Building A Home or Project Recording Studio – Part 1
The world of music creation has changed dramatically over the last 30 years. And even just over the last 10 years, the tools we have allow musicians to write music, record vocals and other mic’ed instruments, mix the track, and even master the track in the comfort of their home on a laptop or desktop computer. If you have not built a home or project studio yet, you have some great options and an opportunity to build something very useful and productive to be creative.
I will break down the key requirements to build a Home or Project Recording Studio. There is no need to buy a book on how to do this as it is not as complicated as one might think. That being said, most musicians are not necessarily technical, so I will keep this article as simple as possible.
Here are some key things you need:
- Computer
- DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) Software
- Additional Software
- Audio Interface
- Headphones
- Speakers
- Microphone and Microphone Stand
- Microphone Isolation
- Cables
- Control Surface
- Keyboard and/or Drum Pads
In this multi-part article, I will initially cover the Computer and the DAW.
Computer
Let’s first talk about this one. This is probably the most important yet overlooked component of your recording studio. Once you have an environment up and running, you don’t realize that your computer is the creation, recording and playback device, as well as many other things. Be selective in choosing a computer. If you must ask your local music retailer or online retailer, that is what you should do. With the choices of Mac, PC/Windows, and Linux, you have a few options. Most music software these days are written to work on Mac and written to work on Windows. There are exceptions to that, but it is rare for the fundamental pieces you would need to write, mix, and master your song.
With Windows 10, most PCs running that operating system has been very stable, and all the fear of blue screen or system locking up or crashing while recording that perfect take is really an issue any more.
With Mac, you will be tied to the Apple ecosystem, however, you are definitely not going to be locked in when it comes to software. I will say, though, there are a lot more free software on Windows as opposed to Mac. That doesn’t preclude Mac to be a good music workstation for your recording studio. We use primarily Mac computers and one Windows computer.
DAW (Digital Audio Workstation)
The DAW is the heart of the studio, where almost everything happens in the DAW, from recording your vocals and guitar tracks, as well as writing parts in MIDI (we’ll cover this later) that you will use software instrument plugins (we’ll cover this later) to write other parts of your song. There are many choices out there, but I will list the most common ones, not necessarily in any order. Also, I will note the plugins each of these can run. This will be important in the next part in the series.
Presonus Studio One – This is quickly becoming a favorite among many people, especially those who were using Cakewalk’s Sonar which was recently discontinued. This is also available for both Windows and Mac, and runs AU and VST/VST3 plugins.
Ableton Live – This was originally a DJ tool to quickly make remixes and edits, as well as overlay some custom loops in between song transitions. Now, this has become a very popular tool for creating, and composing and mixing the song. This too is available on Windows and Mac, and runs AU and VST/VST3 plugins.
MOTU Digital Performer – This one has been around longer than most of the software mentioned in this article (since the 80s). Many musicians used this in the past, and since the last decade or so, more people writing for film and TV as well as commercials have moved to this platform or the aforementioned ProTools HD. This has been tried and true, and is great for both recording and MIDI composition. Available on Windows and Mac, and runs both AU and VST/VST3 plugins.
Avid ProTools – This (especially the HD version) is the industry standard in almost every professional recording studio, and if you write a song in ProTools, you can bring what you have done into a recording studio and pick up where you left off. You can also bring it back home, and work on what you have done in the studio. This is available for both Windows and Mac, and runs only AAX plugins.
Apple Logic Pro – This one also has been around for a while as a company out in Europe, but was acquired by Apple. Great composition tool, as well as mixing. This is only available on Mac every since Apple acquired it, and only runs AU plugins.
Steinberg Cubase – This one also has been around a long time, and it was available on the old Atari ST series computers. This also is tried and true, and has created the standard for plugins called VST (we’ll cover this later.) This is available on Windows and Mac, and only runs VST/VST3 plugins.
And many others – I am sure some of you are thinking, where is Fruity Loops Studio (aka FL Studio), Reaper, Reason, Bitwig, Ardour, GarageBand, etc? As popular as many of these are, I wanted to cover software I am familiar with as many of the artists that need work provided by our studios bring the formats mentioned above, and very rarely the ones I have missed. I have received one FruityLoops or FL Studio project in the last 19 years, as an example, which we quickly converted over to ProTools HD.
I will not, however, state that any one is better than the other. They all have their Pros and Cons, and it is up to you to decide if everything you need to do is covered, and not in the Cons. Next article we will focus only on Plugins.
