Home Recording Heaven

Why does that title remind me of some war slogan or other?

Anyway, the topic of today post is my increasing interest in what is crappily termed 'home recording', music recording that is of course. Also betterly termed 'small studio' recording. I have been doing a bit of this for a while. I am sure you all remember my last album which was recorded in its entirety in the room from which I write this post. Frankly, it showed it! The recording was full of noise meaning that anything above two tracks on the same song began to sound very hissey and cluttered. Well now that I have a super new microphone with extremely low noise levels my recording are starting to sound like something you might even let your family hear. Now I just have sort out that damn crackely guitar lead that I bought. You don't know how many guitars I have taken apart and checked over to find the source of an irritating crackely hum through my amplifier. If I was to tell you it was two would you be impressed? Well it was. It's rather more obvious when a guitar you don't expect to sound horrible, does.

This sudden rush in my enthusiasm has been precipitated by that most wonderful of old age traditions, a book. Yes, after having sampled various literature and even DVDs on the aforementioned subject and mostly coming across tips for those who actually know how to mic a drum kit and the difference in frequency response between condenser and dynamic microphones. Finally however I found (once again in a library) the perfect book 'Recording Techniques For Small Studios' a really great book for the basics and ways of experimenting. So expect the next album to sound a hell of a lot better!

The picture is one of the first I took with my digital camera of a guitar that I had recently bought. It still is not quite functioning properly but should be soon and looks really cool in the picture. It's amazing what a little light will do winking of shiney surfaces. My room is starting to look less like a guitar graveyard what with dismantled parts and coffin shaped cases and more like a second hand shop/recording studio. Guitar anybody?