Recording and Audiostuff #1 - Happy new year to all of you!

Hello Steemians!

I hope you a great holiday celebration and enjoyment.

I have been rather busy with other things and haven't been too present lately, so I intend to change that right now ;)

As some of you know I am a singer songwriter and I work out of my own home studio. The road getting here has been long and very interesting, and it has brought me a lot of enjoyment as well as a lot of trial and error.

A couple weeks a go the great @chaifm replied to a reply I made on one of her songwriters challenge entries, this one to be more specific:

https://steemit.com/openmic/@chaifm/open-mic-songwriters-week-5-or-wind-swept-shores

She suggested that I made some posts about my studio, and about recording, Ableton live, and mistakes and achievements from which I have learned, and I thought that was a great Idea, so here is the first one of many!

This is meant for musicians who don't know much about recording, or people who aren't satisfied with the quality of sound they are getting from their equipment (Hallo @miguelarl ;-)

Recording...... well, one thing is for sure, it is way easier now than it was 20 years ago, back then you had to own really big and expensive pieces of equipment and/or get someone on a professional studio to mentor you to really learn the trade. Now a mentor-ship would help immensely now, of course, but it is not strictly necessary.

Today you can get a couple of pieces of inexpensive equipment and learn how to use them well enough to be able to record, mix and master you own music. This is almost magical to me. people like Skrillex made their way into the mainstream with little more than a computer, a midi keyboard and great ideas.

So... you are a musician, you write songs that "bewitch the mind and ensnare the senses" of those who listen, and suddenly you realize that it would be great to have your songs recorded but you have no money at all, and you have no Idea on how to record or mix something, you don't know the first thing about recording equipment, but you want to learn.... been there, done that, which is why I'm here to help.

Let's start at the beginning, to make a recording you need:

A microphone:

It can be the most expensive one, or the cheapest one there is, if you are reading this and don't know about recording, we'll assume the latter.

An Audio interface

You will need a preamplifier and a analog to digital converter, or in none-geek speak, an audio Interface, if this seems like some weird language, don't worry, it isn't too complicated, basically any audio interface does both things.

A computer:

Doesn't have to be the most expensive one, you just need something that runs smoothly. more current ones will make things easier down the line.

A DAW (or Digital audio workstation or the app you use to get the music in the computer)

Some software like Protools, or Cubase or Logic pro (if you own a mac). There is great variety from which to choose from, I currently use Presonus' Studio One, Ableton Live and Reaper (this is a really cheap and solid piece of software).

It is really important to note that on this day and age, what software you use doesn't really matter regarding audio quality, it only matters how well you know the software and if you will share the recording and mixing project with someone else, especially in the beginning.

A pair of headphones:

Ideally some flat response headphones would be nice, but you can manage with almost anything you have within reach (apple earbuds work for recording as we have seen on many videos here on Steemit, but I wouldn't recommend them for mixing).

These days there are so many options for every single piece of equipment, I would argue that you should just pick a bundle and start, I prefer focusrite's bundles in general, they come with everything you need, everything but the computer, plus they giveaway great plugins every month to anyone who own their gear and registers it on their site!

This post is meant only to make sure you understand what equipment is needed to make a recording, from what I've heard there are many people interested in getting better at recording and getting a better audio quality from their recordings. This doesn't stop here, I will be writing many more post about these topics, if you have any question about this, feel free to ask away, next post won't be as long, this one is way too long! :-P

Lastly, 9gag taught me Long post = potato sooooo......

Till my next post!!