Every budding musician, at some point or another, has resorted to a home recording. Whether for any demo to present for any local competition, or simply for future reference, the first part of a musician's career usually sees a number of extremely low-quality recordings.

http://www.michaelclarkestudio.co.uk/

It does not take a great musical ear to know why home recordings... well... just don't cut it. The technology and enhancements available in a studio are only half the contribution it makes toward the recording. Greatest of, may be the sound isolation and the prevention of leakage from one component of the track to a different.

A recording studio is usually split into three rooms -

1. The studio room or "live room", where the performers are present

2. The "control room", where the sound producer and engineers use equipment that records and manipulates the live sound

3. The "machine room", where any noisy machines the studio could use (ac, backup power source, etc) are placed.

Other than this basic setup, you will find often separate isolation booths, also called "vocals booths" because they are accustomed to record vocals and acoustic instruments. Some studios will also have a separate room for drums, so the sound from the drum does not leak into the sound of the remaining instruments.

The process of recording is fairly simple in the performer's end. There's two choices the performers have - either each part of the performance can be played and recorded separately, or even the entire composition can be played together and recorded at one go. Quite often, the vocals and drums are recorded separately in the rest of the track.

http://www.michaelclarkestudio.co.uk/rates.php

The performers enter the live room, which is usually situated in such a manner that performers can see the control room and also the people within it. The control room typically houses the music producer and sound engineers, who monitor the sound, record it, and insert effects as desired or required. Sound editing such as pitch correction, insertion of effects, balancing and gain adjustment is generally done after the live recording is over.

Large studios such as Advent Media have facilities for drum recording and orchestra recordings, but small studios with low budgets will usually complete the drums using a sequencer rather than live drumming. The microphone setup for drums is extremely elaborate - the microphones have to be chosen and positioned so the sound of every drum is captured individually, that allows better equalizing.

The primary advantage a studio recording has over home recording is that the studio is built to match certain acoustic standards. Ideally, a studio should absorb all sound and reflect none whatsoever. This could happen to be possible only if the studio had infinite mass and absolute rigidity - but sadly, this isn't the case. The good thing is that acoustic imperfections can be kept down to levels that aren't discernible by the human ear.

To add a comment, please log in, or sign up to Greenvoice if you don't have an account yet.