As a commercial recording studio Crash Symphony Productions sometimes get enquiries from people with very small budgets. When they learn of our rates they can freak out! As a result, we've actually gotten really good at giving budding musicians advice on how they can start working on recording at home. You may think that this is counter-intuitive to business? Well, actually, it's not. We're going to begin a series of articles that repeats this advice that we give to those callers. We'll explain why it actually helps us all in the long run. And not for the reasons you may think. Read on to learn more about producing your own music in your own studio.
Why it helps everyone if you set up your own Studio
Here are some reasons why it helps us to give these callers advice. Firstly, the more you know about music production the easier it is to communicate with engineers and music producers that may one day help you. This helps get the results that you want in the studio. Of course, we do our best to communicate in layman's terms but when someone requests 'echo', and what they really want is reverb, it gets tough. Secondly, when musicians have a chance to record at home it helps them work out what they really want on their recording. People who are new to recording often have no idea about the process, no idea how to communicate what they want, and no understanding of how long the process can take. Thirdly, if a musician is able to work on their own music at home it gives them a chance to take the project as far as they can. When they do get to a point where they need professional help they are more aware of exactly what it is that we can do to help them.
About Logic Pro X
The first thing we begin with is the DAW or Digital Audio Workstation. This is where all the action happens inside your computer. It's the program where you record your audio. Think of it as your canvas. For many people out there this is really obvious, but some people don't even know about these programs. Our Sydn studio, Crash Symphony Productions, works predominantly in Logic Pro X. This is a program that is now exclusively an Apple program. It's extremely cheap and you get a huge amount of bang-for-the-buck. It's a big program, too. The reality is that most engineers and producers won't even use all the functionality that Logic Pro X offers. The key is to learn about what you want to achieve and aim for that. There's a mammoth amount of learning material on YouTube. You'll never have a problem learning how to do something.
About Pro Tools
The next big program that our studio owns is Pro Tools. This was one of the first audio production programs. It is found in almost all the large recording studios because they adopted this program very early when studio recording changed over from analogue tape to digital recording. There's no doubt that Pro Tools is a powerful program. We find that we only use it when we are working with UK or American film companies. They send us big Pro Tools Projects and then we record the actors into those projects and send them back. We wouldn't recommend people who are starting out building their own Recording Studio to invest in this program. Support for the software is expensive and difficult to get, it's an expensive program for what it offers, and it is hard to learn. Logic Pro X blows it out of the water!
About Ableton Live
The last big player that we'll talk about is Ableton Live. This is a seriously strong contender for your first DAW. It all depends on your genre of music. If you're into electronic, hip-hop, or other "In-the-Box" styles of music then this could be the program for you. We have found that a lot of young producers who create this type of music are using this program. So many in fact that we were forced to purchase the program for our recording studio. One of our young-gun producers, Adam, is a guru in this program and so we found that he uses it a lot, too.
There are other great programs out there that are useful like Cubase and Reaper, and many more. However, one of the great things about recording on computer is being able to take the project around to different studios, track some content directly into your project, and then bring it home. If you choose a more obscure program as your DAW it becomes more difficult to do this. Our clients, who use logic, can send us the Logic Pro X projects. We can open these up just as they are on their home computer and continue working on the project. If they want us to mix or master it's a lot easier when there is some kind of DAW compatibility between your home studio and the commercial recording studio. There's no doubt that there are ways around this issue if it becomes a hurdle. However, the workflow is a lot better for all when we can open up your project the way it was in your bedroom.
Next, we're going to look at what you might need to record into your DAW in your Sydney Recording Studio.
WEBSITE: https://www.crashsymphony.com.au/
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For more information about our Sydney Recording Studio contact info@crashsymphony.com.au or call 02 9953 7686.