Advice on home music recording setup?

[LI0NSFAN]

I have been around music my whole life, my step dad and sister are both musicians. I know my stepdad spent 20k + on our in home recording studio, but my sister only spent about $1,500. I think you are going about it the right way, start small and build up. There will always be  someone that will buy your stuff you are replacing. I know my sister had a computer built for $500 just for recording and got a used board from a musician that was upgrading for $300. She got good deals on everything from connections that she made. I know that she said for her the best thing she ever did was get a studio mic. She got a Stedman C15, I will let you know that she did not pay for it because the owner of Stedman Corp is a family friend, but I have seen some of his mics go for 2-$300 online you just have to keep an eye out. When she added everything up for her cost number she did put a price of 400 on the mic so $1000 is very doable with some good deals. She did spend a little more than she wanted but she uses this to make her demos. I would say that you could get a computer custom made that is only for recording for around 2-300. Desktops are getting so outdated that you can usually piece one together cheap.

[maroonandwhite]

That FocusRite looks like it would fit the bill perfectly. I 'd rather spend and get a good one to begin with.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Hi maroonandwhite

 

Been remodeling the basement apartment of our old house, finally finished and moved my office down to the little living room. For some years had been programming with only minimal music gear in vicinity of the work computers. My old studio gear had not been used for years and collected lots of dust.  Years ago had tried to set up that old studio to be real "ergonomic" for both music and programming but there was too much crap to ergonomically pile it all in one location easy to reach without having to get up and walk to different locations in the room. The old setup wasn't particularly good for either programming, composing, tracking or mixing. There was just too much gear to "get it all in one place close enough to reach" and still have any desk space left.

 

So this latest attempt is a stripped down subset mainly for "goofing around" playing for fun, testing software and programming if I can get back interested in it. Got kinda fried crispy on programming about a year ago. I don't have ambitions to "get anything accomplished" except have some fun. If one "tries to get something done" it can turn into so much work it stops being fun any more.

 

Tried to avoid setting up so many old antiques that I can't use em without getting aggravated. First pic is a cellphone panorama and the other two are regular camera pics. The room isn't big enough to get far enough away "at the correct angle" to take a good single picture.

 

 

 

 

There are computer shelves hanging off both sides of the little desk, mac on the left and pc on the right. Both set up for dual monitors, selecting between mac or pc with the source switches on the video monitors. Wireless keyboards and mice. UPS's on a rack sitting under the desk. Made a largish "extension" lap desk you see sitting on the comp keyboard slide out drawer. When I'm real lazy can slide out the keyboard shelf, then pull out the lap desk extension propped on the keyboard shelf on the back and sitting on the arms of the office chair on the front, with a "belly cutout" so I can lean back with the keyboard shelf right up to my paunch.

 

Had used various keyboard stands over the years for club gigging, but even the most heavy duty collapsible stands are noticeably wobbly and they manage to design most of the collapsible stands to have inconvenient room for the feet and foot pedals. So a long time ago built that plywood box to stack keyboards on. Solid as a rock, and if a keyboard doesn't wobble, solid as a grand piano or hammond organ, keyboards "feel better" and are more playable. But til recently it was painted black epoxy and didn't have that speaker shelf, because would typically have multiple keyboards tiered up. I prefer at least 2 keyboards available (people gots two hands, ya know), but decided that adding a speaker shelf would be ergonomic. Glued & bolted 2X6 lumber to the sides of the box and across, and mounted a 6 foot wide, 12 inch deep white melamine speaker shelf on the top 2X6. Painted the old thing white to match the room. Feels real solid. Can pound on the 88's and the speakers don't wobble on the shelf. Speakers exactly at ear level.

 

There is enough vertical and horizontal space to later-on add another 61 key keyboard on top of the 88's, under the speaker shelf. Its been 15 years since last buying a new keyboard. Might decide to put one of my other old keyboards in there, or might add a new 61 key workstation if can decide on one that seems worth the money. If I buy one, most likely either a 61 key Roland Fantom G, Korg Kronos X, or Yamaha Motif XF. All three can be had in 61, 73, or 88 key versions, with identical electronics except size of box and number of keys. That old Yamaha KX-88 keyboard controller in the picture is probably 26 years old and it still works perfectly and the keys feel great. Plug the MIDI out into a 61 key workstation for music that feels better on weighted 88's. And only a 61 key gadget would fit on-top of the 88's and under the shelf. Some tracks feel better on a light non-weighted keyboard, so its nice to have both available.

 

Apologies rambling on "keyboard centric" but ergonomics-wise, the most productive I ever was in the past composing and making initial song prototypes, was on various old keyboards that had pretty nice sequencers built-in. You could select tracks and click buttons for record, play, stop, and do rudimentary editing right there at the keyboard front panel without having to reach over and mess with a computer or constantly be diddling with a mixer, recorder and outboard gear. So progress on "modern keyboard workstations" hasn't advanced much for maybe a decade, though they still do continue to improve and have got pretty dang good. People mostly use computers and software synthesizers, and many tend to buy cheeze little small keyboards rather than big powerful hardware instruments. That is the alternate way to try to be ergonomic-- Rather than try to get a computer and large keyboards in ergonomic vicinity of each other, just use a tiny little toy of a keyboard controller that is easier to integrate with a computer setup. But that strategy is most useful with modern forms of music which more resemble bleeps and bloops rather than two fisted piano playing. :)

 

So anyway, for keyboardists, some of the nicer workstations have pretty strong sequencers and pretty nice color touch screens built-in, and are also capable of recording external audio and doing a not-shabby job of editing audio right inside the workstation, all right under one's hands without having to reach hither and yon to adjust computers and outboard gear, or crane one's neck around to see computer monitors or gear settings. Thataway, when composing or initial tracking, one can think about the task at hand rather than thinking about operating all that other gear. If one is working something to a final "polished" conclusion, then one eventually would dump the work out of a workstation and into a computer to finish it up. The computer is lots better for the "finishing touches". But if one is composing or arranging, the kiss of death is to get distracted by computer editing. Sit down with what seems a promising musical idea, and record a few tracks, then make the mistake of stopping to fix mistakes in the first tracks, or edit the sound to be "better". And then an hour later when you come back out of the editing rabbit hole, you forgot what the song was about and can't think of any more music ideas to finish up the composition. Better to lay down as much as possible, strike while the iron is hot, then worry about re-recording or turning the sows ear into a silk purse after the song is sketched out pretty completely.

 

Geetar has its own ergonomic challenges playing guitar and operating a computer at the same time. Sometimes guitarists can get the same ergonomic advantage of a keyboard workstation, with the small or medium-sized standalone porta-studio type multitrack machines, for initial composition and tracking, though it is the same deal for finishing up the song. At some point it is easier to continue on a computer.

 

Logitech makes an inexpensive K400 wireless computer keyboard with laptop-style touch pad on the keyboard. That keyboard seems potentially very useful for ergonomic computer recording, either guitar or keys, because it is easy to put the little keyboard in vicinity of where one is playing and easily control the computer software from the little K400, both key presses and mouse movements.

 

Another thing I keep meaning to explore is VNC software. For instance you can get numerous different VNC softwares so that you can wirelessly connect your iphone, ipad, android phone or android pad to the computer. See a subset of the computer screen on the phone or pad, and control the computer by tapping on the pad. That makes the pad a general-duty wireless remote for recording. Set the pad on a keyboard or table beside the guitar stool, or mount it on a mic stand or music stand in easy reach.

 

In the old days of conventional "big studios" it was a serious PITA to operate the studio without at least two people around. One guy to play music and another guy to operate the gear. For one thing there was the control room holding all the gear, and then one or more tracking rooms holding the mics and instruments. You HAD to get up from the guitar or piano and walk into the control room to set up for tracking, but they made big old klunky wired remotes trailing long snakes, so once you got set up you could control the big multitrack recorder from behind the piano, or from a guitar stool or drum throne. So there are many "better" options for getting set up to solo record nowadays compared to back then. But it is worth giving some thought to how best to set up the workspace so you don't experience too much frustration trying to wear the musician hat and the engineer hat at the same time.