Hello everyone out there in audio recording land. In deciding on a topic for a recent episode of the Home Brew Audio Podcast, I realized that most of the episodes from the past year or so have focused on spoken recording. For things like podcasts, voiceovers, audiobooks, and video narration. But that is really only about half of Home Brew Audio’s audience. The other half is made up of musicians who want to record music at home. And to all you musicians out there, I’d like to say – I’m sorry I’ve neglected you!
The whole reason I got into audio recording and production at home was for music. It all started in high school #$%*$%%$ years ago. Let’s just say that back then, it was all done with some kind of tape recorder. And high school students with part time jobs couldn’t afford professional gear. So we had to improvise using cassette tapes. That is how I cut my teeth in learning audio recording.
The technology and gear right now are so amazing! High quality for a low price pretty much across the board. But there is still a lot to figure out. So I am going to turn most of my attention to recording music at home.
Examples Of Music I Recorded At Home
With just a modest budget, here are a few samples of what I have produced and published at home. Right here in a converted bedroom:
Those were just a few of the songs – all written by Ken and/or the lovely and talented Lisa Theriot. This isn’t an advertisement for our music. But if you are interested in the albums, I’ll put the details on these 4 songs in the show notes. Those songs were called “Son of The Sea,” “The Jew’s Daughter,” “50 Miles into The Main,” and “The Harvest.” You can hear them all on YouTube or buy them on Apple Music/iTunes, Spotify, and most streaming services.
Where Did You Record Those?
So! Did I need to go to a professional commercial recording studio to record any of that? I did not. All in a bedroom. Then I edited the songs on a computer. And not even any special kind of computer either. Just a regular desktop computer. And the only special hardware I used was a standard condenser microphone plugged into the computer through a recording interface box.
That was really the only option for professional sound up until about 5 years, well after all those songs were recorded. But since about 2023 or so, USB microphones have gotten so good, that I am confident I could re-create those songs now, in 2026, with a USB mic – even easier and much less expensive than.
And how did I learn to do it? Did I go to a special school? Nope. It was trial and error over a number of years.
My Origin Story:
It Started With Vocal Harmonies
In high school, my main goal was to record vocal harmonies, which I found fascinating.
But it seemed like few of my musician friends knew how to do that quite right. So I’d play an Eagles song or America song and my friends would just sing along with the melody, not add the 2 other parts to create the desired 3-part harmony. That would have been so cool. But it was not to be.
Singing Harmony – With Myself!
I decided I’d have to sing harmony – with myself somehow. So I borrowed my brother’s boom box after finding a business-style cassette recorder in my parents’ garage. I’d record myself playing guitar and singing on that recorder. Then I’d put the boom box next to the first recorder, hit play on the 1st one and Record on the 2nd one and sing the 2nd harmony part along with the playback. So the boom box recorder now had recorded the guitar and melody voice that was playing back from recorder no. 1, along with my sung harmony part.
Music Good/Audio Quality Bad
That was really cool. But the audio quality was terrible and the noisy hiss got louder every time I repeated this process. And if I wanted 3-vocal parts, I had to repeat the process at least one more time, now playing back the boom box cassette with a guitar and 2 voices on it, and recording THAT onto the first recorder while singing the 3rd part. I was “bouncing” the recordings back and forth between machines and cassette tapes, adding a live voice each time. Lo and behold, it turns out the official audio term for doing this was, in fact, “bouncing.” I want my royalty :-P.
Each Harmony (And Preferably Instrument) Needs Its Own Track – But How?
If you want to record a song properly, you need to be able to mix it afterward. If you are lucky enough to have your own band, it is possible – sometimes – to record everything with everyone playing and singing at the same time as you would do live. But good luck getting everyone’s volume perfectly balanced in THAT scenario. It’s much better to have each instrument and voice on their own recording, and adjust individual volumes up or down to blend properly. That’s called “mixing.”
But if you’re just one person who wants to be every member of said band himself, you are stuck recording one thing, then recording the next thing along with it to add another part or instrument, and do that over and over. And unless you had a specialized kind of recorder called a multitrack recorder, you had to bounce the audio like in my first example.
My First 4-Track Cassette Recorder
Luckily, eventually I was able to afford a multitrack cassette recorder after college. It was called a Tascam Porta 05. You could record 4 tracks on it – on the same machine! That was cool if you only wanted 4 things on your song. but if you wanted more, you were back to bouncing or ping-ponging things once again. For example, you could play back 3 recordings on 3 tracks of your 4 tracks and record those onto track 4. And you could control the individual volumes of those 3 tracks as you did this.
There were a bunch of different combinations of ways to record now. BUT, it was still on little tiny strips of cassette tape, so the quality was thin and just not good. Plus, there was still lots of noise. Nevertheless! I recorded 3 albums this way!
So mixing was possible. But once track 4 had those 3 sounds on it, those relative volumes were permanent. But it was so much better than before.
And now you had 3 tracks you could erase and use again, putting different things on them one track at a time. Then you could bounce track 4 and two of those remaining 3 tracks – say tracks 1 and 2 – onto track 3. Now you have 3 things on track 4, and 2 more things on track 3 for a total of 5 things recorded. And you could do this again on track 1 or 2.
There were a bunch of different combinations of ways to record now. BUT, it was still on little tiny strips of cassette tape, so the quality was thin and just not good. Plus, there was still lots of noise. Nevertheless! I recorded 3 albums this way!
It was a lot of work. And you really couldn’t do much, if any, editing of the sounds one they were recorded. And it was damned near impossible to apply much in the way of effects. And mixing a final version of a song meant listening with your fingers on the track sliders, increasing or reducing volumes IN REAL TIME!
Yeah, this is the audio recording version of “in my day we had to walk to school in the snow, uphill, both ways.” But there is no debating that you kids today have it sooooooo easy compared to all that stuff I just described.
Making The Jump To Digital
With recording programs on computer or even mobile devices to some degree, you have unlimited tracks! No bouncing or ping-ponging is ever needed! I can – and have – recorded like 20 versions of my voice at a time. Totally impossible back in the day with tape.
Recording programs also allow you to apply effects to each track individually to help control volume changes, tone, add reverb or other effects, and then to adjust volumes on each track, even putting changes in a track at various times. And push a button and have it mix it all together in seconds. No having to change track volumes in real time or anything like that.
This would all have sounded like magic to high school me. And now it’s just how it is. Things that took hours or days can now be done in seconds or minutes. And you have total control over all of it even AFTER it is recorded – another impossible thing back then.
At First It Was Digital Recording Machines
As I slowly moved from regular cassette tape, to digital multitrack machines with 8 tracks (the Roland VS-880 I bought on eBay in 1998 for $1,200!) recording to discs, and then to a computer where you could actually SEE your audio, I feel like I’ve made all the mistakes and learned in the trenches. I re-recorded those cassette era albums on a computer and recorded 8 more albums since then. And ALL of that done in a bedroom in a house.
Now It’s All Done On Computers or Even Phones!
Since about 2005 or so, pretty much all recording is done on a computer – or even on mobile devices! There are USB microphones that plug into one or both (see my post about The Best USB Mic). And USB devices/boxes to plug traditional mics into, which then connect to your computer. And there are tons of audio recording and editing software programs out there now. For music recording, I recommend one called Reaper. But there are tons of others.
Digital is “Just How It’s Done” Now
That brings us to this day and age. Anyone who started recording music since about 2010 (or earlier) never knew another way! They never experienced the struggle :-). It’s like smart phones. Anyone born after 2000 has never really known a world without them. It’s insane to me to think that the iPhone only came out in 2007!
I’ve learned how to use several different recording programs and plugins so I could use them myself in my own productions. I’ve learned MANY things along the way that I can pass along to other musicians who want to get their songs out there. One important thing to know is that things right now are so easy compared to the old days. And soooooo much more affordable! I can’t even imagine what I would have done with this capability if it had existed when I was 15. I’m not sure I would ever have left my room :-P.
I Learned The Confusing Audio Language So You Don’t Have To
But one other super important thing I learned is that audio jargon – the language surrounding all the tech stuff – is filled with ridiculous terms that in most cases are hold-overs from the tape days. So they don’t have any real relevance now. Also, back then the professionals really had to understand wiring and a certain amount of electrical engineering. So the language of those technicians sort of stuck around. The result of that is a collection of technical and often confusing terms that scare people who maybe are not so technically inclined.
That means that people often think audio recording too expensive or too hard to understand. So they never make a start.
It Isn’t Expensive or Difficult (Especially with Help from People Like Me) Any Longer
But the truth is that it isn’t nearly so hard as it seems. And I’ve been around long enough to be able to break down things that maybe are still a little complicated, and explain it in a way that anyone can understand.
So I started doing that. I created online courses and tons of articles and videos on YouTube to guide people – sometimes like timid woodland creatures – into the not-really-so-scary-afterall world of audio recording. Once you understand a few basic things, you can start recording your own songs so much faster, cheaper and easier than ever. AND have them sound as professional as any of your favorite pop stars out there.
After focusing on spoken content recording so much and creating a really in-depth course just for those people, I have begun putting together some courses like that for music recording. NOt that I don’t have ANY courses teaching how to record music. The Newbies Guide to Audio Recording Awesomeness shows how to record songs and vocal harmony as well as spoken stuff.
But it’s not that easy to go through a course that tries to teach it all, if you’re only interested in music. So I’m going to focus on that starting now. I’ll let you know – from the podcast, on the home brew audio site, and on YouTube or email – when these courses drop so you can check them out.
There is a course you can start on right now if you want. Though I do plan to update it starting ASAP. That course shows music AND speaking (podcasts, audio books, etc.) recording. It’s called The Newbies Guide to Audio Recording Awesomeness.
What About AI?
I had to add this because of the explosion of AI music generating programs out there. Opinions are all over the place on this. I am checking one of them out pretty thoroughly called Suno. There are a few similar ones, but that seems to be the most popular.
The temptation is so high. You can literally put in a prompt and have Suno write you a song in a style you tell it. And it will sound amazing. HOWEVER…
That recording will NOT belong to you. You cannot copyright it. Always read those terms and conditions. If you have written lyrics, don’t put them into Suno unless you want them to own your lyrics also! Yes, some of this is still so new that courts are trying to catch up. But Suno’s T&Cs will mention this. BE CAREFUL.
Even if you put in a song you have already written, or mostly written, BE CAREFUL. The resulting recording might not belong to you.
So for now, here is my advice on using programs like Suno (this will change – probably pretty fast): Create your own music and lyrics (especially if you want to avoid costly legal battles in the future). You can maybe use Suno to give you some IDEAS on lyrics and even ideas on melodies to get you started CREATING YOUR OWN music. After you have those ideas. Put Suno away and start recording your own music in the traditional way, as described above. That way you will ALWAYS own your own the rights to your recording.
