I am very conscious of budget constraints, so my list of advice is made with the goal of getting the best result with the lowest budget, without compromising on quality.
You could probably spend 10 times more to get better “gear”, just to end up with a 5% better sound. Is it really worth? I don’t think so. You can certainly bridge that 5% gap just by improving your technique and following some tips.
SOFTWARE
To record professional sounding tracks, you will need a pice of software called DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). There are plenty of options in the market, but the best one are Logic Pro (Apple) and Pro-Tools (Avid). You could probably find something cheaper, but my recommendation is to invest a little bit more: you will end up using the software for a very long time, and you won’t have to upgrade later and spend more time and money in several purchases.
For what concerns the examples that you will find on this website, they are made in Logic, simply because it’s the software I use and know better; but you can transfer the principles to another platform quite easily.
HARDWARE
As minimum, you will need:
a laptop/desktop computer, a microphone, an audio interface and a room with as little noise as possible. Also, a couple of monitor speakers &/or a good pair of headphones. In addition, if you plan to record keyboards or trigger synths-sounds, you might need a usb-keyboard or a midi-controller.
My suggestions:
- computer: if you can afford it, go for a Mac, it’s well worth the money. Otherwise you can use any other manufacturer. The cheapest solution is probably to use your existing machine! If you are on a budget go second-hand. But don’t get too old models, you need some decent RAM size and a good processor to cope withe the DAW. Even with a tiny laptop like the Macbook Air 11” you can achieve impressive results, because the RAM and processor are so powerful that can run Logic easily. I recorded many pieces on such a device with no problems at all, the super flash hard drive made everything run smoothly.
Please go to the next post to read more about microphones and audio interfaces.
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