As a musician, one of the things that can most benefit you and enhance your development is to have a space in which to express your ideas and unleash your creativity. That place is the recording studio.
When deciding to set up a recording studio at home, there are plenty of options: from the most economical, i.e., equipment consisting of the basic tools to experiment, give shape to a musical idea and create your own demos; to more advanced options and for higher budgets, with which you can have an equipment capable of recording with an almost professional quality.
In other blogs, we give you a series of important advice so that your musical career gets a great impulse. Blogs like increasing your audience on Spotify or how to make your own cover art.
Before going into detail about the basic components you will need to create your home recording studio, the acoustics of the room is essential to achieve a neutral sound (without alterations in frequency). Ideally, you should seek expert advice from the professionals at Mastervibes Academy to carry out an acoustic treatment of the room.
Some things that can help you are to place carpets and panels on the walls and ceiling to absorb sound or put elements on the walls (shelves, furniture …) to prevent them from being parallel.
1- A COMPUTER
It doesn’t matter what computer you have, since within your budget you can fit an infinite number of brands and types, the only essential thing is that the computer has a powerful RAM memory, since it will be the central brain of our home recording studio. From there, everything is a matter of taste and needs, although an important point to consider is whether you choose desktop or laptop, which offers fewer features but has the advantage that you can take your projects wherever you want.
2- A DAW
The DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) is the software you will need to have on your computer to record, edit, mix or do all kinds of arrangements on your music. Some of the most recommended are Fl Studio, ProTools, Ableton, Cubase and Studio One. In the end, it’s not so much the program that matters, but what you do with it, so choose the one you find most practical and easy to use.
3- THE AUDIO INTERFACE
Necessary to manage the inputs and outputs of the computer, as well as to process the sound, this hardware will be in charge of converting the acoustic/analog sounds into a digital signal and vice versa. As with everything, in interfaces you also have options and ranges to choose from, but don’t go crazy… This is a home recording studio, not a professional one, so a 2-channel interface will suffice.
4- HEADPHONES/STUDIO MONITORS
You need to hear the sound you record, studio monitors are essential in your home recording studio. With them we will carry out the sound monitoring, so it is important that, when choosing them, you take into account the dimensions of the room and the position in which we are going to place them with respect to us so that the frequency response is as flat as possible.
If you are on a tight budget, you can opt for studio headphones which, although they are not as accurate as monitors, have significant advantages if the studio is not soundproofed.
5- MICROPHONE
The last of the basic elements to set up your home recording studio: a quality microphone that allows you to record vocals or the sound of your instruments directly from a line input. It is best to opt for a condenser microphone, nowadays there are very inexpensive, as they are perfect for recording vocals or instruments without distortion.
*PLUS*
If you are no longer a beginner and have been involved in recording studios for some time, you will probably want to go further and set up a more complete rig. In this sense, there are more components that will be of great use to you:
– MIDI keyboard: maybe, if you are a guitarist, you have your guitar; or, if you are a singer, you have your voice… but, when it comes to recording a demo or capturing an idea, you could use a bass, a drum kit, keyboards, etc. That’s what you can achieve thanks to the MIDI keyboard, which triggers sounds from a virtual sampler.
🏆Congratulations! With these basic elements you will be able to work and create music in your own home studio without spending a lot of money and with a very professional sound. In addition, on sites like Grafiksbox you can add images to your music with just a click 😛
