I believe there are many reasons for people to record their music. The legacy of one's talent will live on long beyond the composer or performer. My own father passed away nearly 20 years ago and I only have a few recordings of his music and no recordings of his voice, which I wish I had to listen to and pass along to my children.
It is the purpose of this article to help you capture the sound and quality that you've probably been striving towards for perhaps a very long time. There're so many facets involved in a good recording, it'll be the purpose of this article to help you discover ways and techniques to greatly improve your recordings overall. This article will primarily cover room acoustics. The importance of a good sounding room cannot be over emphasized. This is one area most overlooked in 95% of all homes studio recordings and is one of the very first things I hear when evaluating home studio recordings.
The following can be really easy exercise and very enlightening procedure for you to try. Take a microphone and speak or sing with levels set properly at the distance of approximately 2 inches from your mouth. Read (or sing) and then step back from the microphone approximately 1 foot and continue reading or singing. Continue to step further away from the microphone until you're at a distance of 10 feet or more as your room allows. Listen to the sound of not just your voice, but really listen to the reflective room sound as your voice is bouncing off of the floors walls and ceiling. It is these reflections of sound into your microphone which is the very beginnings of potentially a poor sounding recording.
One of the easiest and least expensive ways to correct the small room sound is to find a quiet space within your home and completely cover all surfaces with absorbent audio acoustic foam. It is much easier later on to add digital delay and reverb then it is to remove the tone of early reflections within a bad sounding room!
Over the years I've had the option of recording in a number of different spaces, the smallest of which was a walk-in closet where I covered every surface with foam. I then used inexpensive but good sounding digital reverbs to add some natural quality ambience into the recordings. In another situation I had a larger space to work in and in that case, built a room approximately 5' x 6' which allowed more room for more vocalists and for playing guitar without feeling claustrophobic. In that room I was able to run a remote control device back to a tape deck which is really no longer required now with wireless mouse and keyboard's being the way to go.
The importance of following this step of recording within a quiet room and one free of small reflective, improper room acoustics (other than recording in a controlled environment within a real studio) will be the best, easiest and least expensive way to improve your recordings by a large margin.
For more information and to view our studio, please visit http://www.aspenleafrecording.com/
My name is Ken Dravis and enjoy my work as an audio engineer and producer in western Colorado. I work with many clients on various projects from complete production in our studio to editing, mixing and mastering work from musicians recordings in their home studios. More information can be found at: http://www.aspenleafrecording.com/
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