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Mic Stands, Do You Need Them?

Mics are important for any recording you may be doing, now or in the future. But do you have to, by all means and circumstances, have to have a mic stand. Well… yes and no.

A mic stand holds and stabilizes the mic, pretty straight forward. If you can find a way to do this without a stand (which is easier for miking instruments than vocals) then go for it! However, having a mic stand tends to make things a lot easier for recording and more straightforward, and therefore makes life a little more simpler and doesn’t leave room for error regarding placement. For info on placements, check out this Sweetwater article.

According to the article, you can easily mic a guitar or other amped instrument by hanging a mic above it–no stand required!

You may also be interested in constructing your own stand if we’re really talking budget. If so, check out this article for more on that,

Thanks for stopping by as always, should have a new podcast coming up sometime soon. Was planning to have one done by today but weather in Nashville got really nasty last night.

See ya!

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An aside for MIDI controllers…

Some people are scared off by making their own music. “How would I make my own music by myself without a band? I can only play one instrument.”

Thankfully, that’s all you need with MIDI controllers. MIDI controllers are wild instruments capable of sending signals to a computer to play virtual instruments in software. These virtual instruments can be quite literally any instrument you want, and as long as you have basic piano knowledge, you can rock out with any instrument out there with a little bit of fine-tuning.

A standard MIDI controller, these come in many different styles.

MIDI controllers are capable of telling a computer to create a sound based on a system incorporated into the computer. The signals given are then translated into the virtual instrument of your program and outputted through your speakers. It’s a neat concept, and I will be sure to touch upon it again in the near future.

For more info, check this out!

See ya!

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Setups!

Setting up a personal “studio” can be hard, especially in a home with other people and animals and such, but it can be done under the right circumstances, and thankfully those circumstances aren’t too specific.

Here’s some basic things that you may already have to get started.

  • Workspace: a folding table and a chair works if you’re on a budget, but a lot of people already have desks that they can transform into a personal studio fairly easily.
  • Headphones: don’t know a single person who has none at all. Most headphones are of excellent quality and while it’s always preferential to upgrade to studio headphones, you can hold on to that for now.
  • Laptop: most students and workers have a laptop accessible to them, and thankfully, a laptop doesn’t have to be exceedingly powerful for most beginner work in Pro Tools. 4GB of ram should still be the minimum memory, however.

Now for the buying part (sadly things aren’t free). Some things you’ll need to buy are:

  • Audio Interface: this will hook up to your PC and allow you to input any instrument through mics or cables and then also allow for output on speakers of your choice.
  • Speakers: Pro Tools is often finicky with built-in audio on PC systems, I eventually just caved in and bought my Presonus Eris speakers and my ears thanked me later.
  • Instrument and Mic cables: needed for whatever instrument or mic you’re going to plug in, thankfully Amazon carries an array of these cables and sells them for way cheaper than other outlets. You don’t really have to go premium on cables.
  • Microphone: PC (and Mac) built-in mics are pretty lackluster. I would recommend purchasing a decent XLR microphone to make sure your recordings are clear.
  • Pro Tools: Most excruciating purchase you’ll have to make. Avid dominates the music industry with a digital workstation that can quite literally do anything musically. Only problem is that the cheapest you can get it is 300 dollars as a student or subscribing to the program.

That’s the beginning of our little studio setup, I should be on track next week bringing my own together and I can definitely share my progress and setup then.

See ya!

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Record Players!

I know this may already be a little far off from what I said we would get to, but that’ll be here soon, just asking you to be patient with me!

Today’s topic of discussion is record players, or turntables, or just whatever people want to call them. They play vinyls, or in other words, records, by spinning the record while a needle on an arm goes over the record and retrieves signals from the grooves of the record to play back media.

Audio-Technica turntable

But enough of the science lesson. I wanted to talk about purchasing record players if anyone was interested in getting one, so here’s some tips.

  • Built-in audio is a no-no: built in speakers are the biggest risk you can take with a turntable and I can almost certainly tell you they are never worth said risk. There’s a lot of 6-in-1 players that offer a lot of functionality but don’t seem to do anything really well. You can get really far with a cheap speaker and upgrade as needed if you get a player that doesn’t have the audio built in.
  • Records require a lot of care, and sadly, there are some players that can even damage them. Put a lot of research into the specific model you’re looking for. There was a really neat looking Crosley I found at Walmart last winter, but I read online later from multiple sources that these players can easily damage records! That stuff is expensive, so make sure you have something that takes good care of them.
  • You may have to shop a little bit on the pricey side for a good record player. My current player of choice is the AT-LP60XBT and I’m very impressed by it. I hooked it up to my Presonus Eris speakers and it sounds perfect to my standard.

I know this isn’t necessarily an “on budget” kind of thing, but if you’re interested in supporting artists you love and want something new, (or old, depending on who you ask) a record player may be just the thing for you!

See ya!

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Let’s Talk About Interfaces…

So, you’ve decided you wanted to take the route of making a personal budget studio in your own home. Good on you, no worries! However, there are several key items you will need to achieve this goal, and an Audio Interface is one of the big contenders.

An audio interface is basically a tiny box that bridges a certain connection gap between your computer and your sound equipment. These are typically USB based. You can tap the link above for more useful information, but the bottom line is that you’re gonna need one of these if you want your recordings and even playback to sound good from whatever program you’re using. The biggest thing an interface will be helpful for right now is XLR input, which is the common cable type used for microphones. You obviously don’t want to use your computer’s built in microphone for music recording, so it’s necessary to purchase an interface first so that you can use a better piece of equipment.

However, these don’t come cheap if you’re looking for quality. Behringer interfaces on Amazon are sold for $50 at the lowest and only go up from there. If you’re okay with having only one input (meaning you’ll have to record everything one at a time) then you can actually save a lot of money here. I decided to go big here and purchase a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 interface which I got for about $140 from Sweetwater (awesome store!). I would say the amount you spend on the interface should be dependent on the other costs of your gear. Just keep your budget in mind! I’ll go more into detail on setting all of this equipment up when I finish talking about the rest of these components.

As always, thanks for stopping by. See ya!

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Welcome!

About this site…

Welcome to my new blog about Audio Engineering. Audio Engineering, simply put, is the “magic” that goes into producing the music we all listen to or just happen to hear on a day to day basis. It’s the backbone of any good song, whether it be a studio or even live music session.

I have created this blog to show how I’m coming along with audio engineering, and provide tips from a beginner’s perspective on the subject. With this being a beginner’s reference, I’ll try to keep things cheap and manageable by the standards of this field (hence the “budget” part of the site title). I’ll be posting flash sales or other deals in the Nashville area that I’m aware of regarding recording gear when necessary, and I will hopefully have some great content in store!

So whether if you’re interested in the subject of audio engineering, or just would like to learn with me, this is the place for you. I will be posting tips regarding my personal experiences with Pro Tools and the physical personal “studio” that I have at my home. I figured it would make things more interesting if I could make this a social learning experience, but we’ll see where it goes.

Here are some links that may be helpful:

What is an audio engineer?

What is Pro Tools?

Lastly, for more info about myself, click here.

Thanks for stopping by, and until next time, see ya!

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