by Chris Wickham

Created on: January 10, 2007   Last Updated: April 04, 2007

Home recording is often a difficult art to master. There are so many variables created by the lack of professional equipment which can affect the overall quality and outcome of your recording. However, after many painful and frustrating hours, I have finally achieved a recording quality for my solo work that I am proud of, so I have decided to share my methods so other people can benefit from my work and not waste as much time as I have trying to produce a good recording sound. This article will focus on recording drums, bass, guitar and vocals and will try to keep the facts and methods as simple as possible.

The first thing that you need to realise is that you are doing this at home and that you can't expect your recordings to sound identical to those released by your favourite bands. As disappointing as it may seem, you do not possess the greatest recording equipment on the market, but this does not mean you won't be able to create a high quality recording. Aim to achieve a sound that you are both comfortable and happy with; it does not need to sound perfect.
Another point I need to explain is that this article will focus on home recording for the financially challenged such as myself. There are too many articles which assume you possess ten microphones and the facilities to minimize natural reverb and create brilliant masters etc. so I will try to focus on using the least professional equipment and the most household appliances as possible.

The first instrument that is usually recorded is the drums. The drums provide the timing and drive for your piece of music so they need to be both precise and fairly loud in the final mix. If your recorder is equipped with a built-in metronome, make sure you use it to achieve a recording with an accurate tempo. If not, you can record a simple click track which you can play along to, which can be erased and recorded over with another track at a later stage. I have discovered multiple ways to record drums using different numbers of microphones. To achieve the best drum recording quality, I believe five microphones are necessary. However, it is possible to achieve adequate with results with a single microphone. I think I should point out that you do not need to possess an expensive drum microphone set to achieve a good drum sound; normal omni-directional microphones will do the trick just fine.

If you are using a single microphone, place it next to you to your left, level with the bottom of the snare drum. This position ensures

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