From mic placement tips to prepping for a recording session, these home recording posts from the Disc Makers Blog offer insights for recording and mixing in your home studio.
Looking for expert tips to help you get better results recording in your home studio? We’ve got a ton of home studio blog posts we’ve published over the years, and we’ve collected some of them here for you with a focus on getting the best tones from various instruments and getting the best results from your audio mixes.
Home Studio Handbook
The Home Studio Handbook, our expansive hands-on guide to home audio recording, covers a wealth of topics that newbies and those of you with studio chops can learn from. The 37-page Home Studio Handbook is free and available for download now!
Recording tips
How to record better tones in your home studio
From potato chips to preamps, decoupling to drum heads, these 13 tips can help you get better tones when you’re recording in your (not-acoustically pristine) home studio.
Recording acoustic guitar: Experiment with mic placement
The mics you use in your home studio recording are a major variable in how your recording will sound, but mic placement is a big part of capturing the best tone for your recording.
Recording bass guitar: Tips from a veteran producer
Producer/engineer/studio owner Jon Marc Weiss discusses mics, mic placement, and different techniques for recording a great bass tone for every music genre.
How to record a kick drum
Producer/engineer/studio owner Jon Marc Weiss discusses microphones and miking techniques when recording a kick drum in your studio.
How to record a snare drum
Producer/engineer/studio owner Jon Marc Weiss discusses miking techniques when recording a snare drum along with a full drum kit.
Mic placements to record snare drum in your home studio
Getting a quality drum recording in your home studio requires a space with proper acoustics and mics that are up to the task — and mic placement goes a long way to a pro result.
Piano miking techniques for the studio and stage
Producer/engineer/studio owner Jon Marc Weiss discusses piano miking techniques on different instruments in different settings to get the tone you need for the situation.
Recording saxophone and reed instruments
So much about recording saxophone depends on the player, the room, the mics, the style of play, and how the track fits into the song. Here are some recording tips from a veteran producer.
Recording vocals in a home studio
These simple tips will help you get the best results when you’re recording vocals in your home studio.
Tracking vocals one phrase at a time
It’s great when a vocal performance can be recorded in one cohesive take, but not every session will succeed with this approach. Sometimes, a modular strategy is required.
Tracking vocals: Making a phrase-by-phrase approach work
If you are planning a phrase-by-phrase approach to tracking vocals in a studio, here are some tips to help make your experience a success.
Mixing tips
Mixing bass guitar in your home recording studio
When mixing bass guitar, don’t get discouraged if it takes a while to get the track just where you want it – bass can be the most difficult instrument to manage in a mix.
Five ways to avoid a muddy mix
If you keep these five principles in mind when working on audio mixes in your home studio, you can avoid a muddy mix every time.
Why does my music need mastering?
Home recording is easier and more affordable than ever, which makes the role of mastering ever more important. Here are objective reasons that make the case for mastering.
How to get better results mixing in your home studio
From stereo placement to EQ, busing to reverb, veteran music producer and engineer Jon Marc Weiss gives pro advice and insights on how to manage your mix in your home studio.
Mixing vocals in your home studio
Mixing vocals in your home studio can be exciting — and it can also be a complex challenge. Work to construct the instruments around the vocal so that everything gets to shine.
How to make better audio mixes with panning
These nine tips will help you understand how panning can help add width, space, and depth – and generally help you make better audio mixes in your home studio.
EQ and your audio mix: Five tips for spectral success
These five tips will help you approach EQ and your audio mix like a pro. Follow them, and you’ll add clarity, separation, and depth to your tracks.
Add clarity to your audio mix using pre-delay
In this video, engineer Scott Wiggins explains the use of pre-delay with reverb on your vocals and snare drum to help add the desired effect while maintaining clarity and presence.
Mixing on headphones in your home studio
Other than cost, which is one obvious reason headphones are a worthwhile option, here are three advantages to mixing on headphones in your home studio.
How to mix drums and percussion in your home studio
From kick drum compression techniques to EQing your snares, we’ve put together some tips for mixing drums that will help you get the most out of your recording.
Panning adds width to your audio mix
Your audio mix is a three-dimensional sonic image with four basic elements: level (height), EQ (height), panning (width), and time-based effects (depth).
The four essential elements of EQ and your audio mix
If you think of your audio mix as a three-dimensional sonic image, its four basic elements are level (height), EQ (height), panning (width), and time-based effects (depth).
Mix with your song structure in mind
There are standard tricks a mixing engineer can call on to cater to and complement the song structure and arrangement and create a great overall mix.
