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| It looks just like a real studio |
In this day and age, you can see why people would ask this
question. Why bother spending your hard earned cash when you can go and buy
some ludicrously cheap software and track stuff yourself? We all know people
who have (ahem) illicit copies of software that us respectable types have spent
thousands of pounds on, who are willing to record for free.
Or of course, why not go the whole hog and build your own
studio? If you have the time and resources available, that’s a truly fantastic
idea, and one that I would love to do myself. I’ve got a rudimentary
understanding of treating a room, and it would probably “do”. I’d probably have
a nervous breakdown with all the woodwork involved, as I’m not a patient chap
with woodwork. Anything else I think I’m pretty cool with, but woodwork? Forget
it…
Even with a good, solid amount of treatment, you’re not
going to completely stop sound getting in and out. If you’re building your
studio in a house, then even after treating the room you’re still probably
going to have to look out for your sound leaking out and disturbing the
neighbours. Or you could have their sound leaking onto your tracks. Then
there’s the issue of building a treated area for mixing. Even if you’ve had
your room calibrated, you run the risk of disturbing other occupants, and
having to stop recording or mixing just when things are hotting up is a real
end to creativity.
All of this is moot if you have a farm somewhere, and you
can convert a barn or an out house. If this happens to be in the Dordogne, I’d
be delighted to come and help you set it up and perhaps engineer for you.
The way that things are going, it’s even easier to get hold
of some very good equipment for a fraction of what it used to cost. You don’t
*need* a huge console these days, although of course there is a time and a
place for these. Preamps and channel strips range from the easily accessible
budget options to boutique beautiful stuff you’d have to save for a few months
for. There are some very good mics out there that can be picked up for around
£150, and some that you could buy for the price of a second hand car.
Let me state this case first of all, a great engineer will
get a good sound using a cheap mic and the inbuilt preamps on a USB box. But in
a studio, you’re going to get a combination that is really hard to beat. You
will get rooms that have been properly treated and will sound good. You’ll get
some nice mics, hopefully Neumann, Telefunken, AKG, Schoeps etc. You’ll get the
more expensive boutique preamps like Neve, SSL, Avalon or Focusrite.
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| A microphone, yesterday |
“But that’s all for show isn’t it Chris?” I hear you cry in
despair. Well, no. I've written a bit about this in another blog, but the fact of
it is, it's simple. These tools are the tools used by professionals on
professionals. If you really want to get the very best sound out of your
instrument, be it guitar, voice, sax, tuba etc., then you want to have the very
best microphones pointing at it, and you want it going through a great preamp.
Besides, you’re paying for it, and who wouldn’t prefer 5* to 1*?
In larger facilities you’ll get options to use different
equipment, different drum kits, different amps. Also in larger facilities you
will get the big console, and in the top end studios you’ll get Neves or SSLs,
and you’ll incur the cost of having someone who can maintain them and who actually knows how to use them!
Wherever you go, you’ll also have an engineer who knows how
to use these and get the very best out of them.
The benefits of having an engineer with you are manifold.
They can worry about setting mics up and everything else
while you can concentrate on the important bit of getting ready to get the
tracks down.
You don’t have to worry about whether you’ve gone into
record, or worry about getting levels as they have got it all covered.
They’ll be listening to really make sure each instrument
sounds the best that it can.
They’re a good and independent set of ears, and they can act
to help you get the most of the session.
They’re also going to be keeping track of your takes.
You’ll have someone who can sort out monitor mixes for you,
so one of the band doesn’t have to stop and adjust a (real or virtual) fader.
In many cases, the engineer will take a co-production role
with you if you ask them to, and they can help, offer advice, and in some cases
they can coach.
This is a simplistic list, I do not mean to belittle the
activities of an engineer, they really can be an important but transparent
instrument in the band.
But yes. You certainly can record at home, and there’s
nothing wrong with this at all. In fact it’s brilliant that we can have such
incredible technology at our disposal. It can be such a boost to creativity.
But I don’t think it’s going to be replacing the need for a permanent full on
studio facility just yet, especially for recording live instruments.
Christian Thomas is Production Director at Space Studios. He
hates the smell of Rockwool in the morning.
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