10 Home Recording Studio Tips

More and more People are building home recording studios because of the simplicity involved in recording music today. All it takes is a common home computer rigged up with a few audio hardware accessories and you've got a project sound studio worthy enough to create a demo tape, or independent music release.

Managing your home recording studio to be functional and bug free can be difficult. So here are a few tips for keeping your studio in good order and being ready for common problems.

• Always save back up files I can't stress this enough its a very basic rule, but hard drives are known to crash for no reason, and with no notice, so why take the chance.

• Listen to your track on several different stereos and in various environments, then go back to your studio and make any final adjustments to the song. It may sound good in the recording studio and then like crap in your car stereo, or portable mp3 player.

• Avoid distractions like a telephone or television in your work environment.

• If you've hit that frustrated point with software, always check the help option in the program it may seem simple but 9/10 it will solve your problem. If this doesn't solve your problem the Internet is full of discussion boards, blogs, and articles that will help you through your stressful situation.

• Always keep a bottled of cold water for the singers in the studio, and make sure its not ice water, you do not want to effect the vocal cords of your singer.

• Keep your studio clean. Being organized can help your creativity flow, and working in a mess is has been proved to have a negative impact on your productivity. The colour of your studio can play an important role in setting yourself in a creative mood for writing a track.

• Keep lots of masking tape around for labeling faders on the mixing board, and a couple of Sharpie pens these fader strips can be removed and stored for future work you may do on the track.

• Test all of your equipment before you plan to record, so that when everyones ready to jam you are not piecing together cables and trouble shooting some mysterious feedback that you cant find the source of.

• Keep plenty of extra patch cables around both long and short, you don't want to have to use a crammed recording studio because your patch cables are too short, or so long that your tripping over a nest of cables.

• Plan the layout of your studio, make your studio make sense. Have all of your sound equipment at easy access, this will entice you to be more experimental when tweaking your gear.

There are many other things that you will learn when recording and your home recording studio will gradually convert to cater to your specific production needs. So be sure to keep these tips in mind, I'm sure you will come up with many more of your own. As your studio grows you be faced with many choices on the best way to set up your gear, all I can really say is keep an open mind and remember to leave room to upgrade your sound equipment and room to add new equipment to your current set-up.