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Introduction

If you’re like most musicians, you’ve been noodling around on your instrument for a while and you’ve finally decided to take the plunge and get serious about recording your ideas. You may just want to throw a few ideas down onto tape (or hard drive) or capture those magical moments you have with your band. Or you may want to compose, record, produce, and release the next great platinum album. Either way, you’ll find that having a home studio can give you hours of satisfaction.

Well, you’ve chosen a great time to get involved in audio recording. Not long ago, you needed to go to a commercial recording studio and spend thousands of dollars if you wanted to make a decent-sounding recording. Now you can set up a first-class recording studio in your garage or spare bedroom and create music that can sound as good as that coming out of top-notch studios (that is, if you know how to use the gear).

Home Recording For Dummies, 6th Edition, is a great place to start exploring the gear and techniques you need to create great recordings (if I do say so myself). This book introduces you to home recording and helps you to get your creative ideas out into the world.

About This Book

Home Recording For Dummies not only introduces you to the technology of home recording but also presents basic multitrack recording techniques. In the pages that follow, you find out about the many types of digital recording systems available, including computer-based systems, all-in-one recorder/mixer systems (called studio-in-a-box systems), and phone and tablet recording.

You get acquainted with the basic skills you need to make high-quality recordings. These skills can save you countless hours of experimenting and searching through owner’s manuals. In this book, you discover

 The ins and outs of using the various pieces of equipment in your studio

 Tried-and-true engineering techniques, such as microphone choice and placement

 The concepts of multitracking, mixing, and mastering

 How to turn all your music into complete songs

 How to assemble and release an album

Home Recording For Dummies puts you on the fast track toward creating great-sounding recordings because it concentrates on showing you skills that you can use right away and doesn’t bother you with tons of technical jargon or useless facts.

Throughout the book, you see sidebars (text in gray boxes) and text marked with the Technical Stuff icon. Both of these are skippable — they provide interesting information, but it’s not essential to your understanding of the subject at hand.

Finally, within this book, you may note that some web addresses break across two lines of text. If you’re reading this book in print and want to visit one of these web pages, simply key in the web address exactly as it’s noted in the text, pretending as though the line break doesn’t exist. If you’re reading this as an e-book, you’ve got it easy — just click the web address to be taken directly to the web page.

Foolish Assumptions

I have to admit that when I wrote this book, I made a couple of assumptions about you, the reader. First, I assume you’re interested in recording your music (or someone else’s) in your home and not interested in reading about underwater basket-weaving (a fascinating subject, I’m sure, but not appropriate for a book entitled Home Recording For Dummies).

I assume you’ll most likely record your music using a digital hard drive recording system because these are the most common types of systems available. I also assume you’re relatively new to the recording game and not a seasoned professional. (Although if you were, you’d find that this book is a great reference for many audio engineering fundamentals.) Oh, and I assume you play a musical instrument or are at least familiar with how instruments function and how sound is produced.

Other than these things, I don’t assume you play a certain type of music or that you ever intend to try to “make it” in the music business (or even that you want to treat it as a business at all). If course, if you aspire to make music your career, you’ll find the information in this book invaluable in helping you make the best sounding music possible.

Icons Used in This Book

Throughout this book, I use a few icons to help you along your way. These icons are as follows:

The Tip icon highlights expert advice and ideas that can help you to produce better recordings.

Certain techniques are important and bear repeating. The Remember icon gives you those gentle nudges to keep you on track.

Throughout the book, I include some technical background on a subject. The Technical Stuff icon shows up in those instances so that you know to brace yourself for some dense information.

The Warning icon lets you know about those instances when you could damage your equipment, your ears, or your song.

Beyond the Book

In addition to what you’re reading now, this book also comes with a free access-anywhere Cheat Sheet that gives you even more pointers on how to successfully record music in your home. To get this Cheat Sheet, simply go to www.dummies.com and search for “Home Recording For Dummies Cheat Sheet” in the Search box.

Where to Go from Here

This book is set up so that you can read it from cover to cover and progressively build on your knowledge, or you can jump around and read only those parts that interest you at the time. For instance, if you’re getting ready to record your band and you need some ideas on how to get the best sound out of your microphones, go straight to Part 2. If you’re new to this whole home recording thing and want to know what kind of gear to buy, check out Chapters 1 and 2.

For the most part, starting at Chapter 1 gets you up to speed on my way of thinking and can help you understand some of what I discuss in later chapters.