Hey guys. Any tips on recording.
- Thread starter Dylan Burley
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I have almost no experience in this area. But I have seen some of friends (who have small bands) record stuff in home studios. The only thing they have is a good microphone set and some good DAW software (maybe a midi keyboard too). Overall it is not that expensive. I think you can record vocals,guitars, synth and many other instruments in professional quality in your home. Recording drums might need a studio though.
Im located in Canada but thats not the point. With a small budget you could record on DI directly into a daw and send those files to me and I could re amp them in either my Kemper or my Hellwin. Same for bass. Drums, the midi technology got so good, you could use midi drums to do your first album or demo. Vocals would be the trickiest part but yeah a recording is as good as the people youre working with. Going to a home studio like Sayonil suggest could be an option but then again that depends who youre working with and what he has. Its incredibly easy to go on youtube, watch a couple tutorial and then buy the minimum equipement and then pretend to know what you do but its much more complicated than that and every recording/mix depends on the music youre recording.
@sayonil you could absolutely record vocals and guitar/bass on a home studio but that again depends on how well sound proofed the place is. Drums definitly need a studio recording or if at least the dude at the home studio has a room done just for that. Also, as i said, that depends on your budget. Home sound engineer can be expensive too. Or you could try it out for yourself and turn your home into a home studio but that will take time to something of great professionnal quality
Ok I’ll try to give you the best possible options that you can do. I will asume that you have 0$ but you NEED AN AUDIO INTERFACE and 1 MICROPHONE (you need a mic if you want to record vocals). Without that you can’t do shit.
Now I’m gonna list the things that you need.
1. A good computer – you need atleast 4gb ram so that your computer can function properly when you are recording. It will work with less ram but it will most likely start lagging. So 4gb minimum and everything above is a plus.
2. Audio Interface – you need that to record your guitars, bass, drums, vocals or anything else. Idealy would be that your interface has 8 inputs so that you can record all of your drums at the same time but since you said that your budget is very low, an interface with 2 inputs will work as well but you will need to do some adjusting when it will come to the drums. ( I will explain later how to do it). You can also do it with 1 input but then you would have to wait on your turn to record a guitar because you can record only 1 at a time. When you have 2 inputs you can record 2 guitars at the same time. The interface I would recommend is Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 (https://focusrite.com/usb-audio-interface/scarlett/scarlett-2i2)
3. Daw – You need a program in which you will record. The best “free” one is Reaper (https://www.reaper.fm/). Reaper is free for 30 day if I’m not wrong and then they want you to buy a license but you can still use it if you don’t buy it. The license costs 60$ and that’s absolutely nothing compared to pro tools or cubase which cost over 600$.
4. Amp simulator – you need something to simulate your amp if you are not planing on recording the guitar with a mic. Best free amp simulators can be found here: http://www.wiredguitarist.com/2016/12/30/top-5-free-guitar-plugins/. The best ones that cost are bias fx or guitar rig 5.
5. Microphone – I will give you two microphone options with which you can record “everything”. They are Shure sm57 and Sennheiser MD 421. Shure sm57 is perfect for recording electric guitars or snare but you can also record vocals with that but you need a pop filter for that which is not really expensive. The mic costs 100€ and that cheap for a microphone and that mic will last you forever. everybody has that mic. Sennheiser works great for vocals, toms, guitars, kick in… but that mic is more expensive. It costs 379$ i think.
6. Drum recording – Now here stuff will get a bit complicated, there are few options you can do:
– Drum replacement – that means you get your microphone and let’s say you want to record a kick, you get your mic and you tell the drummer to just play the kick, it doesn’t even have to be a kick, he can tap his foot on the floor, the important thing is to record those transients and then when you record that you import that file in your daw and you replace those transients with a drum sample, so each time a transient appers it will be replaced with a sample that you choose. There are some free drum triggers here: https://www.drumwerks.com/drum-replacement-plugins/
Now obviously that would take 100000 years because you have 1 mic and it would take forever to record the whole drum. This would be a great option if you have an interface with 8 inputs and you have 8 mics.
– Programming the drums – The absolute best one is Superior drummer 3. You can literally do anything with that and it sounds amazing. The downside is that it costs over 300$ and it has over 250gb of samples. Good news is that there is a great free drum vst that you can download and it’s called MT Power Drumkit 2 (https://www.powerdrumkit.com/). I use it all the time. It really sounds great for a free vst. The only downside is that is sounds metal, meaning that if you wanted to record a slow, soft chillout song those drums wouldn’t really work because they sound heavy. But if you only want to record rock or metal then it’s perfect. It will take some time to learn how to program those drums (it’s not really programing, it just drawing the notes on the piano roll) but it’s not really hard. It just takes more time to do it than to record it.
Now I’m gonna list the things that you need.
1. A good computer – you need atleast 4gb ram so that your computer can function properly when you are recording. It will work with less ram but it will most likely start lagging. So 4gb minimum and everything above is a plus.
2. Audio Interface – you need that to record your guitars, bass, drums, vocals or anything else. Idealy would be that your interface has 8 inputs so that you can record all of your drums at the same time but since you said that your budget is very low, an interface with 2 inputs will work as well but you will need to do some adjusting when it will come to the drums. ( I will explain later how to do it). You can also do it with 1 input but then you would have to wait on your turn to record a guitar because you can record only 1 at a time. When you have 2 inputs you can record 2 guitars at the same time. The interface I would recommend is Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 (https://focusrite.com/usb-audio-interface/scarlett/scarlett-2i2)
3. Daw – You need a program in which you will record. The best “free” one is Reaper (https://www.reaper.fm/). Reaper is free for 30 day if I’m not wrong and then they want you to buy a license but you can still use it if you don’t buy it. The license costs 60$ and that’s absolutely nothing compared to pro tools or cubase which cost over 600$.
4. Amp simulator – you need something to simulate your amp if you are not planing on recording the guitar with a mic. Best free amp simulators can be found here: http://www.wiredguitarist.com/2016/12/30/top-5-free-guitar-plugins/. The best ones that cost are bias fx or guitar rig 5.
5. Microphone – I will give you two microphone options with which you can record “everything”. They are Shure sm57 and Sennheiser MD 421. Shure sm57 is perfect for recording electric guitars or snare but you can also record vocals with that but you need a pop filter for that which is not really expensive. The mic costs 100€ and that cheap for a microphone and that mic will last you forever. everybody has that mic. Sennheiser works great for vocals, toms, guitars, kick in… but that mic is more expensive. It costs 379$ i think.
6. Drum recording – Now here stuff will get a bit complicated, there are few options you can do:
– Drum replacement – that means you get your microphone and let’s say you want to record a kick, you get your mic and you tell the drummer to just play the kick, it doesn’t even have to be a kick, he can tap his foot on the floor, the important thing is to record those transients and then when you record that you import that file in your daw and you replace those transients with a drum sample, so each time a transient appers it will be replaced with a sample that you choose. There are some free drum triggers here: https://www.drumwerks.com/drum-replacement-plugins/
Now obviously that would take 100000 years because you have 1 mic and it would take forever to record the whole drum. This would be a great option if you have an interface with 8 inputs and you have 8 mics.
– Programming the drums – The absolute best one is Superior drummer 3. You can literally do anything with that and it sounds amazing. The downside is that it costs over 300$ and it has over 250gb of samples. Good news is that there is a great free drum vst that you can download and it’s called MT Power Drumkit 2 (https://www.powerdrumkit.com/). I use it all the time. It really sounds great for a free vst. The only downside is that is sounds metal, meaning that if you wanted to record a slow, soft chillout song those drums wouldn’t really work because they sound heavy. But if you only want to record rock or metal then it’s perfect. It will take some time to learn how to program those drums (it’s not really programing, it just drawing the notes on the piano roll) but it’s not really hard. It just takes more time to do it than to record it.
So in summary what you can do is this:
1. Buy an interface and record the guitars and bass through di with amp simulators, program the drums and have no vocals (cost 100-150€)
2. Buy an interface, a microphone and a pop filter and record guitars and bass with a mic and program the drums and record the vocals (i don’t recommend doing the drum replacement with only 1 mic and 1 input, only when you have more mics and more inputs) (cost around 260€, pop filter is less than 10$)
also 60$ for reaper if you choose to buy it so in total you would need to spend around 300€ or 350$ to do it.
1. Buy an interface and record the guitars and bass through di with amp simulators, program the drums and have no vocals (cost 100-150€)
2. Buy an interface, a microphone and a pop filter and record guitars and bass with a mic and program the drums and record the vocals (i don’t recommend doing the drum replacement with only 1 mic and 1 input, only when you have more mics and more inputs) (cost around 260€, pop filter is less than 10$)
also 60$ for reaper if you choose to buy it so in total you would need to spend around 300€ or 350$ to do it.
I don’t think anyone has mentioned this, but when you actually start recording, make sure you’re not recording too loud at the beginning. You can always apply gain after you record, but if you have something that’s too loud to start with, you can’t take it back without recording all over again. Just turn down the record volume to give yourself some headroom. I’ve only ever experimented with MIDI stuff, but even there, it makes a difference in the overall quality.
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