How I set up my home recording studio

It was easier than I thought

While we are all stuck at home, facing a pandemic emergency we didn’t anticipate, we can still be very productive in terms of songwriting and recording.
On top of preventing us from getting crazy, depressed, or bored, these activities are also very safe, as any artist can engage in them without leaving home nor meeting other people.
However, while songwriting is quite straightforward for…well, songwriters, it can be pretty challenging to record your music at home, unless you have some sound engineering notions.

In this article, I am going to share my home recording experience with you, hoping that my trial and error process will somehow be useful to other artists.
Before I get to the juice, I should warn you: I still prefer to record my songs in professional studios, where the acoustics are great and the sound people know what they’re doing. However, I find it extremely useful to be able to sketch out ideas and arrangements in my home studio. It saves so much time when I get to do the actual recording, plus it gives me way more opportunities to create content for my listeners. For example, I have recorded a few secret tracks to give out for free to my mailing list subscribers and I was pretty proud of the result. I have also used my home studio to record cover videos for my YouTube channel, raising the bar on the quality of my work.
So, if you are a singer and songwriter or a musician who would like to start recording ideas and tracks at home, without having a clue on how to do that, you’re in the right place! Here’s a little guide for you.

Please note, there are some affiliate links in the article, but they are properly indicated.

Photo by Paulette Wooten on Unsplash

How does your room sound?

Unfortunately, there is no expensive gear, nor any mixing trick, that will make your track sound good if your room has bad acoustics.

If you use a microphone to record vocals or acoustic instruments, you must make sure you are not capturing unwanted noises coming from the outside. Secondly, you will also need to reduce reflection, a phenomenon that takes place each time a sound wave hits a surface (like a bare…