By Charles Pyron
Stellar Media Sound Engineer

Let’s say that you are an aspiring musician. You’ve spent a few years learning how to play an instrument, a guitar for example, and you are starting to get creative with writing your own songs. After a couple of open mike performances at the local coffee shop, you start to feel that the next logical step to your growth as a musician is to create a recording of your songs. This is not only so you can share them with more than just friends, family, and the 10 other aspiring, over-caffeinated songwriters at the open mike, but also so you can have an archive or a way to remember the song in case you take a break from playing it. However, you don’t quite feel like shelling out hundreds of bucks to record in some intimidating, high-pressure studio with a producer who keeps looking at his watch.

Fortunately, new recording technology has made it possible to produce recordings from home that far surpass the song productions created with cassette tape four-track recording devices, productions once considered the epitome of what the novice recording engineer on a budget could achieve. In fact, depending on how serious you want to get with creating a home recording studio, you may be able to do away with the need or desire to go into a professional studio all together. So with the budget-minded musician in mind, here are a few tips to help you get started recording your song creations:

1. With relatively cheap software, your office or bedroom can be turned into a multi-track studio.

There are hundreds of different programs out there for recording music on both Macs and PC’s, with prices ranging from $50 to $5000 or more. For beginners, software in the lower price range will probably have more than enough capabilities to produce a decent sounding demo with a relatively easy learning curve. A program such as Steinberg Sequel Music Creation and Performance Software ($99.95, www.sequel-music.net) offers recording, editing, and mixing tools along with thousands of audio loops and effects to enhance your sound.

Most software gives you the ability to record with a limitless number of tracks, which you can combine with audio loops so that your computer becomes your backup band. So a song that might originally consist of a guitar with vocals can now have a lead guitar track, a couple of backup harmony vocal tracks, and some bass guitar all combined with an audio drum loop to give the song a groove (also drum loops are more fun to use when trying to keep a tempo than a metronome). The possibilities are virtually limitless.

Another key factor to keep in mind when recording into a computer, as opposed to something like a four-track is, besides giving you almost a limitless number of tracks to work with, computer software allows you to edit and mix your songs so that they can easily be exported to burn on a CD or post on your myspace page. Making sure that all of the tracks you recorded are properly mixed together is a very important part of the recording process that takes time and practice, even with a computer. However, once the song sounds close to the way you feel it should sound, it can be released online for the world to hear with just a few clicks.

2. To record your song into your computer, a small investment in a nice microphone and mixer is necessary.

Microphones also vary in price range and will require a little time and research to figure out which is best suited for you. In a nutshell, the two most popular types of microphones are dynamic microphones (which are basically the common hand-held microphone you would see at an open mic) and condenser microphones (which you are more likely to find in a recording studio and come in a wide array of shapes and sizes). Without diving into the technical differences between the microphones, condenser microphones are best suited for recording because they produce less noise than a dynamic microphone and pickup a wider range of frequencies. However, condenser microphones require an electrical charge to work and this comes from what is known as phantom power. Phantom power is a small electrical charge that runs through the microphone (XLR) cable from a mixer to a condenser microphone, which brings us to mixers.

There are many ways to send sound into your computer. For a few hundred bucks you can purchase a mixer or a computer audio interface that has USB or Firewire connection capabilities and is generally easy to set up. A computer audio interface is similar to a mixer but can only be used to record sound into a computer. A mixer on the other hand can be used in live settings as well as for recording. The advantage of a interface is that it is usually collaborated with a specific software program so that the two work together.

3. Learning how to produce a quality home recording takes time and practice.

If there’s one thing an aspiring home recording engineer needs to understand is that recording music, whether it be from home or from a million dollar professional studio, is not an exact science. Rather, it is an art that takes time, practice, and a willingness to experiment. Even without top of the line studio equipment, you can produce surprisingly good recordings by compensating with creativity. For example, a walk-in closet full of clothes makes for a decent vocal booth as the clothes will add insulation to dampen exterior sounds. Or if you’d like some natural reverb, you could try recording in a tiled bathroom.

If your creativity starts to feel strained or you’re not getting quite the sound you want, there are countless online forums and articles on home recording and they serve as an excellent source for beginners and experts alike to learn about different methods and tools to use for recording. One good place to start is on the Harmony Central website (www.harmonycentral.com), which features articles and forums on practically anything that relates to music.

Hopefully these tips will help get you on your way to becoming a home recording engineer. With some hard work and creativity, maybe you’re songs will take off and become a hit on myspace. Perhaps one day those open mike nights at the coffee shop will become sold-out arenas.