How to record a song part 1/6: preparation!

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's article!

Today we are starting a new serie, which is a prequel of our super comprehensive How to mix a song one, and it will detail all the steps necessary to record a song or an album from scratch, step by step, presenting all the links to the in depth tutorials.
As per the aforementioned mixing tutorial, also this serie of articles will be FULL of hypertext links: click on them to open dedicated in-depth articles, and expand your knowledge :D

This time will be even more comprehensive, because it's a six part serie that starts with the preparation.
Let's start by saying that this tutorial will not cover the recordings done with just one microphone in the middle of the room, for that there is a dedicated section, we're talking about a full multitrack project this time.

Fist off we need to have some recording equipment, which can be a small home recording studio (click here for an article about how to create a small home recording studio for less than 500$) or a full fledged professional one, the fundamental tools to have are a computer with a DAW, a good audio interface (with as many inputs as possible, 8 can be a good start if we want to record real drums, but we can also use multiple audio interfaces together), some microphone, a decent monitoring system (good monitors or headphones), jacks and mic stands.
About the computer is important to have a fast cpu (for the real time processing and to keep the latency low), a good amount of ram (possibly from 24gb up, in order to handle the virtual instruments with ease) and a big hard disk, capable of storing all the takes needed.

Now we need to set up our Daw and audio interface with the settings that will be the foundations of the whole project: setting the bit depth and sample rate.
Usually the standard for a project is 24 bit and 48khz, but if we want to save some hard disc space is acceptable also to record directly at 44khz without sacrificing excessively the quality.
Now we need to setup our soundcard in order to make it ready to record with the drivers perfectly configurated and at the lowest latency allowed by our computer, click here for a dedicated article about Asio, Buffer size and Latency.

Finally, when our computer and audio interface are perfectly setup, before starting to record the various instruments it's important to focus on the human factor: here is an article about 4 things to do to get a band ready to record.



CLICK HERE FOR PART 2/6: DRUMS!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 3/6: BASS!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 4/6: GUITARS!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 5/6: VOCALS!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 6/6: KEYBOARDS AND EXTRA ARRANGEMENTS!


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