I’ve produced two albums over the past few years as what I would call a serious amateur musician; I don’t make a living at music but I do take it seriously. I want every sound on the recording to be right.
Learning this process from ground zero has been chanllenging. I had been a guitarist and singer/songwriter for many years but had never attempted to arrange, record, and produce an album. As part of my giving back to the universe that has made it possible for me to do all this creative work I wanted to create a series of videos and documents which would help absolute beginners go from that ground zero to mastered album.
This will be created as a series of modules which each provide (1) A high-level overview of a topic like “why use a studio?” and (2) The basic how-to technical information for you to actually do some concrete task, like make an informed decision about whether or not to use a studio.
The basic structure of the process and the overall set of modules will look something like this:
- Songwriting practices
- Taking a song from basic lyrics and chords to a multitrack arrangement
- Arranging and charts
- How to set up a basic home studio
- Getting your computer to work with your board or interface
- How to figure out your DAW
- The limits of the home studio
- Boards, mics, and other odds and ends
- Why use an external studio?
- Mixing
- Why does an album need mastering?
- Finances and costs–real numbers
- Hiring and working with studio musicians–how and why
- Others as I think of them!