As my guitar weeps but my speakers bleed.
It was 6:45 in the morning, the sun was about to wake up the sleeping side of the world. But Jack’s mind was already on to something extraordinary that had kept him awake all night. A standard four by four groove was playing in a loop precisely at 114 BPM as he played a D/F# ending with a D power chord in the open position. He had been working on “Hotwire” for a few days, and he now had everything that he needed, a meaty riff, perfect lyrics, a mind-blowing chorus which he couldn’t stop singing himself. The melody was serene to Jack’s ears as is the first morning of the Spring after the long cold winter. Today, the world would witness the greatest song ever written in the history of Rock, the “monster-mammoth jam” as Jack Black would put it, he thought.
As he replayed the last chorus on his iPhone and iRig 2, the next step was to get everything recorded in Garageband, which he had downloaded from the App Store quite recently. YouTube was his mentor, and Jack was no ordinary disciple. It had taught him everything he knew about Guitars, AC/DC and Aerosmith. He had watched all the 87 videos from “Garage Band for Newbies” with utmost attention scribbling his notepad with a sharp pencil, sometimes even circling the things which seemed to make a world of difference in recording. It wasn’t Jack’s first rodeo in writing songs; there were at least six amazing songs in his iPhone’s Voice Memos which meant the world to him. He had even played them live a more than a few times. Despite, he was a bit nervous as Hotwire would be his first professionally recorded song. He quickly mapped the audio interface inputs to appropriate channels in Garageband, set up the line level such that it was all green and barely touching yellow. Four hours and twenty minutes later, twelve vibrantly colored tracks were shining through his bloodshot eyes which hadn’t blinked away from his monitor for a second. He quickly arranged the tracks, fixed the smallest timing issues, cranked up the bass and mids, even ran Auto-EQ and repeated the process multiple times until it sounded great through his Beats headphones. It was the time for the showdown. He quickly uploaded the final mix on Sound Cloud and Whatsapped the link to those he believed shared the same creative psyche.
World’s best creations demand appreciation merely not by its creator but by its beholders.
Hotwire was no different in nature. Minutes later, his WhatsApp buzzed, and again, and again. Anxiously, he opened the messages and slowly his face turned from Red to Black. As he read them one by one—
Jeane — Dude, hotwire solo ain’t hot, didn’t come out that well.
Jack — I think I need the new classic distortion pedal, or may be its the amp.
Mike — Its good but vocals sound flat, you sound way better when you sing live.
Jack — I knew I should have bought the Shure SM-57 instead of this cheap Chinese mic.
Hold on a second; this Jack dude sounds just like me! If that’s what you have been thinking all along, let me surprise you by saying, Jack indeed is you.
As artists, we all spend most of our time with our gear, let it be tweaking guitar patches, fixing noisy cables or choosing the best DAW and one thing we would all agree upon is that, it takes a lot of time. Getting it all right can be painful, time-consuming and at times frustrating.
Simplicity is often a deceiving perception of things which are hardest to follow.
And setting up your home recording studio is a great example. It involves making many important decisions during which, you face numerous questions like do I need a DI box with effects processor or will a condenser mic make me sound better. Plethora of similar discussions and issues can be found all over the Internet dating as far back as 2007 when the world saw the first iPhone. Things have changed drastically as the technology which was once locked in big studios on Abbey Road is now available at affordable prices without wrecking your bank account. However, it has only brought more chaos when it comes to setting up a studio as making decisions is even more complicated.
In the beginning, was my strat, an amp with a tape and mic and that was my studio.
One example is the advent of Multi Effects Pedals like my Pod HD 500X, which models various guitar amps and effects in a single unit without you needing to buy individual analog pedals. If you start asking around, you’ll be surprised that even today, many of us debate over the ease of using MultiFX pedals vs. the “real tone” of analogs. And don’t even get me started on Virtual instruments like Guitar Rig, which model the amps and effects in software on your computer. Nerds might say that those are the best because they can control it on Mac. And that’s just the effects! There are a plenty of posts on the web, both old and new which discuss various prospects in picking studio gear. They are great and provide vital information in general. However, you can’t just buy everything because everything costs money and you probably don’t need everything.
I recently upgraded my home studio, and I want to share my encounters and adventures in this series. If you haven’t read the excellent posts by Bryan from http://ehomerecordingstudio.com, go through them for sure as they will help you understand what goes on inside a studio. In this series, I won’t discuss things like how condenser microphones are different than dynamic ones or how sound signal flows because I don’t intend to write just another guide on “How to set up your home studio?”. Rather, I want to make your journey as fluid as possible by:
- Proactively sharing the mistakes that I did.
- Helping you find rationale when you get that urge to spend $$$ on new gear just because you don’t sound great with your existing setup
- Fixing issues when your gear cracks out and produces sounds that it’s not supposed to (pun intended)
- And some more reasons that we will uncover together :)
Stay tuned…
