You could call many different things a home studio. Some might just put a few mics in the living room, some would build a sound proof room in the basement. I needed a way to put down my musical ideas with reasonable sound quality.
This article is not about how to achieve studio quality sound at home and record the next label for Dream Theater. This post is about songwriting and how to build a suitable home studio for it.
I compose and arrange songs for my band. For this I need to work with all the typical instruments in a rock band, such as guitar, bass, drums and keyboard. I'm in the lucky situation that I don't sing, so I don't have to write and record vocals. I get vocal tracks ready as wav files.
This is a small sample of my home recordings. Rembember, this is not a mixed and mastered studio recording, this is just the middle step of composition. (if you are interested in the final song, you can download it here)
How can you arrange a complete song, at home, all by yourself? Here comes my solution.
Goal: The main goal is to create the somgwriter's home studio
- Record guitar and bass
- Record keyboard (Line and MIDI)
- A drum sampler which sounds realistic for rock music.
- Edit the tracks in a flexible DAW application
- It should be silent, usable in the evening even if you live in a flat
- Fixed cabeling, no need to adjust connections while working
- Should take up as little space as possible
I did NOT try to accomplish the below:
- acoustic treatment (soundproof room, ect)
- create studio quality recordings
- record acoustic instruments
It is not my goal to take every possibility into consideration in this article. I just want to share a solution that works for me. This might be a good starting point for others or useful for fine-tuning your system.
Guitars
One solution could be to put a guitar amp in you room and mic it. Not only does this take up more space, it is also very loud, as you need to boost the volume on the amp to get good sound. I don't think the neighbours can handle a 100W Fender amp with volume level 6 around midnight.
The solution is to use guitar modelling software, which can emulate guitar sounds with astonishing detail. Also note, that this way you will have 10-20 guitar amps at your fingertips, when searching for the right sound.
Of course the software approach raises many practical issues. I'll discuss those in the second part of this article.Bass guitar
If a guitarist wants to record bass lines, I'm afraid he will need a bass guitar. Using a guitar and octaver effect does not provide proper sound. But bass guitar sound is not that sensitive. You can get reasonable sound by just recording the raw signal. Altough i would advise to use modelling software for bass too, to get really good sound.Keyboard
In comparison to other instruments, a keyboard can easily be connected to a computer. Using both audio and MIDI connection is advised. After that you only need to gather the right software instruments, which by itself is a whole topic, which i didn't get into very deeply myself.Drums
Drums might seem the most difficult. A real acoustic drumset is completely out of the question, because it's big, very loud and you could spend a fortune on mics, effects and a mixer to get reasonable sound from the kit. This leaves us with the option to use a drum sound module. An electronic drumset could be an option, however i found, that even that can be too loud in a flat. I chose to input drum grooves into MIDI using the mouse, and use a VST to play them back. It does work surprisingly well!Vocals
I don't record vocals, but my system could be easily used for recording vocals too. Then again, singig is quite loud, so you would need a soundproof room, or your neighbours to live far away. Often, this is the biggest challenge of all. But aside that, you just need a mic and a stand.
Computer
A stable and powerful desktop compiter is a must. Today's software can do wonders, but it requires a fast CPU and wast amounts of RAM. I would not recommend using a laptop, because you can get a more powerful desktop computer for the same price. Since the home studio is not portable, there is no point in using a laptop for it.
If we want to accomplish all the above objectives, there is serious need for a professional audio interface. For example we would like to monitor the wet signal while recording guitar, which requires extra-low latency, that only audio interfaces with ASIO driver can provide. We also need many input connection, if we don't want to spend most of our time adjusting connections for different instruments, and so killing the creative flow. DSP mixing is very important, i'll also explain in my next post.
The components - my solution
Harware:
- EMU 1616m PCI audio interface
- HP xw6400 workstation (2 x 2.66Ghz Xeon, 4GB RAM, WinXP)
- A 19" TFT monitor
- 2x Alesis M1 Active Mk2 studio monitors
- Gretsch Electromatic guitar
- Johnson bassguitar
- Roland XP-10 keyboard
Software:
- Ableton Live 8.1
- IK Multimedia Amplitube 2
- IK Multimedia Ampeg SVX
- Toontrack EZ Drummer
- Various VSTs, ect. (Reason, Grand Piano, ...)
Click on the picture for full gallery!
Choosing the DAW - what should a good DAW (Digital Audio Worstation) do?
Stability: this is one of the most important aspects, and unfortunatelly most software fails at this point. If it only freezes or throws an exception once a day, it's too much!
MIDI editor: It should be possible to create and edit drum loops with ease. Support for this is surprisingly limited, or non-intuitive. Although I could imagne, that not too many people use this kind of approach. :)
Looping: Just support looping audio clips at a sophisticated level.
Tempo changes and transpose: Be able to slow down the whole song by 10 BPM without affecting pitch, or causing any kind of sync problems. Be able to change pitch without changing tempo, on the fly.
I tried out many DAWs, and finally chose Ableton Live.
Ableton Live: very stable, even suitable for Live Act. Excellent handling of audio loops, transposing, has a tempo track, good enough MIDI editor, and many more nice features. The only thing i miss is a clip pool.
Sony ACID Music: i have worked with this DAW for a long time. Very nice app, although it has stability problems. Besides that, it had one nasty little flaw, that kept me looking for another solution. When inputting MIDI notes with the mouse, it would always default the velocity to 64. I could change it after input, but i had to do this for every single note. A huge creativity killer.
Cakewalk Sonar: I don't really remember what the problem was with this one. Stability issues I remember.
Steinberg Nuendo, Cubase: It does not support audio loops. I can't place a clip on the timeline, grab the edge and drag it to resize and loop. I found changing tempo and pitch very difficult. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
In the coming articles I'll explain some topics in detail, illustrated with examples, videos and tips. And finally a new piece of music from my recent songwriting activities in my home studio:
Further articles:
- Part 2 - Amplitube and DSP routing (coming soon)
- Part 3 - Editing drums in MIDI and creating a complete loop (coming soon)
External links
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