DIY Music Production

Why spend money to do the recording at the professional studio when you can do it at home? Can you produce a good quality work when the professional studio charge you hourly rate? How wonderful if you can do the recording at home anytime you like? Let’s see how can this happen. It is not as difficult as you thought.

Today’s recording relied heavily on the computer software; therefore, you need to have a decent computer to assist you. If you are not a tech savvy, get the computer support specialist to wire up everything for you properly. The computer should equip with a sound card with midi in/out port.

Music editing software or some call music sequencer is a must. There are number of such products in the market. For example, Acid and Cinescore from Sony and Sonar Home Studio from Cakewalk. Though, there is also free software available in the internet (Just type in free sequencer in the search engine). As in which software to use is very much depending on your needs. I personally like to use Cakewalk products.

For the input device, you can purchase a midi input device such as electronic keyboard or electone if you have the budget. Otherwise, a normal computer keyboard can also do the same thing but it is rather tedious. By the way, for a beginner, I would like to recommend a product call “Prodikeys” by Creative Technology. “Prodikeys” is the combination of music keyboard (with only 37 keys) and computer keyboard.

It is advisable for you to have a reasonably good mic. The ordinary mic that comes with the computer is not suitable for sound recording purposes. Ask the audio shop to recommend one which is commonly used for singing purpose. Having said that, you need not have a sound proof environment but do your recording in a room which is isolated in order to keep the unwanted noise to minimum (don’t let your own mobile phone ringing spoil your recording).

Once the infrastructure is up, you will need to familiarize yourself with the music editing software before everything else. Don’t start to figure out how to use the software only when you are into the actual  music   production . Reason being, learning to use the software can be time consuming. The frustration in the learning process may kill your creativity at that time.

There are some important things to note when you plan for your music arrangement (for example, the number of tracks and what instrument to use). As further amendment and enhancement will surely be carried out by the recording company, don’t make your music too complicated. It is more important that you are able to demonstrate the uniqueness and the feel of your music. Your music must be able to “read” and hence “understood” by the music producers. I would recommend that you share your music with your friends and relatives in order to get their opinion and feedback, regardless whether they are music literate or not.

Music editing software allows you to create your music in number of formats. For sure, you wouldn’t want to upload a wave file format to your website for sharing purpose. Just burn your file into the most commonly used MP3 or WMA format which has a smaller file size and yet reasonably good sound quality.

Enjoy your recording and see you again.