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Joined: Aug 2005
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Journeyman
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Journeyman
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Well I need mine for my sanity. With the threat of Covid19, with the California fires nearby and an orange sky with ashes everywhere, my home studio became a welcomed escape yesterday for 9 hours.
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I agree with Notes. Yep, Bob...I am running out of time to be a studio engineer...lol
The home studio is a good place to escape but real work needs to get done in a real studio.
I find it very distracting to look at a DAW, press keys on a keyboard, and play guitar.
The last California house I lived in was outside Corona, California. The day I moved in a fire came over a mountain and was stopped across the street from my new house. Air tankers were dropping that red stuff on my car!! Red sky is scary stuff.
“Amazing! I’ll be working with Jaco Pastorius, Charlie Parker, Art Tatum, and Buddy Rich, and you’re telling me it’s not that great of a gig?
“Well…” Saint Peter, hesitated, “God’s got this girlfriend who thinks she can sing…”
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To me there is a big spectrum of what is a real studio and a home studio. I have seem real studios that are top notch, and those that are simple and basic. I have seen home studio with the same features.
If your home studio is a rascal 8 track, or a cheap laptop and some co outer speaker run everything in through a $59 berhringer mixer. (What I used to have) you might get less than a pro studio results.
If your running a top flight PC or Mac, SSD hard drives, 32 gig of ram, in a dedicated space that does have sounds for the road outside the Ice maker, the HVAC coming on, the dog barking, etc. Basic sound treatments on walls top quality studio monitors. A pristine audio interface with a nice assortment of mikes and gear. You can get a very professional result.
As everyone mentioned above skills are important. If you invest in good equipment you can close that gap. Another thing is finding the effects that work for you. Finding the software that makes the process flow.
My 2 cents worth.
HP Win 11 12 gig ram, Mac mini Sonoma with 16 gig of ram, BiaB/RB 2026, Reaper 7, Harrison Mixbus 11 , Presonus Audiobox USB96
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eddie1261
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eddie1261
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As we have had this discussion before I will add the same type of comment I have made in the past. This question can't be asked without also asking "What is your end game?" Do you need a CD out that shines like a perfect diamond so people will come to see you on your upcoming arena tour? There aren't but a few people here who are actually in that kind of situation. You don't need that level of engineering to play your favorite Hank Williams tunes down ta' the Iggles club.... If you have no distribution channels and dozens of rabid fans to buy 50,000 of your CDs, why waste all that money? I put out one CD and that was a bucket list thing for someone who was bogged down in cover bands his whole life and always thought he was the next Lennon/McCartney as a writer. Of course I am not. I am just some chump in Ohio with marginal talent and a massively inflated ego. I was happy to sell the 45-ish units I sold, and lost what to me is a a fair amount of money doing the thing. That in itself is relative, as losing a few hundred bucks on CD that really only mattered to me may not mean anything to someone with a mansion and his choice of Bentleys to drive down to where his yacht is docked. True fact is that I could have had George Martin and Geoff Emerick work on that CD and it wouldn't have been any better than it was. While the material mattered to me because they were stories of my life, real songwriters likely would have to stifle the laughter if they heard those songs.
In one of Tom Bukovac's videos he talks about doing a session and telling Bryan Sutton "I don't know. I just don't like anything I am playing." To which Sutton replied "Tom, THE SONG SUCKS!" That'd be me.
Another story involves some girl singer who recorded a CD in a friend's home studio. I did some work on it for him and happened to be at the house when she called to say she was picking up her CDs which had been delivered to the house because he wanted to hear the mastering. She came in, he popped a copy in, she listened for about 4 or 5 "A&R listens" of maybe 30 seconds on each song, shrieked "Oh my god! I SUCK!" threw the whole box of 100 CDs into a trash can and ran out crying. I don't remember if she even got out the door before we fell out of our chairs laughing. I mean she was TRULY awful. And then he told me how many takes he had her do on every song, and that those were the best of the bunch! And that started me laughing again.
So, a pro studio isn't necessarily a magic potion. You can suck for free at home or for hundreds of dollars per hour at Muscle Shoals. Inversely, you can also shine in a home studio. For free.
So yeah, for "real" bands, studios have a place. Otherwise it's a digital hole in a building into which you pour money.
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Joined: Oct 2016
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Though it is a fact that some once-busy music city studios are working to keep the lights on, it would be a mistake to say the growth of home studios is to blame. The former sysytemof production/distribution has been changed. It would be fair, though, to say that that cultural tastes, including pop culture, have changed. That could go back to Picasso, when people embraced other than "produced" art, and the artist became a public figure. (Then, too, there was the photo studio.)
Today's musicians are thought of as entrepreneurs, and expected to have commitments to social causes. We can see the taste change rendered by cell phone video. Perfection is not the standard. Being there at the scene of the content is. Home studio musicians are experimenters, explorers, hobbyists, and technocrats. Just look at the growth of home based video blogs on You Tube!As some of the posts on this thread suggest, we are not lookingat a choice between the two. Those great commercial studios might start thinking of being distribution points, as well, though.
That's what the Opry did.
Last edited by edshaw; 09/12/20 11:19 AM.
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eddie1261
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eddie1261
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You can sum a lot of this up with "Then computers and the internet happened...."
I remember when bands got 1 million dollar advances to do an album. 1 million dollars. That led to them doing things like renting castles in England to record in. That studio clock runs whether you are working or playing ping pong in the rec room.
There's no better example for me personally than my working with Rog. We live 3600 miles apart, but when I send him files he has them in minutes. He works on them and sends them back usually the next day. I critique what he did, he makes changes as needed, and sends it again. Once I like the mix he pulls out that magic dust he uses to master and then I get them back one last time. We've never met, likely will never meet, but we have a fine, respectful working relationship.
A local band here in the Cleveland area (now long disbanded) went to England to have Hugh Padgham mix an album for them. And it didn't sound any better than the ones done by the local guy they usually use. We have a studio here called Suma. That was the home base for Ken Hamann, who won gold records for his work with Grand Funk. His son Paul took over when Ken passed, and every band in the area wanted to record there because he was just that good. Sadly we lost him a few years back to cancer.
Studios will always be needed but by a different demographic than in the past. A lot of "if we could only record in a real studio with a real engineer" bands will still rent studios to take their one shot at fame and fortune, but be realistic about the odds. Think about this. There are 32 teams in the NFL. That means that for the entire male workforce, there are 32 starting QB jobs. And the odds are probably better at you getting one of those jobs than being a major force in the music business.
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One of the things that come to my mind that many pro studios have that most home studios don't have is a selection of microphones. It is very easy to get thirty to fifty thousand dollars invested in microphones alone. Some studios have a lot more than that tied up in microphones.
A new Neumann U87, which is a common vocal microphone, cost over $3000 dollars. Old vintage
Neumann microphones are so sought after the price is insane.
Rooms designed for sound, isolation booths, B3 organs and other instruments , engineers with years of experience are common conditions of good studios world wide.
There are limits on everything. Money is a real issue. Home studios address part of the money issue. They provide a condition that provides a way for many people to produce music who otherwise could never afford it. There is a place for both.
I can assure you that professional recording studios are not going away anytime soon.
Billy
Billy
“Amazing! I’ll be working with Jaco Pastorius, Charlie Parker, Art Tatum, and Buddy Rich, and you’re telling me it’s not that great of a gig?
“Well…” Saint Peter, hesitated, “God’s got this girlfriend who thinks she can sing…”
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Quality Studios make a massive investment in procuring and delivering the best possible equipment. Quality sound engineers don't just happen. Years of development and skill precedes them.
When musicians wish to take advantage of the talent set and functionality that can be provided, well, it obviously comes at a price.
Indeed, there is still a relevant and warranted place for quality studios and engineers.
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
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Platium New York  Abbey Road London  Unbelievable technology.
Last edited by Planobilly; 09/13/20 12:41 AM.
“Amazing! I’ll be working with Jaco Pastorius, Charlie Parker, Art Tatum, and Buddy Rich, and you’re telling me it’s not that great of a gig?
“Well…” Saint Peter, hesitated, “God’s got this girlfriend who thinks she can sing…”
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Unbelievable technology is right and unbelievable money too, even if you want to setup or upgrade your home studio you need only look at a music mag to see how much you can spend.
You sure can spend some serious money by just buying music equipment.
Last edited by musiclover; 09/13/20 01:05 AM.
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eddie1261
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eddie1261
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Oh, it's quite believable. It's right there to see, thus it is believable. The quality and clarity of the channel strips in Neve consoles is beyond compare. The best part of watching Sound City is seeing Dave Grohl buy the Neve board from them He STILL will not divulge what he paid for it, but he does say that the studio paid $78k for it and they gave him a very reasonable deal on it. I still watch that movie 3-4 times a year. Great stuff.
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You can sum a lot of this up with "Then computers and the internet happened...." It has come around to another predicted stage, "on demand" radio programming. Some networks are introducing smart phone and laptop apps that permit users, for little money, now, to join a club that permits them to request custom playlists from the networks' huge databases. Goes without saying that Amazon is in this hunt, too. In the mid 90's, Bill Gates announced that Microsoft's intention was to own the copyrights of all material ever produced.
Last edited by edshaw; 09/13/20 05:41 AM.
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Isn’t that what Apple Music and Spotify have been about for years? For $10 a month with Apple Music I have access to millions of songs on demand. They create weekly playlists for us and I can create one in a few seconds based on genre, song or artist. And as multi genre listeners I don’t recall ever looking for a song that wasn’t available. And since we uploaded our 400+ CD collection to iTunes years ago Apple Music has those for a reference as to our tastes in addition to our more recent listening habits. We love it.
Our albums and singles are on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Pandora and more. If interested search on Janice Merritt. Thanks! Our Videos
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Thanks for the update. I've recently been listening to NPR, so when they announced the "program" badge, I thought it was something new.
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