A simple cheap home recording studio

Any recording engineer will tell you that the single most important piece of equipment, by far, is the microphone. If you use crummy mics they won't capture all the sound and no amount of futzing around with EQ and special effects can bring back sound you never recorded in the first place.

That said, not everybody has the same taste in mics. And not every instrument responds well in every mic! You need to get mics that favor the sound you want to make.

I randomly try recording equipment - some of it works out and some of it doesn't. I got my AKG mics when my partner Pat Sky got disgusted with the music biz and sold them to me cheap; I bought the Sennheisers because I'd been on a gig where the sound guy used them and I really liked them.

If you've done any studio recording and found a mic you like, try to get one like it.

The fact is, an awful lot of nice recordings have been made with stage mics, even the old standby Shure 57s and 58s. Just try what you've got and see if the result is satisfying.

I can't say enough good things about this program. It basically will do most of the things the very expensive programs do - I haven't used a quarter of its features. Once you've installed the Fast-track Pro software on your computer and plugged it in, it will appear in a drop-down box in the "options" of Audacity and you can select it. And when you click "record" in the Audacity program, your mic input will automatically appear in the window. That's it! No heartache! You can normalize, EQ, add effects, etc., and you can overdub. You can export as a wav file or as an mp3.

I always export the wav files and work with them in Soundforge, because it's an easier interface. Then I import them back into Audacity to do overdubs. Rinse and repeat. But you could do the whole job in Audacity if you had to.

Download Audacity

• Make sure your room is relatively soft - if you have a lot of windows, cover them with cloth or moving pads. Sound bouncing off floors and glass makes for a too-obvious "living room recording" sound.
  
  
• Make sure your cables are in good shape. Lots of my xlr cables are ok for performance but introduce static into the recording environment. It's worth buying some new ones and taking care of them. Get good ones, or they can also hum when they cross over each other. So don't let cables cross.
  
  
• Turn off the air-conditioner and heating system. You may have to unplug your refrigerator if it's too close. All those things can be heard. I have a few recordings in which you can hear my (now deceased) rooster crowing. I think it's funny but it wouldn't do for a formal recording.
  
  
• Turn off all phones!
  
  
• Experiment with mic placement. Take the time to do many tests. Sometimes moving a mic half an inch makes a difference.