I’ve got thousands of dollars worth of recording gear. If you want to spend that much, and get the best sound you can, here’s a list of what I use.
If you’re on an extreme budget, here’s some really cheap stuff you can get away with to record on your computer.
All-in-one kit – $169 for all this:
Samson C01UCW Studio Condenser USB Microphone
Cakewalk Software
Mike Stand BL3
Microphone Pop Filter
SP01 Shock Mount
10 ft. USB 2.0 Extension
–Carpet remnants to nail up on walls: free (pulled out of dumpster behind carpet store)
If you have a room you can sacrifice, it would be good to nail up carpet remnants on the wall for the place you do your recording. An echoy room will make a shitty recording. You can always add reverb in your editing program, but you can’t take it away.
I did this to a room in our old house:
In our new house, I only did that in a small closet, because I’m only recording voice and guitar in there…not drums. I record bass direct into a tube preamp, and use drum loops.
It’s a lot less work to sound-condition a closet than a whole room:
If you’re recording live drums, There are lots of ways, partially depending on how many mics you have.
1 mic: hang it overhead.
2 mics: one overhead, one on the bass drum. Or two overhead, crossing each other in direction.
3 mics: one on bass drum, two overhead, crossing each other in direction.
4 mics: one on bass drum, one between the snare and high hat, two overhead, crossing each other in direction.
5 or more mics: one on each drum and cymbal, two overhead, crossing each other in direction.
If you’re recording live with other instruments in the room, you should try to get some isolation, with gobos.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gobo_%28recording%29
You can make gobos pretty easily.
By crossing the overhead mics, I mean this:
If you wanna go old school (non-computer, non-digital), you could pick up a cassette 4-track Portastudio on eBay cheap. (Maybe 100 bucks?) That might be a good choice for if you’re not very computer literate.
Here’s a page with MP3 links:
http://www.hitsofacid.com/SexKissCage/sex_kiss_cage.html
to the demo Bomb made that got us signed to Warner Brothers. Was recorded on a portastudio with an outboard compressor, two Sure sm58 microphones (about 80 bucks each…they’re the mics usually used for the vocal mics in clubs).
One of our guitar players engineered it, and I think it sounds pretty good for no-budget.
You could skip the outboard compressor if you were REALLY careful with all the levels.
We recorded the guitars, bass and drums live to two tracks with two SM58s hung from the ceiling, about ten feet apart, in the practice space. Then we overdubbed my vocals to one track, then added more guitars (both at the same time) to the last track.
You’d still want to hang up blankets or nail up carpet. A good dead-sounding room is important.
Happy recording!
–Michael W. Dean
Tags: cheap digital studio, diy audio, diy digital audio, secrets of home recording
Michael, there is a distinct lack of firearms in all of those pics. You can’t record right unless you’re strapped, man!
~Matti
lol……
I have other hobbies!
MWD
Mr. Dean!
Your huddled mass yearning to create demand more tech posts!
Or we shall hunt you down and beat you soundly with our copies of the $30 school! (no not really…but I couldn’t resist saying that)
lol….
I’m sick of tech writing. Can only do about a blog post’s worth these days.
MWD
I’ve definitely learned a lot from you on many subjects, and this is one of them. I love making videos, unfortunately I don’t get a lot of time to do it, but I do enjoy it. One thing you’ve turned me onto is the H2. Don’t know when I’ll get one, but I have been watching fleabay for a steal. I’ve always complained about the crappy audio quality on my cameras, I think mixing in a separate audio track from a quality recorder just might do the trick. I didn’t even know such things existed, let alone were so inexpensive, until I started reading your stuff. Thanks MWD!
Justin
Make sure you set the H2’s sample rate the same as the camera or the audio and video will drift out of synch when you combine them in the time line.
Even so, it works best for under five-minute clips of synch. There is no time code on an H2.
MWD
I used an H2 for the audio on the RLC YouTube video I blogged on here a few days ago. Sounded much better than the camera mic.
Best is a camera with an external mic output, then use an external mic. Then the camera will lock the synch. But H2s are great for podcasting and recording location sounds (nature, sex, birds, lightning, ect.)
MWD
Thanks for the tips! I have other ideas for the H2 besides just syncing to video, but we won’t go into that here.
A fun and handy little device I think it would be, in a whole host of ways.
Unfortunately the only camera I’ve ever had that was high end enough to have an external mic connection was stolen years ago. It was in the pre-digital days, an old Panasonic VHSC. That camera took AWESOME video, far better than any of the digitals I have now, but to be fair I have to add that my old Panasonic also cost about 10 times what any of the digitals I have now did, LOL. A high quality digital video camera is just one more of the expensive gizmos on my someday wish list, until then I’ll make do with the cheap ones I’ve managed to collect.
One thing’s for sure, editing is definitely easier with digital. Nero or Windows Movie Maker sure beat the hell out of stacks of VCRs plumbed together with a bunch of wires and manually starting and stopping the player, the recorder, and the audio. I actually used to do that if you can believe it, and turned out some pretty cool stuff that way. What used to take all day takes an hour now with a computer and there are SOOOOOOO many more options as far as what can be done. Transition effects were far beyond my capabilities back then, now they’re done with the click of a mouse.
Justin
yup!
The great thing about digital filmmaking is it allows anyone to “play the game.”
The horrible thing about digital filmmaking is it allows anyone to “play the game.”
Some of the best digital filmmakers started on actual film. There’s nothing like cutting actual FILM or mucking around with two VCRs to let you really grok editing.
MWD