The best method is to save recording cost is to have recording done at home. In fact, this is very popular nowadays and a lot of engineers prefer to work at home than using a professional studio.

This is very popular in indie music culture, such as myself an independent recording producer. Learning recording is sometimes a difficult and time consuming process and this is a profession for those with excellent ears, patience, music lovers and perfectionist.

After learning recording for almost 5 years, I have made this blog to share all my home recording and audio mixing tips. Before those 4 years, I studied electronics and audio engineering that gives me theoretical background. But after studying, I find it hard to practice in actual scenario because I do not have the gears, studio and room to record.

If you have this type of difficulty, this is normal, and when you plan to pursue a career in music business specializing in recording production, the only requirements are the skills. Gears will follow after that. What is the use of gears after all if you do not even know how to use it?

The very good thing of doing your own recording aside from saving a lot of money is experience and skills. Reputation will follow after that. Master the art of recording and you will have many clients.

Many noobies dreams of getting millions from the music industry without solid understanding of the business. Music industry is very broad and composes of different types of professionals. Let me illustrate below to help you where do you most likely belong:

a. Artist- this is the performer and core center of the music industry, the artist is one with great voices and the ability to capture audience through their charisma. If you plan to record your own songs first by yourself because you plan to be a recording artists soon. This is extremely hard. I suggest to find a producer for you instead, so that you focus on the mastery of your talents.

b. Songwriter- this the step 1 in the music industry, the life of the industry. Without songwriters or musicians, there is no such thing marketable in music business. These type of people are rich because of their royalties but are threatened nowadays due to cut in royalty income and piracy which I feel very bad. If you are songwriter and plans to record your song, this is a correct approach because you will save cost in the recording. But you need to find the proper artist to sing the songs and maybe develop recording producer skills for you to effectively manage your recording. Read this blog because there are many tips in developing these type of skills.

c. Recording producer- this is the manager of the music production process that oversees the overall recording session. Producers are what makes the song hit. This is because, producers have great skills to spot great songs, great artist and great recordings to make it a hit. As a start a producer needs a songwriter to supply the songs, an artist to sing, and a studio to record those songs. As a great requirement for great advantage, the producer should need a studio to do the work.

d. Mixing/Recording engineer- the most technical person in the music industry, deals no art but all science. The engineer simply gets instructions from the producer what type of sounds are the output. This can be done by showing to the engineer some referenced commercial CD to get some idea of what the final mix should sound. The engineer then start recording one by one in multi track those instruments as instructed by the producer. The engineer should make sure all of those tracks are properly recorded or else, there will problems in the mixing process. After all instruments are recorded. Engineer will now start to mix the tracks which most of the information in this blog is all about. The producer will review the mix and comment if necessary.

e. Mastering engineer- the second most technical guy in music industry. The function of this engineer is to polish the mix and convert it to standard quality recordings acceptable in the industry. The CD bought in stores are master recordings, this means all the sound are properly adjusted so that it will listen very nice in all forms of audio equipment. Now this could be harder as there are different audio equipment. Mastering is simply getting the loudest volumes without ruining the mix.

f. A&R- zero technical but all subjective, these are popularly known as "attitude and rejection" but the correct meaning of this acronym is "artist and repertoire". The A&R is the responsible person for the success of the artist and the album. To get success in working with the artist, A&R works hard in finding quality artist with songs that will generate excellent return of investment in the recording company. And these persons are working in the recording labels, they will be fired in some cases when they sign artist that are not producing returns. This is very emotional and very hard for them. Sad to say A&R is very subjective in judging artist quality. I know why, because music success cannot be measured. My advice for those wanting to be A&R is to find hits first than artist. Even though a label signs the artist but customers will buy or download songs because they personally like it. And I do personally like and buy songs after I listen many times but A&R can judge artist songs in less than 1 minute and 30 seconds, is it a reliable judgment?

g. Music/ Song publishers- works very closely with recording labels and songwriter. The function of this publishers is "song plugging" a common term to give for giving fresh and marketable songs to artist to perform. In music business, publisher and a writer shares the royalty income earn from the songs.

FM stations, TV stations and paper media are not members of the music industry and do not have the heart of the musicians, it is why when they are included as factors of music business success, things will be more complicated especially for the indie musicians and artist.

This suggest that to work with the media industry is to have balls, money, connections and mouth. And major recording labels are very good at this to drive massive sales through promotions by marketing image, songs and sometimes making perception.

You read that above, it may be long but is very useful for the blog readers to decide what type of career they will choose.

 

This blog is very helpful only to songwriters wanting to record their own songs, mixing or recording engineers, mastering engineers and recording producers. Other types of business, I suggest to check my pages links for other resources. Thanks for your time!

Contact information:

February 1,2009 News update: If you like to hear my recording production works and song catalog. Please visit my music publishing site: www.musicforlicense.net. Thank you!