Define Your Studio

I first want to start this post by saying thank you to everyone for the positive feedback on the blog. I'm feeling the anticipation to get your home studio set up, so I'm going to jump right into this and start getting you ready to make sweet, sweet noise.

To start off, you need to have a general idea of what you want the primary focus to be in your studio. I figure there are two kinds of setups you could do in a small environment. The first setup would be a studio that is entirely dedicated to making electronic music. The other setup would also include full functionality to produce electronic music and sound design, but would also be suitable to record acoustic instruments, such as drums, guitar, bass, vocals...you name it. While both of these setups contain capability of electronic music production, the kind of gear you will purchase heavily depends on what aspect of production you focus on. When you go to purchase gear, you don't want to spend a ton of money on something you aren't necessarily going to need (prices can range from hundreds to thousands of dollars).

Before we go out and buy anything, we need to think "what do I plan to achieve with my at home studio?"

For me, I took the acoustic instrument route. I enabled myself to be able to record 8 channels of audio at once, including 2 DI's (talk about that later). My setup is small enough that I can travel with it and record on the go, moving from different recording spaces. I also have a synthesizer that acts as a synth as well as a MIDI controller. This gives me the option to produce digital music as well.

You, on the other hand, may not be recording any bands or acoustic instruments and just want to produce digital music. You may just be interested in a MIDI controller and some software that contains samples, loops, and digital instruments. This would be a much smaller and cheaper setup and would require a lot less gear.

What kind of studio do you want? Leave comments on this post to share at home studio ideas with others. Seeing how other people use their home studio will give us ideas on what your studio may focus on. Electronic digital production? Acoustic recording?

TTYL,
BCEB

*It's not about how fast you can pump something out, it's how efficient you can use your knowledge to create the best available product while delivering a professional experience.*