Tennessee Jedi wrote: ↑Mon Jan 13, 2025 9:26 am
Hey Jon
The last few years Ive really been getting into recording at home.
Im kicking myself for not exploring that part off making music sooner.
How are you recording your stuff ?
Home studio ?
Ill check out your album today
Thanks. I hope you dig it!
I recorded all of my albums in pro studios (the first two at 6 String Ranch in Austin, TX; the last three at Gizmo Recording in Silver Spring, MD).
I'd thought of getting into self-recording but upon researching the hardware and software needs and considering the necessary education and learning curve to do it well, I realized, my true musical loves are songwriting, playing, and singing, not engineering, mixing, or mastering.
So, I decided to put my time into the former and my money into paying pros for the latter.
I also understood from the start that the guys I play with otherwise are not suited for working with in the studio. The musicianship skills needed to excel in the studio are in a class by themselves.
My modus operandi is to do all of the singing, and almost all of the guitar playing, myself and hire the best possible studio pros for bass, drums, and the few guitar parts I know to be beyond my own ability.
An example of the latter are the occasional slide guitar parts on my songs, e.g., the slide guitar on the song, Caught in the Current, on Duality. I come into the studio having worked out those parts myself in advance. Then I demo them for the studio guitarist to play perfectly. (May I add, I played the lap steel parts on Inconvenient myself. I figured it was time to learn the skill!)
There are exceptions to the studio pros only, rule. For example, on the second of the two examples below, I asked two close friends to join me in the studio to lay down the Indian flute and djembe tracks. It wasn't seamless but they pulled through for me in the end. I'm quite happy with the outcomes.
I said that, moving from album 2 to album 3, I switched studios. I had several reasons for doing so.
One was that although I learned so much from my producer for the first two albums, I felt, moving forward, that I wanted to produce myself. I'm not a pro. This is my avocation. It should be a joy to do.
And so it goes.
Here's an example of the difference between the same original song of mine produced and recorded first by a professional producer, and afterwards again by me.
For the initial version, all I'm doing is singing. Everything else - everything! - is computer generated. The producer cut my guitar playing out of the track completely.
For the followup version, there is not one bit of computer generated anything. Everything you hear was played live by a musician. And you can hear my guitar parts clearly.
I love songwriting and recording my original music. It is the most fulfilling musical endeavor for me!
1st version: all the instruments are computer generated via apps and plug ins:
https://youtu.be/c5TX_2iRkLI?si=bsbglkEgLpwWT_uT
2nd version: all the instruments played live by actual musicians:
https://youtu.be/zSh8DO2IPSc?si=31OiTK4VIm_uhv2V
