Home Studio….How Did You Learn the Ropes?

TD77

Inspired
Many of us are fortunate to have the ability to record at home. I think I read somewhere that over the pandemic home recording equipment sales have surged. Count me in among the customers. Late to the game, I now have a modest studio at home and very thankful for it. Thing is….it’s very overwhelming. I have limited knowledge from my time in an actual studio, recording songs but relying on the expertise of the studio engineer for everything. I’ve watched YouTube videos which are a Godsend and have them saved in categories on my YouTube account for reference. It’s an exciting journey to learn but also frustrating at times. There’s so much to learn and apply. Getting the tracking done is one thing. Then there’s the black hole if mixing and eq and how to navigate that whole world. Im accepting that it will take me time to get comfortable and enjoying the small discoveries and “wins” in learning new things. How have you all learned? Any formal background or just trial by fire? Any recommendations of books or courses out there that really helped you out?
 
Internship in a local studio in the 90's, took a recording class in college, started mastering in the 90's and transferring stuff to digital helped a ton with EQ. I have been using Cakewalk since it came out and now it's free and very easy to use as long as you are on PC.

There are a couple of izotope plugins that are fantastic and free! Relay and Visual Mixer. Visual mixer has helped tremendously with my mixes and of course the FM3 has made my recordings sound fantastic.

I have mostly learned by trial and error. I started with at 4 track cassette, mini disk recorder, to a Tascam 788 hard disk recorder which I still have. Since I purchased my FM3 last July, I have been either recording or mixing/mastering everyday and love it!
 
Hands on mostly. I recorded a lot at pro studios in the 80s. I became friends with engineers and some deveoplers of high end mic pres. I asked questions a LOT. Luckily everyone was kind and helpful. But I started with a 4 track portastudio and drums machine for writing. Graduated to a midi sequencer and hardware synths and samplers. Then got an Akai 12 track tape recorder and mixing board. I had to work really hard to make that thing sound good. I had to learn about gain staging. Since then it's been better.

Nowadays there's youtube and google. Much easier. Manufacturers have gotten much better at writing manuals. Yamaha used to be the worst.

Now I have a 50 I/O high end home studio. Just a step at a time. Yet and still I'm less of an engineer than I am a guitarist/musician. If things get too complicated it spoils the creative process and leaves me scratching my head.

My suggestion is to buy the best gear you can. It helps make things sound better even if you lack technical ability. Plus most of the stuff I bought retains its value. I haven't had to buy new mic pres for upgrades for instance. But there's always room for improvement - like acoustic treatments!
 
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YT and all the great course on internet (for example Mix With The Masters, Puremix, etc. ) are great but you have to do the thing many many time to experiment what you do and listen to what adjustments do to the recorded music. Download some multitracks (better if they are raw track with no processing) and experiment. Just my 2c
 
YT and all the great course on internet (for example Mix With The Masters, Puremix, etc. ) are great but you have to do the thing many many time to experiment what you do and listen to what adjustments do to the recorded music. Download some multitracks (better if they are raw track with no processing) and experiment. Just my 2c
Thanks. Yes it’s trial and error over here with YouTube videos, notes I’m taking and organizing for desk reference and some other things. Just trying to get a very basic workflow going that can carry me through from tracking to mixing. Making progress but man there’s so much to know. I have huge respect for those who really have perfected this craft. I much prefer writing and playing than the technical side. But the cost of an actual studio and hiring musicians is just too much. My hope is to work my way to recordings that are good enough to pass muster.
 
Thanks. Yes it’s trial and error over here with YouTube videos, notes I’m taking and organizing for desk reference and some other things. Just trying to get a very basic workflow going that can carry me through from tracking to mixing. Making progress but man there’s so much to know. I have huge respect for those who really have perfected this craft. I much prefer writing and playing than the technical side. But the cost of an actual studio and hiring musicians is just too much. My hope is to work my way to recordings that are good enough to pass muster.
Take your time and if I can help you anyway just let me know.
 
I have done a ton of reading as well as YouTube videos. I have been doing live mixing for a long time so I know the process and how the equipment works. That helped a lot. I really like playing with this stuff. I wish I had more tracks I could do mixing and mastering on. I am never happy with anything I lay down and typically never finish it. I am going to try really hard to change that habit.

@Diego is there a good place to download raw tracks to work with? I started a training at one point that had that available but the material was a little behind the times and used older software than what I had so it made things a bit difficult so I dropped it. I didn't see the value for the price. It was a bit expensive and all I really wanted was the tracks to work with.
 
Some things that have worked for me for a number of 'deep' tools like DAWs and such:

1. Maintain a document (per tool) for accumulating summaries of 'lessons learned'. Let it grow organically in content and (re)organization. Capture things important to you, now and best guess for future needs, in your own words. Helps retention and eliminates stress of "I hope I'll remember this when I need it." The document eventually becomes a fantastic searchable reference, particularly for those "how to do xxx" cookbooks that you don't need to do frequently.

2. Find the best forum for the tool and scan it daily for tips and tidbits (including those helpful to add to your document). I've learned more from forums (like this one) than from manuals, tutorials, and youtubes (which are also often great, but some can pose a time investment vs useful content challenge).

3. Repeat 1 & 2 for years unending... which for me is a source of unending joy :)
 
Some things that have worked for me for a number of 'deep' tools like DAWs and such:

1. Maintain a document (per tool) for accumulating summaries of 'lessons learned'. Let it grow organically in content and (re)organization. Capture things important to you, now and best guess for future needs, in your own words. Helps retention and eliminates stress of "I hope I'll remember this when I need it." The document eventually becomes a fantastic searchable reference, particularly for those "how to do xxx" cookbooks that you don't need to do frequently.

2. Find the best forum for the tool and scan it daily for tips and tidbits (including those helpful to add to your document). I've learned more from forums (like this one) than from manuals, tutorials, and youtubes (which are also often great, but some can pose a time investment vs useful content challenge).

3. Repeat 1 & 2 for years unending... which for me is a source of unending joy :)
Great tips. I’m keeping notes and have been able to retain certain things where I don’t need the notes anymore.
 
Did the fostec and Tascam 4 track back in the day then bandmates started sucking and told myself "Forget these Guys" and then started GB now Logic, and couldn't be happier.

Haha! That can be so true. I never wanted to sing. No one else would. So I did, and still struggle.

Never wanted to play drums, but drummers always seemed sketchy and unreliable, so
I would jump on the kit at rehearsal and play drums when they didn't show---because
one drummer and one guitarist is pretty much always better than two guitarists.

My biggest wish was (and still is) to always play well with others. Nothing beats that chemistry
and in the moment give and take of multiple musicians in the same room. That is sadly not feasible
for a lot of reasons, though. So we suck it up and don all 18 hats and try and do it all ourselves,
while not getting exhausted/burnt out in the process. :)
 
In High School, people always thought that computer dorks automatically understood live sound equipment. In our case, it was relatively true...but still....rude.

So, yeah...live sound for school things basically any time the theater kids weren't available. Then just kind of being interested in technology and loving music. I DJ'd for a long time. Took up guitar on a whim, etc.. And, I kept just "playing", reading, watching, etc.. I kind of can't imagine not doing it, but I also can't really imagine living a normal studio lifestyle either.

My high school and college both had "music labs", and I took some classes. Most of it was electronic production, some tracking and mixing. Some of the classes went well, and I had access to a good amount of nice stuff and went in as much as I could to experiment and learn. I ended up helping out a lot of my classmates because I just wanted to do more of it and several of them were very lost.

DJing was probably the most instructive. The controls are very basic, but you're doing them in real time and responsible for all the sound. I eventually bought Live to integrate it into my DJ sets. I also ran live sound off a succession of of crummy half-broken Behringer mixers for Fraternity parties when we would hire a band.

At some point, when life wasn't going like I expected, I got an internship in a pretty high-end studio. It wasn't Abbey Road, but I worked on sessions for bands you probably know (and others you don't). I continued to run live sound when bands would rent out our practice space because-for some reason-none of the actual engineers wanted to do it...but mostly I vacuumed, cleaned bathrooms, and ran/organized cables. And occasionally did recalls on an SSL 4064G+ and a couple rooms full of the outboard stuff people dream about.

Side note: the thing people don't tell you about dream gear is that it's a PITA. Yeah, there might be a bit of mojo, but there's a reason they pawn the recalls off on the interns.

Fortunately, I didn't have to deal with tape except for pulling reels from the archives and baking them in the oven for transfers. But, one cool side of that is hearing the pre-mastering versions of some pretty big 90s bands. Yes, they sounded better before being squashed to death and high-passed for more level.

That ended because I couldn't make it work with actual school. It wasn't an overall great experience, either. Most of the engineers were cool, and I learned a good bit. But, management were dicks. And, I finally got sick of taking time out of my life to work for free in such a stressful environment. You couldn't be 5 minutes late for a shift or take a sick day...if you did, there was a line of people right behind you waiting to work for free and get treated like dirt. Apparently, the only reason I got hired was because I looked like I was rich enough to not have a job for a while. They never had plans to promote me to a position with real responsibilities.

The problem is that I'm a horrible songwriter. So, I never had material to work on that I actually liked. I've mixed for some friends and somewhat enjoyed it.

At some point, an internet friend asked me to take a crack at mastering a couple tracks he was going to start sending around, mostly to get a different perspective. So, I kind of figured out what that was, and one of them ended up getting played on A State of Trance (Armin Van Buuren's radio show). And he got signed off it. His label had it remastered by someone else before the release, which bummed me out....but it was also a much better master.

I took some time off to do other life things. Now, I work in tech...but I do it at home from a little mastering studio that I built when we bought our house. I'm still all-ITB here, with a good room and good speakers. I still mostly work for friends and their friends...and not as often as I would like. But, it's a LOT of fun when I get to do it. And the closest thing to a downside is that my workstation has a really awesome stereo.
 
I know that I don't know a lot. With the help of my brother (who went to school for audio engineering) and a friend who's ran his own studio for a while, I managed to mix my first solo EP. I was using garageband so the tools were limited, but it was my first time and that was the pace I was at anyway. I decided to splurge on a new machine and Logic X, expecting to keep working on recording songs, learning to play bass better and working on my mixing skills. I kind of did that. Becoming a parent (and working OT in a pandemic) mean I don't put nearly as much time into the studio side as I had hoped. If I was better at time management, I'd be working on mixing my next EP as opposed to considering a buy/sell scenario and posting on forums. It's not that I'm super interested in learning how to mix or get the right studio tone for something, it's that I don't have the money to pay my friends in the industry - I'd rather (and do) buy guitars.
 
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