputs.
The more obvious upgrade would be a new microphone to replace the Kenwood you are currently using. An SM-58 will last you a lifetime or if you have a bit more to spend something like an SM7b will be a great investment particularly recording in untreated spaces.
Also, you could try recording the midi information of your electric drum kit and then loosely quantising/editing the takes to retain the feel. You can map these to Logics in-built drums which are pretty great.
Congrats on finishing a body of work, most don't get that far!
Thank you for your suggestions, and specifically on the microphone one. I wanted to get a new one but I was having some difficulty choosing a good one for me. I will look into this. And thank you for your nice words!
Yeah going down the microphone rabbit hole can be confronting. It's always best if you can try a particular model before purchasing it (particularly for your own vocals), as microphones are very source specific.
Not always an option depending on where you are, but often you can find an audio-rental company nearby. It's hard to go wrong with the mics I mentioned above though. Keep it up!
Analog to digital conversion is highly variable in quality and responds dramatically to budget. If the thing you want is ADC, you want it all spent on the ADC.
Live gear has different tradeoffs. Particularly at the low end, it's not meant to produce a signal that's pleasant to listen to alone in a silent room. As you walk up in price point, money will be spent on things you don't need, like onboard processing (your DAW is better anyway), durability for touring (overkill to sit on a desk in your house), convenience of managing chaotic high-channel-count situations (studio work is methodical and iterative), integration with proprietary low-latency networking, etc. Pristine, noise-free preamps are pretty late in the list. Different needs, different tradeoffs.
The very best digital live consoles asymptotically approach the capabilities of Pro Tools on your Macbook. Having to operate in real time adds a few zeroes to the cost.
If you really must record several mics at the same time, and can't afford enough ADC to bring in the tracks separately, then it might make sense to mix the signals upstream of the recording using whatever is at hand.
> how does the choice of live mixing console vs audio interface affect production?
1) A mixer "mixes" multiple inputs down to one output. An audio interface maintains separate channels.
2) Prosumer mixers don't have MIDI-in. That's often ok for just guitar or vocals, but add a couple of synths and the routing gets complicated fast. Hope your computer has lots of USB ports!
3) The dedicated audio interfaces have adequate DACs, no idea about the prosumer mixers.
Most people doing recording want to keep the channels separate and mix in their DAW, so they don't use mixers for recording.
In this case with the AG03, there's only one or two channels, so he's really just using the pre-amp feature in isolation.
So technically he's using the wrong device, but the AG03 is so limited it doesn't matter. :)
I have a Yamaha MG10XU 10-channel mixer, and I wouldn't use it for recording since the 10 input channels get merged into 1 stereo output channel, so there's no way to individually adjust gain or effects in the DAW, only using the physical knobs. I always use my Focusrites, Steinbergs or synth interfaces for recording.
It's kind of crazy to see that while he has some slightly nicer instruments than me, he mostly does the same thing I do, only with a couple orders of magnitude more talent and a Dropbox with Frank Ocean and Migos vox in it.
This is a great writeup. I did something similar to this. 80 songs. Everything this author says about the process is pretty much the same that i experienced, but it took me a year to figure it out and another year and a half to write and record all the music. about one song a week. Oh except I did drums differently, I found somthinig called Fat Drums (or something), a midi-based drum machine, and basically i finger drummed on my usb keyboard into a track on my DAW. it was fantastic, absolutely indistinguishable from a human drummer. oh also i used ableton as a daw, it is really good, but really anything could work. and like this author discovered, you can spend way too much time redoing takes, so i took a lot of pride on doing one or two takes and moving on. kept the creative process flowing. in fact after 80 songs, maybe 12 i thought were actually pretty good, so we formed a band, learned those songs, and played live locally for a year or so. it was fun. great job romes!!!
I tried to post a correction on Medium, but they wanted me to create an account. So I created an account to post the correction and they still wouldn't let me post, something about either my profile wasn't complete or I hadn't done enough to allow posting.
Great business model. Outsource the content creation to the peons but then implement draconian restrictions so you have to jump through hoops to make a positive contribution.
Anyway, the correction is, the book "Set Your Voice Free" is by Roger Love, not Robert Love as stated in the article. Helpful for anyone looking for it because Robert Love writes Linux books that contain very little information about improving your singing voice.
I don't understand why anyone would be suckered into creating value for a place like Medium when they are so obviously exploitative.
hey, thank you for noting! i'll fix it right away.
this is my first time using medium as well. I think i might abandon the account and repost the story on my blog.
Medium is a bit backwards. Their intention is to clean up commenting but all it really does is raise the bar of entry such that people often don't even bother regardless of intent.
A lot of medium posts/articles that should have opposing views as comments are often one sided echo chambers because of this.
Yes but the law of diminishing returns is especially prevalent, here.
For a serious, scientific, by-the-numbers mixing technician, the amount of quality increase versus the amount of time spent more often than not hits a massive bell curve fairly early on - particularly if it is not that technician’s original material.
Pro mixers also have lots of presets and tool chains already setup that they always go-to. It's not that they could just finish a mix in a day, it's that they have a lot of their tooling already roughly setup, and they just have to dial it in. It still takes time to create and setup those chains/presets.
But yeah, you do not need a lot of professional equipment or specialized knowledge now to create great records. I am not at all bemoaning this fact, I love that creating music is more and more open for all, music is a very human quality we should all have access to.
One of the more famous “in your room” records is Sufjan Stevens’ Illinoise. Highly critically acclaimed album involving many instruments that was mostly recorded on a Shure SM57 in a Manhattan apartment. And this isn’t your bedroom EDM album, this is an album that well over 20 different classically trained musicians played on.
> This is exactly the reason why I switched careers from audio tech to development. Funny seeing this posted here.
I think the barrier to entry is even lower in development. While audio production requires at least some investment due to high hardware demands and expensive software/instruments, you can probably start learning development with the computer you already have and you'll have immediate access to a huge range of high quality development tools and in-depth documentation. Those are excellent conditions for newcomers and amateurs.
The difference is that people are actually willing to pay for software development as opposed to music, which seems to be increasingly taken for granted and somewhat devalued.
Another thing I find pretty amazing is how much guitar work is 100% digital these days. The progress in DSP technology has allowed thousands of sounds available to the masses. $500 goes a long way these days which wasn’t true a decade ago.
And those digital units are not only "legit" sounding, but also much more flexible and hassle-free. Lighter, with instant preset recall, different input/output routing.
I love this tech, really, and the fact that it brings people closer to making music.
The Strymon Iridium is fantastic, if you have more to spend and want more flexibility Kemper profilers are hard to beat. AxeFX also gets a lot of love.
On the more budget end most audio interfaces these days will have a Hi-Z input for guitar, there are many great amp/stompbox emulation plugins these days.
I adorrrrre my Iridium. I have Guitar Rig & Bias FX and a bunch of other sims, but the Iridium is really special. The sound is _inspiring_ - in that it makes me want to just sit and play guitar for hours on end because it sounds so damn good. It's expensive and I try to not be a gear addict, but imo investing that much in my joy was money well spent.
For professionals, Kemper and the AX8 amp modellers. The Kemper has a huge community of professional users sharing their profiles.
There are also various plugins that emulate a single kind of amp, but they're not quite as convincing, or as popular.
The Kemper was designed by the same dude who designed the Access Virus, which is more than two decades old now and still considered a classic pseudo-analog synth implemented with DSP.
Sibling posted some good stuff people are using. AxeFX and Kemper is pretty much the standard stuff. Line6 has been in the digital game forever and even their budget stuff is worthy (pod HD500, pod studio, Helix). Hell, I record a ton of stuff with guitar amp modeling in GarageBand and even some of those sound pretty awesome.
Great write-up. People don't realise, this was instrumental to the success of Billie Eilish. She and her brother make their music in a tiny bedroom studio and you can't argue with the results. The trove of available VST plugins for mastering, mixing and instruments are vast and most of them are affordable for those who are serious about pursuing bedroom recording.
Finishing an entire album is a great achievement. Even with the tremendous improvements and price reductions in modern home-recording equipment there is still numerous hours of effort required. It is a marathon like effort and anyone who completes it should feel proud.
This is great, exactly what I've been trying to do but there's never enough time and now the second kid is on the way... I guess I'll have to just find that extra time somehow because you got me excited again.
One question:
What did you use for the guitar amp? I personally use Guitar rig and I keep getting lost in all those infinite guitar sounds. I'm worried my songs won't sound cohesive if I experiment too much and have a different setup (or several) for each song. Do you just pick a few sets like a clean sounding one, dirty sounding one and stick with them through the whole record (maybe add some unique effects here and there) or does it not matter?
Rule of thumb for any sound situation, live or recorded: give yourself a limited palette so you can sound consistent.
If you want an album to sound like it's all one piece, you use the same instrument and processing for it all the way through -- except for that one time that you want to highlight it.
In visual terms, you want the grass on the left side of the painting to be the same as the grass on the right side of the painting, unless you deliberately want to say something about the grass. You should only be drawing people's attention to what youwant them to be looking at.
Great article (and nice music). Wish I had read this pointers years ago, when I still had a lot of free time.
Maybe a nice hobby for corona quarantine time :-)
There's some fantastic artists on youtube who produce in similar circumstances. Here's one of my favorite examples (the video was also made in the artist's room) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYv6-5VmNEM
The artists name is Mree, and it's her cover of Walking on a Dream by Empire of the Sun. It's worth the click, and now you know to what you'll be clicking.
Really neat article. The part about promoting your music seems really hard. I have 0 knowledge about music industry but I've heard there are some sites like Submithub that promote your music to blogs for a small fee. Maybe you can try that. A few reviews from music blogger can help you get more fans.
Reminders me than one of my favourite albums ever, Sheena Ringo's Kalk Samen Kuri no Hana was recorded entirely by her in her apartment with Mac and some cheap hardware.
I scrolled straight to the singing part to see if there were any nuggets of wisdom. I've been singing with a teacher for 6 months and it still seems impossible. Everything is so indirect and there is no obvious path to getting better.
Are there any people here who have improved their singing skills significantly? What did you do?
Yup! I went from "I don't even sing karaoke or sing in the shower" to really liking my voice, performing super comfortably in public & preparing to record my first studio EP. I guess it's been 3-4 years at this point.
I had a musical background which definitely helped, but the main thing is I desperately wanted to be able to sing.
The main thing you can do is take weekly vocal lessons with a good vocal teacher who you vibe with and practice every day. I didn't have lessons for that whole time, but the periods where I have had a teacher I got better quicker way better than when I just practiced by myself.
The cool thing is that singing unlocks songwriting, and songwriting is absolutely transformative as a self-care practice. It's also infinitely more fun to sing your own songs than covers. But also performing your own songs gives you a drive to get better at singing. Virtuous cycle.
Assuming I already have a guitar, bass and electric piano (with midi) how much would I have to spend on bits and pieces to do something similar. I have a couple of low spec windows laptops so might well need a new machine as well?
Guess the main costs would be the digital interface and software plus a new computer maybe (does it really gave to be a mac!!)
I think you'd be best seeing how far you can get with your current laptops before upgrading. On the software front Reaper would be an excellent choice on Windows, very cheap and CPU efficient.
Cheap audio interfaces have come a very long way, I'd look at what's being sold second hand in your area. Something with a Hi-Z input if you're wanting to record your guitars directly though the interface.
On top of those things you have, I spent about $300 on a condenser mic and preamp and about $150 on an audio interface.
I lack quality studio monitors or monitoring headphones with a flat response, they're kind of pricey, but necessary to make professional sounding music. Any speakers or headphones you play your tracks through will add their own sound that makes it difficult to mix or master properly. The tracks might sound great through the speakers or headphones you're using, but like garbage through other ones. With flat monitors, what you hear is only the sounds of your tracks.
For software I use the vast array of audio production tools on linux through kxstudio and elsewhere.
My workflow tends to be, hydrogen for drums, rosegarden patched through various plugins for midi, all routed into ardour alongside any audio input tracks. I'll usually record track by track. I use ardour to mix everything, then I take my mixed down track and master it using jamin.
Didn't read the article, but a Windows/macOS computer with a DAW + audio interface (for recording instruments + if you decide to get nice headphones that require a pre-amp) + midi controller + some virtual synths/samples, and you should be good to go.
There are plenty of decent free synth/samples, so I wouldn't count it as an absolute necessity to spend money on synths.
The only reason I say "Windows or macOS" is because of driver compatibility with your equipment + choice of DAWs, with the most widely used ones being macOS/Windows only.
Even thought you have a piano that is midi compatible, you might want a separate MIDI controller, so that it is smaller + has pads + knobs to control various parameters. I have a piano with MIDI-out as well, but found it to be super inconvenient to work with compared to an actual midi controller. My personal affordable recommendation that isn't just basic barebones stuff is Arturia Minilab MKII (currently $109 on Amazon). Got it myself a couple of months ago, still very happy with the purchase.
Regarding an audio interface, Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 is very robust and is heavily recommended (currently $159 on Amazon). It might be a little bit more than the basic needs, but it gives you a bit of a room to grow. And the basic version is just $109 (Scarlett Solo), so I feel like an extra $50 is worth it, given that you probably won't have a need (but def might be tempted to) to buy another one pretty much ever.
I spent around 90€ on the audio interface (however, i think you can get a better one for less money now), 35€ on the mic stand, 15€ on the cable. I'm pretty sure you can get far with free software, and it wouldn't require a new machine - you just need the basics. I'm not sure how much the rest of the equipment cost because most I didn't buy myself.
Great job putting out an entire self produced album and documenting it. I wanted to bounce this opinion off you.
Its my opinion that most folks who are going to be using programmed drums would be better off with an inexpensive MIDI controller with some pads (like the one pictured in your article) vs playing them on an electronic kit unless they happen to be a very skilled drummer.
I play drums passably, but when I'm demoing up ideas I just thump them in with some pads on a MIDI controller.
Behringer's audio interfaces are very, very good for their money. The UMC204HD (2 in w/ inserts and 4 outs) at less than 90 € delivered is quite a good deal. Both inputs are universal (mic/line/inst), with pad. Phantom power is switched in common for both. It also has MIDI in/out, but I never used that, can't comment.
Note that a separate pre-amp or DI box is not necessary with these. You can connect microphones of either kind directly as well as pickups.
To go further on this, I switched from mac to PC for my studio setup a couple years back as mac hardware seemed to increase in price too much in relation to PC. I had only bought software that was able to run on both because I want to maintain flexibility to switch at will; and switching my commercial VSTs, DAW (Ableton Suite), NI Reactor, etc to PC was seamless. All my saved sets came across fine.
Hit the secondhand market is usually cost effective. People upgrade all the time thinking its getting to help them make better music (it usually doesn't).
The practice with what you have. Getting good at recording takes years.
Hey! No, it did not cross my mind - where do you release Creative Commons music? As a goal I wanted to have my friends listening and sharing the music where they usually listen to it. If you want to chat about it contact me (see last line of post for contacts)
Creative Commons doesn't mean you can't put it on Spotify iTunes Etc. It just means it can also be distributed on platforms that aren't part of the music industry copyright and licensing system.
One advantage of doing it this way is so your music is widely available even if the platform of the day goes away and you're not on top of it to migrate to whatever's current.
- Use a condenser microphone with a pop filter for vocals
- Use 2 matched condenser mics for acoustic instruments, separated by twice the distance to the instrument, pan them left and right
- Use a dozen cheap foam panels to reduce unwanted room sound (placed closer to the vocals/instrument depending on situation). I tacked mine to a sheet of plywood so that it could be moved around.
- Eat a banana before singing to help improve vocal quality
- It will never sound as good as you want, but the most important thing is the performance. People will put up with imperfect recordings if the performance is good.