What a Recording Studio Can perform For Performers Every budding musician, at some point or any other, has resorted to some home recording. Whether for a demo to present for any local competition, or just for future reference, the first a part of a musician's career usually sees a series of extremely low-quality recordings.
recording studio chesterIt does not have a great musical ear to know why home recordings... well... just don't work. The technology and enhancements obtainable in a studio are just half the contribution it makes toward the recording. Greatest of, is the sound isolation and the prevention of leakage in one element of the track to a different.
A recording studio is usually split into three rooms -
1. The studio room or "live room", where the performers are present
2. The "control room", in which the sound producer and engineers use equipment that records and manipulates the live sound
3. The "machine room", where any noisy machines the studio could use (air conditioner, backup source of energy, etc) are put.
Aside from this basic setup, you will find often separate isolation booths, also known as "vocals booths" because they are used to record vocals and acoustic instruments. Some studios will also have another room for drums, so that the sound of the drum doesn't leak into the sound from the remaining instruments.
The procedure of recording is rather simple from the performer's end. There's two choices the performers have - either each area of the performance could be played and recorded separately, or the entire composition could be played together and recorded at one go. Quite often, the vocals and drums are recorded separately in the rest of the track.
recording studio chesterThe performers enter the live room, which is usually situated in such a manner that performers can see the control room and the people inside it. The control room typically houses the background music producer and sound engineers, who monitor the sound, record it, and insert effects as desired or required. Sound editing such as pitch correction, insertion of effects, balancing and gain adjustment is usually done following the live recording has ended.
Large studios such as Advent Media have facilities for drum recording and orchestra recordings, but small studios with low budgets will often fill in the drums utilizing a sequencer instead of live drumming. The microphone setup for drums is extremely elaborate - the microphones need to be chosen and positioned so the sound of every drum is captured individually, that allows better equalizing.
The primary advantage a studio recording has over home recording is that the studio should match certain acoustic standards. Ideally, a studio should absorb all sound and reflect none whatsoever. This would happen to be possible only when the studio had infinite mass and absolute rigidity - but sadly, this isn't the case. The good thing is that acoustic imperfections can be kept down to levels that aren't discernible through the human ear.