How to record a song at home?

Many people just love to sing, someone knows how to play music on certain musical instruments, someone writes music, words, in general, ready-made songs. And at one fine moment, you may want to record your work, so that not only close people could listen, but, for example, send to some competition or just put it on the Internet on a personal website or blog.

However, I don’t want to spend money on a professional studio recording, to put it mildly, and maybe they are not enough. This is where the question comes up in my head, with what and how to record a song at home, and is it possible in principle?

In principle, it is quite possible, you just need to properly prepare for this process: at a minimum to acquire the necessary equipment and properly prepare everything to record a song at home.

Necessary equipment

In addition to good voice and hearing, a microphone plays an important role in recording a song at home. And the better it is, the higher the quality of the recorded voice. Naturally, one cannot do without a good computer, the speed of sound processing and generally editing the recorded material will depend on its parameters.

The next thing you need when recording is a good sound card, with which you can record and simultaneously play the sound. You will also need headphones, they will only be used when recording vocals. The room in which the recording will be carried out also plays a very important role, so that there is less extraneous noise from the windows and doors it is necessary to hang them with blankets.

How to record a song at home without good software? And in any way, so it will definitely be required. What music programs can be used for this, how to create music on a computer, you can read in the articles of our blog.

Preparation and recording

So, the music (soundtrack) for the song is written, mixed and ready for further use. But before you start recording vocals, you need to warn all the household so that they do not distract you from the recording process. Best of all, of course, recorded at night. This is especially true for city dwellers, because the noise of a big city during the day can penetrate into any room, and this will interfere and affect the quality of the recording.

The reproduction of the phonogram should be adjusted in volume so that it sounds approximately the same as the voice. Naturally, it should only be played in headphones, since the microphone should only pick up a clear voice.

Now you can start recording. The main thing is not to hurry and not to expect that everything will turn out from the first take, you will have to sing a lot before any variant seems perfect. And the best way is to record a song individually, breaking it into pieces, for example: sing the first verse, then listen to it, reveal all the irregularities and defects, sing it again and so until the result seems perfect.

Now you can proceed to the chorus, doing everything in the same way as recording the first verse, then recording the second verse, and so on. To evaluate the recorded vocals, you need to combine it with the soundtrack, and if in this variant everything suits you, then you can proceed to the recording processing.

Voice processing

Before proceeding with the processing of the recorded vocals, you need to note that any processing is a deformation of the sound and if you overdo it, you can reverse the voice recording. So all processing should be applied to the record at a minimum.

First of all, it will be necessary to cut off the extra empty space, right up to the beginning of the vocal part of all the recorded parts, but at the end it is better to leave free intervals for about one or two seconds, so that when you apply some effects, they are not interrupted at the end of the vocal. You will also need to straighten the amplitude throughout the song using compression. And in the end you can experiment with the volume of the vocal part, but this is already in conjunction with the sound track.

This option of recording a song at home is well suited for both musicians, and possibly entire groups, as well as for simply creative people who do not have enough money for a studio recording of their work. How to record a song at home? Yes, everything is not so difficult as it may seem. For this, three constants are enough: a great desire to create something of their own, with a minimum of equipment and, of course, knowledge that can be found in our blog articles.

The author - Stanislav Kolesnik

At the end of the article is a very brief video briefing on how to set up equipment and record a song at home: