Building a Home Studio
1. Room Treatment
The key to putting together a great home studio starts with making sure that the space you are using is acoustically treated.
If you’re starting out and are unsure on where to start with treating your room it can be confusing and overwhelming. You might also be working with a smaller budget. That is all fine!
Treating your room shouldn't be about spending the most money on "high end" products. In fact, most of those materials can be found in your local home improvement and fabric stores.
Room treatment isn't sound proofing. Room treating is about combining sound absorbing materials and reflection surfaces to produce a consistent frequency response throughout the entire room.
2. What is your studio's main focus?
This is the main question we should be asking ourselves before we start adding gear to our home studio.
When I first started out on this musical journey, I wanted to be able to record, mix, and master. So I designed my space to incorporate all of those services and built my budget on gear based on those services that I wanted to provide.
Now, I'm actually in a smaller room and I don't need a bunch of recording equipment like I did before. So I sold all of it and kept only what I needed and what I knew I would benefit from
Plan out what you want to offer and then create a budget that will support those needs.
3. Choosing the best Audio Interface for you
Not sure which audio interface is right for you?
Your audio interface is the central nervous system of the entire studio. Audio interfaces were specifically designed with the home studio in mind. These interfaces contain microphone preamps, line inputs for instruments, monitor outputs, and most importantly, convertors. These convertors allow the recorded audio to be converted digitally to record inside our recording software and then convert the audio back to analog so that we can hear it through monitors or headphones.
One of the biggest things you will need to know when deciding on which audio interface to buy is how many tracks you want to record at the same time.
And of course your budget will play a big factor in which interface is right for you.
4. What Mics to Start with
It's not what you have, it's how you use it.
The best way to pick a microphone is to know what type you need. There are three basic types of mics: Condenser, Dynamic, and Ribbon.
Having a great all-around mic is ideal when first starting your home studio. A dynamic mic like an SM57 is perfect for recording ANYTHING.
Once you start adding mics to your collections, it’s good to incorporate different sounding mics to add variety. There are many types of mics that can produce bright or darker tones. Here are some of my choices for those looking to start their mic collection at a budget level.
5. Get Great Sounding Recordings from Your Home Studio
Did you know you can produce the same hit records you hear on major streaming platforms? You can, and I've done it!
The first album that I ever produced, engineered, mixed, and mastered was a home studio recording. All of the tracking was done with mics that I've already recommended and an 8 track audio interface that is actually not even in production anymore.
My studio was a bedroom. My drum tracking room was the closet. Which also doubled as a vocal booth. Everything else was in the open room. I used blankets, rugs, comforters, and sleeping bags as room treatment.
That album now has over 160,000 streams on Spotify alone. So, are you ready to get your music out there for the world to hear? Let's go!
