Home recording has been a staple for a lot of musicians for many years now. As the technology has gotten better and cheaper, it’s easier than ever to record with professional quality. To the point that Grammy-winning albums are now produced at home. Case in point: Billie Eilish’s WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? Was produced completely at home in Billie’s brother Finneas O’Connell’s bedroom.
There’s quite a wide range of quality level and sophistication of course but at this point, just about anything is possible. From a simple setup of laptop, audio interface, vocal mic and some instruments to a full-blown Avid Pro Tools on a Mac Pro and super high end interfaces and mixing boards, high-end audio processors, patch bays, and built-out rooms for music recording just like a pro recording studio. The possibilities are endless.
Here’s what I have at home: A MacBook Pro, 2TB portable hard drive, Focusrite Clarett 2Pre, Lauten Audio LA220 FET Condenser Mic, Casio Privia PX-160 Piano/Controller, Sony MDR7506 Headphones, electric guitar, acoustic guitar and ukulele. It’s not the highest-end gear by any stretch but it suites me well and I’m able to record quality sounds and voice that I’m happy with.
For software, I use Apple’s Logic Pro X. I have used Pro Tools but I prefer at home to use Logic. I was pleasantly surprised to know that Finneas uses Logic for all of Billie Eilish’s recordings too! It suits me well and I’ve learned what I can do with Logic to make it sound great. Of course the professional studios mostly (but not exclusively!) use Pro Tools. Audio for film and television productions use Pro Tools as well.
There are a plethora of DAW’s (Software for audio recording is referred to as Digital Audio Workstation’s) on the market today. Steinberg’s Cubase, Adobe Audition (though that’s a lot more geared toward sound design for film and video projects), Ableton Live, Audacity, GarageBand (Logic Pro’s little sibling), REAPER, and Universal Audio has just announced LUNA to go along with their Apollo controllers and interfaces. I have only really used GarageBand, Logic Pro, Pro Tools and I’ve used Ableton just a bit. The one’s I’ve come across all have their strengths and weaknesses, and are sometimes geared toward different types of music makers. Ableton is very much geared toward the electronic music makers and DJ’s for example.
Bonstone’s ‘Zombie Heart’ was recorded at a home studio at Tom Young’s (Bonstone Guitarist) with a professional Mackie mixing board and using a Tascam 24-track digital recorder. It was mixed by myself with help from Tom and some others on my home rig using Logic Pro. ‘Weather’ was recorded almost completely all by my own self on my home rig. I have several new projects I’m working on with my home studio now. I also do a lot of demos as well.
Often I will use GarageBand on my iPad to sketch out a song idea, including drums, bass & guitar using GB’s virtual instruments, and scratch vocals with my hands-free earbuds and phone mic. I can then easily open those GarageBand projects in Logic Pro on my laptop and finish the song using real guitars/bass, a full piano keyboard and pro vocal mic for final vocals.
I’m a singer so my vocals are of course my top priority. I have a system for recording my vocals at home alone. I’ll start out taking a pass through the whole song on one track. If I don’t feel great about each line as I go, I’ll stop and start over until I have one whole take on one track of the song that I can feel good about. Then I will do that two more times so I have three complete lead vocal tracks of the song, with the best performance that I can at least tell through the headphones. Then I’ll go through the whole song line by line with the third take of the song and if I’m not 100% happy with that take, I’ll listen to the first and second take of that line and if one of those sounds better, I’ll ‘comp’ it into the third track and save the third take of that line to a new track. If I’m not happy with any of the performances of that line in the three takes, I’ll record a new take until it is what I’m happy with.
Once this process is done I’ve got my ‘comp’ lead vocal track. Comping is a common process when recording and is used by most all musicians to get that perfect take all the way through the whole song.
Now that I have my complete lead vocal track I can go back and do all the background vocals, harmonies and doubling. Recording these tracks is all dependent on the song and how much, or wether the songs needs these. Most songs I write I use at least some combination of these but sometimes just one vocal track is all you need. I also approach these tracks with the band in mind. Who’s able to sing these parts live when I’m singing the lead vocal and what is their vocal range? Will they be able to sing these parts without damaging their vocal cords? Can they sing them and play at the same time? Sometimes though it depends on what the song needs and if it’s too much for the rest of the band, we may not always need it or we get some background singers!
Home recording may not be enough for some artists and there are limitations that some may not be willing to deal with. But a lot more pro artists and working musicians are using it more and more and it’s certainly not going away anytime soon. In fact, just like anything else, it’s growing and evolving just like the music business and the tastes of the fans. And the most importantly no matter how many resources you have or how few, all that really matters is that artists can express themselves and get their music out there and that’s what I most appreciate about home recording.
