This is a continuation of the information I shared in the last blog, "The Beginning". The guys aren't here to record today so it's just little ol' me on Ustream showing you how a basic home studio is structured. Below the video is the rest of the list of stuff you will need for your studio:
Video streaming by Ustream
-Monitors: Monitors are built specifically for "monitoring" sound in a studio. There are specific effects in music that you will hear much more clearly in monitors that you may not even hear at all in speakers or in amps. Good monitors on the low side run about $200 each (mine are KRK Rocket 5 monitors and they ran about $170).
-Pop Filter: Probably one of the cheapest pieces of equip that you'll buy for a studio, but it's built to do two things:
- It eliminates "popping" sounds from fast-moving sound waves caused by your voice that impact the mic and distort the recording. The material/pockets in the filter "break up" the air molecules caused by the sound wave before it hits the mic (for the other ladies out there, it's like a hair dryer with a diffuser... it protects your hair from direct heat produced by the dryer by "breaking it up" before it reaches your hair).
- It protects the mic from spitting...
-Studio Headphones: The savior from what I call "double sound". Monitors (if they're in the same room as the mic) must be turned all the way down or off during a recording, because if your monitors are turned up while recording, the condenser mic will pick up the sound coming from the monitors and record it into the audio track, then the audio track plays it back into the monitors, then it gets picked up again, and the cycle continues infinitely, causing what's called "feedback". So, headphones allow you to hear the recording and instrumentals while recording without having the monitors. Of course this is one of the main reasons why studios have a separate sound booth and control room. Good quality studio headphones start at about $100.
-Cork: As you see the room I have my studio in has NO cork whatsoever (and no carpet), which makes it by the far the least ideal setting for a studio, but I'll get that fixed soon. This is where the physics of "sound" come into play. When you have hard walls and hard floors, sound that is produced in that room is like throwing a beach ball anywhere in the room; it bounces back. Sound waves bounce back and forth continuously at a fast pace and the mic picks it up, causing that "reverb" or "echoey" sound. However, when floors have carpet and walls have a softer surface (cork, or egg cartons), those sound waves get absorbed by those soft surfaces, which makes them less likely to bounce back, as a beach ball being thrown on a bed. That gives you a "dryer" sound, which is what you want! Your best bet is to get a bulk of cork from home depot or like the roll below.
-Cables: Cables, obviously, connect all the devices to each other. There are different types of cables so I explained some of them and how they are used in my Ustream video.
Hopefully the next blog in a couple days will be our first recorded session with Yung Solomon and some of the other guys so you get to see them in action and I get to show you how all this stuff works! Make sure you subscribe at the right via email or google reader to stay updated!
Streaming live video by Ustrea
No comments:
Post a Comment