So You Are Ready for Your 1st DAW?

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Category: Recording Studio

Published on Tuesday, 27 December 2011 00:14

Written by R. H. Amaro

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So you visited your best buddy's basement where he has set up his semi-professional Digital Audio Workstation (DAW), and you eyes were open to the possibilities that you too can have your own DAW or Home Recording Studio?

I will give you 5 questions you must answer before you kill your kid's college fund for nothing!

1.  What are your musical capabilities?

You must take real good look at yourself and make a list of all your stregths musically, but I suspect that if you didn't consider yourself a musician you would not even be interested in a DAW.

Whatever level of musicianship you find yourself at, it will determine the amount of equipment that you will need to get started. If you are just a song writer that plays guitar/keys than a simple 2 channel usb sound card with preamps, condenser microphone, and active monitors will do.  If you are multi instrumentalist and vocalist, or you plan to record your whole band, then you will need much more equipment (although it is possible to record a 5 piece band with the 1st set up overdubbing but the drums will not sound as crisp).  This question has to be answered before you make up your budget because you can easily over spend at the store and end up with a bunch of equipment that you not only cannot operate, but will never need or use.  To help you in this decision, think of the minimal you think you need to record a 5-8 song CD as a solo artist or band.

2.  What is you true budget to begin right away? This has to be the amoubnt of money you can spend right now on equipment without jeoperdizing your monthly budget.  A buddy of mine went and had me help him out gathering all the basics for a DAW MIDI based, only to find out that he could not afford monitors and actually owed about $700 in parking tickets.

On the other hand I have a colleague who actually used those 18-months of no financing to buy his rig and paid it off way before the 18 months accrueing no interest.  And of course there are those who have so much money they could mount a very decent rig at will, not me, but some.  The point is, don't go nuts if you don't have the cash to buy and start recording almost right away because nothing is sadder than buying a mixer but you can't buy monitors right now.

3.  Do you have the space for your rig? I have seen people spend the money for their rig and then store everything due to lack of space.  If you are limited in space you have to build your rig around the space you do have available.  A factor here is also determining how much of space you actually need for what you feel will meet your recording needs.  Will you record Drums, guitars, keyboards, etc.?  For me it comes down to comfort space.  Since I record all intruments and vocals I needed enough space where I can comfortably track my music moving from instrument to instrument which are in close proximity yet not in my way.  Acoustics in the space for your rig are important as well. A cornered rig may not be ideal when accurately mixing your tracks, and that goes for a tall ceiling room with lots of empty space.  I urge you to get guidence on this from a recording community forum where I got tons of help from the pros www.tweakheadz.com.

4.  Is your significant other in tune with your rig? If you have no significant other, skip this.  For those of us that actually have someone that deals with some of the "divaness" that all musicians have, this is a legitimate question.  If you plan to be productive in your studio you must have all the support in the world from your spouse.  In this I see it no different that the head coach's wives, they're in it for the long haul!  You better-half has to know that this is your time alone because you are being productive, but then again, we don't find partners that want to support us, they find us; so this question may already be answered.

5.  When the music is done, then what? You must have a minimal goal here.  Sure we all want to write a song, record it, burn it on CD, show to a guy, he likes it, makes it a hit and we get paid millions of dollars.  But in the real world (like out of your mind) that is a long shot.  So have an attainable goal.  When I began to record I knew that it was material that one day the band could learn and we would have enough material for a 3 hour set of original music.  That was the minimum.  Now I have other goals because of that one goal that started it all.

Just because you don't have a favorable answer to every question does not mean you should give up because I know you won't anyway. Belive me, I know.  But you could work on making those answers fit for you over time.  Whatever you do, don't go crazy buying stuff you really do not understand what it is that is suppose to do... if sales people catch on to the fact that you are faking to know, you could end up with a time machine but do not know how to program it. Or worse; no crystals!

Well that was tough... so get cracking and research before you spend! Good luck my friends.

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