Yesterday I wrote about why you should collaborate online. Today I want to share with you a few tools that will help you get started.
Obviously, you need to find people to collaborate with. Maybe you’ve got some musician friends who live in another town or another country. If you don’t know anyone who’s willing to collaborate, get involved in an online forum or two, or post an ad on Craigslist.
The Tools
There are a bajillion ways to collaborate online, the simplest being emailing files back and forth. However, this can bog down your email server, and most email services set a limit on file sizes you can attach to a single email.
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I meet a lot of people online. It’s one of the perks of running a website. I’ve even made…dare I say it?…friends online. (Mom, if you’re reading this, don’t worry. I think they’re all normal, law-abiding citizens.)
Anyway, it’s no secret that the internet can connect you with exponentially more people than you could ever meet “offline.” So what does this mean for us recording engineers?
Well, let’s take a step back. What are your goals for your home studio? Are you looking for new clients? Are you trying to find musicians to play on your material? Or do you live in a small town with very few musicians and you simply want to meet some like-minded folks?
As cheesy as it may sound, the internet is a GREAT place to collaborate with people. I’m not saying we should ignore the normal methods of finding clients, other musicians, etc. Going to concerts, writers nights, local AES meetings, etc. is still a great idea. Keep doing those things.
But don’t write off the internet as a way of expanding your home studio. You could be ignoring one of the best things that could happen to you as an engineer.
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Last week my friend Kevin and his wife flew all the way out to Nashville from LA to record vocals for his album in my home studio. We had one week to track vocals for 13 songs.
Of course, we spent a lot of time just hanging out and showing them around Nashville, but 7 days was an ideal amount of time. It gave us plenty of time to focus intently on each song, and it also gave Kevin time to let his voice rest between sessions.
Many of us are using our home studios to record our own music, right? This has been especially true for me over the last few months, as I finished up recording my own album. But I’ve been itching to get some clients in here so I can take off my “artist hat” and put on ONLY my “producer/engineer” hat.
I like that hat. 
After spending a week recording Kevin, I realized how important it is for us as engineers/producers to not forget the psychology behind the recording process. Music is a highly emotional event. When you’re recording a musician, you certainly need to focus on mic placement, gain structure, song arrangement, performance, etc., but a session can quickly go sour if you neglect the emotional side of the process.
Each musician is different, and if you don’t figure out how to create an environment he/she feels comfortable in, the rest of the process is going to be difficult. See Make the Singer Comfortable.
I know what you’re thinking….”Dang…Joe and Kevin must have had some big fights, eh?”
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Today I finished up the last mix for my upcoming album. As I start the process of mastering, artwork, duplication, etc., the obvious question arises:
Should I give my music away?
Last month I wrote an article about pirating plugins which spawned a healthy debate. (As I write this, there are 147 comments on that one post.)
That post hit a nerve with a lot of you. Regardless of which side of the fence you fall on, I think we will all agree that the advent of digital products has changed things forever.
We can argue the point that you wouldn’t steal a lawnmower, so why would you steal a piece of software? … and I’ve made that argument plenty of times … but there’s still a disconnect. To go from 1 lawnmower to 1,000 would require many hours and dollars. To go from 1 digital item to 1,000 would require very little time or money. Just copy and paste, right?
The Digital Age
We’ve seen this affect the sale of music. People are able to easily access and reproduce music without spending a dime. Is it wrong to take a musician’s work and “steal” it without paying them for their efforts?
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You may have noticed that I haven’t posted quite as much this week. The reason? I had a perfect storm of my iMac crashing and having to be in 3 different states over the course of a week. Yikes!
The new iMac is hear and running wonderfully, and before I hit the road for the third time this week, I thought I’d share some things I learned from this experience.
The Story
In case you missed it, I got a new 21.5″ iMac about a month ago. I had been running everything (my studio, HSC, etc.) off of a 3-year-old white Macbook. It still runs great, but it was starting to fade, so I jumped on a demo iMac from Sweetwater.
The first issue I ran into was a bad logic board (the firewire port was unresponsive). I took it to a local Apple repair place, and they fixed it in a couple days. No big deal. (And it was all covered under warranty.)
Well, a few weeks later the iMac decided to shut itself off…never to power on again. So weird. We think it’s a bad power supply.
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You know what they say, just because you CAN do something doesn’t necessarily mean you SHOULD.
There’s a common thread I see in the home studio world. A lot of home studio owners are musicians themselves. They record their own music. Sound familiar?
Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with wearing a bunch of different hats in your home studio. That’s what I do on a daily basis. One second I’m belting out a lead vocal track, the next I’m comping, editing, and mixing the song.
And I’ll admit, I’ve got this idea in my head that people will be REALLY impressed with my music if I perform every single part. All the guitars, all the vocals, bass, drums, etc.
Is it impressive to be the “one-man band”? I suppose it is to a degree. But is it best for the music? Probably not.
The reason? I’m not a bass player. I’m not a drummer. I’m not a female vocalist. I’m not a lead guitarist.
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Monday I emailed my newsletter subscribers to check out a post I wrote a few months ago called What Are Your Favorite Plug-ins?
There are a lot of great comments over there, and there are a lot of cool, free plug-ins to check out.
One comment, however, caught my attention.
Ryan wrote:
I understand that to some, this is a moral issue, but plugins are extremely easy to download off of torrent sites…for free!
I’m just saying…why line the pockets of these huge corporations by paying their ridiculous prices. They are just trying to hold the home engineer back so that major labels can keep making their money. I don’t do it of course….I’m just sayin. Haha
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As many of you know, I’m in the process of mixing my album, and members of Mix With Us are mixing it right along with me.
We’re learning a ton about how to mix and how to overcome all sorts of obstacles for mixing in a home studio. However, one source of difficulty (and also embarrassment for me) is the quality of some of my recordings.
Productivity IS Important
I’ve written about productivity a lot here on Home Studio Corner. In Roadmap to Finishing Your Album (one of my free eBooks), I made the point that you really shouldn’t take forever to finish an album, that you should focus on getting things done, scheduling your time wisely, and learn how to accomplish more in your home studio.
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