Home Recording Anatomy – The beginner’s guide
When The Beatles entered Abbey Road Studios (then EMI Studios) in 1962, they were confronted by the latest in state of the art recording equipment. Four Track mixing consoles and tape machines, thousands of pounds worth of microphones, compressors, fabled reverb chambers and plates, skilled engineers; these were all at their beck and call. I guess all that equipment is why they were so successful and wrote and recorded so many seminal works? Many would argue not. Hundreds of other artists recorded at Abbey Road during the Beatles’ storied 8 year run and we hardly hear about them at all.
I’ve often wondered why that might be and I think I might have figured it out.
The Beatles had the songs.
They had the things to say and knew just how to say it. They used everything at their disposal to do it, that everything just happened to be (at the time) the most state of the art facility ever created.
I have a good news though, here in the year 2023. Technology has come A LONG way. Now, so many of those tools and equipment that The Beatles, and countless other giants of music, have used to create extraordinary music are more accessible than ever. A $200 interface, $100 microphone and a laptop is all you need to create timeless music. Bon Iver’s gorgeous debut album ‘For Emma, forever ago’ is one example of this. A Shure SM57, a Digidesign Mbox, a free version of pro-tools and a beat up acoustic guitar is all he needed to go multi-platinum. The evidence keeps coming back to it being the songs that tip you over the top…
So do you have songs? Things you want to say? Come join the democratisation of music.
So What do you need? Well let’s look at the basics.
Number 1 – A source.
What do we mean by a source? Anything that makes sound that you want to record. A voice, a guitar, a piano, drums. Whatever it is- that is the source.
There are two main types of sources.
- Acoustic Sources. These are sources that make their own sounds. For example an acoustic guitar, a snare drum or the human voice.
- Electric Sources. These are sources that send electrical signals (or MIDI information) that needs to be amplified (or interpreted) to hear the sound.
Now some sources can be both. An Acoustic guitar for example might have a pickup in it that can send electrical information, but also make sound acoustically. Deciding which one (or both) you want to capture is part of the fun of recording and engineering the sound.
Number 2 – A way to capture it.
Here is where things get a little more complicated – but not by much. The way you capture it very much depends on the type of sources you are recording. An acoustic source (that makes its own sound) will need a microphone to take that sound and convert it into electrical information.
But how is this electrical information recorded? Well back in the day, the electrical signals were recorded directly onto tape. This was an often a bulky, time consuming and expensive process putting recording out of reach for many. Since the invention of digital audio recording however this has put professional results within reach.
For digital recording you then need to convert it into a form that a computer will understand. This is where an audio interface comes in. It takes a mic signal, boosts it, and converts it back and forth from the computer in 1’s and 0’s. If you have an electric source – it can convert that information as well.
An interface by itself though is a little useless – you need something to record into, and later, play back from. This is where your computer comes in. Using a piece of software called a Digital Audio Workstation (or DAW), your computer is now setup to start recording.
Number 3 – A way to hear it.
We want to hear what we have recorded right? Headphones, speakers however you prefer; these can be connected to your interface to give you playback and help you use the software to fine tune your sound. The experimentation really begins when the red recording light goes off for me. Reverbs, Delays – fun effects are all the rage as you mangle your recording into something that can often sound either much better (or much worse) than how you captured it.
In many ways it is really that simple. A song, or a story, something to capture it and something to hear it with. There are lots of microphones out there that all do different things, interfaces that have different abilities, different digital audio workstations, speakers and headphones – all at different price points. Stay tuned to bendigovinyl.com.au for some deep dives on these!
