More and more People are building home recording studios because of the simplicity involved in recording music today. All it takes is a common home computer rigged up with a few audio hardware accessories and you’ve got a project sound studio worthy enough to create a demo tape, or independent music release.

Managing your home recording studio to be functional and bug free can be difficult. So here are a few tips for keeping your studio in good order and being ready for common problems.

• Always save back up files I can’t stress this enough its a very basic rule, but hard drives are known to crash for no reason, and with no notice, so why take the chance.

• Listen to your track on several different stereos and in various environments, then go back to your studio and make any final adjustments to the song. It may sound good in the recording studio and then like crap in your car stereo, or portable mp3 player.

• Avoid distractions like a telephone or television in your work environment.

• If you’ve hit that frustrated point with software, always check the help option in the program it may seem simple but 9/10 it will solve your problem. If this doesn’t Continue Reading...

1. Your equalizer or spectrum meter are your best friend when it comes to producing a song. If you don’t have a spectrum meter plug-in you can cross reference your song by playing it in any music program like winamp http://www.winamp.com By analyzing the EQ and its responses. Find the frequency range that is not jumping very high and fill it with sounds of the appropriate frequency. You should also use your eq to pump these missing frequencies if they are coming in too low.

2. Do not mud up your song by putting to many sounds of the same frequency range this will not produce a desirable effect, keep your song clean sounding. Take an overview of your song and what you are using to fill these specific frequency ranges. Get rid of any sounds that are causing complications in the mix they will only make it sound worse.

3. Clearly label all of your sounds, FX, and anything that you can about the song you are writing because chances are you’ll eventually come back to it without a clue of where you left off. If you work on one song at a time sticky notes and/or masking tape for your mixer and monitor will do the trick quite nicely.

4. Save your song as new versions, as it progresses, so that if it starts sounding worse than the previous work you can go back to its basic structure and re-write it.

5. Hearing the same riffs over and over can start to numb your ears of its catchy sound. Go back to what you are working on after a nights sleep its always better to have a listen with fresh ears.

6. Keep the volume at a reasonable level while you are working in your studio and only turn it up once and a while. This will help yourself from going deaf and will help Continue Reading...

We have all heard the effect of reverb on sound, the most common example of this is when your singing in the shower, and you noticed the acoustics in your voice really stood out, or maybe the sound of a voice echoing through a canyon or stadium. Reverb is simply creating a physical atmosphere for the sound (like a virtual room).

Using reverb is essential in producing a song, In order for a drum kit to sound realistic you must give some atmosphere to the sound. Reverb is also important in adding depth to your song, by using different types of reverb you can add different depths to your mix, giving you a some dimension to your track. Reverb is also commonly applied to vocal tracks, to add a bit of interest.

Types of Reverb

There are many various examples of reverb some sound like the instrument is being played in a concert hall where as others mimic smaller spaces such as a shower stall, or a closet. The settings on a reverb effect generally go:

Wet - this is the amount of the effect being applied

Dry – this is the intitial sound before it is effected

Room size - The room size should be adjusted according to the decay time. Small room size with shorter decay, large room with longer decay. Continue Reading...