by Jnmarseille13 (March 16, 2022)
by Jnmarseille13 (March 16, 2022)
You have your own personal computer at home, with one or several digital audio workstations installed. You have been improving and making high quality beats. All your friends ask you to send them some beats so that they can write some bars and eventually hop on it. Your peers who were laughing at the sound of your music 6 months ago are now praising you and telling you that you’re so cool! You’re the boss!
However, deep inside of you, you’re still not satisfied enough. Composing instrumental is a passion, which is why you keep doing it, but you feel like something is missing. You feel like you’re still not even a little close to reaching your full potential. Then your best upcoming rapper friend calls you and asks you if you want to book a session in a recording studio one day and work together. And that’s when you realize what’s missing…
You want to work with your friend and have control on the sound, and not just letting him hop on your beat and watching him from far away. You want to wear all the hats at once! The producer’s hat, or the sound engineer’s hat! Or even better, you want to bring your own vocals to the song!
However, you know that you would need to invest a lot of money for all that gear they have in recording studios and you can’t do it in your apartment anyways, so it’s already a dead end for you, you’re sad… until… until one day you visit www.beatuniversity.net and YOU FIND OUT THAT YOU CAN DO THIS WITH VERY FEW EQUIMENT AND WITHOUT BECOMING BROKE ! But how?!! Keep reading this article to find out how!
First, let’s start with the basic knowledge. In order to make a rap song, you will need:
That’s about it. You might think I’m joking but I’m not. No, you don’t need those expensive mixing board you see engineers working on in professional recording studios.
The DAW will be the most important part, as this will be where you arrange the different tracks together and mix them. Most popular DAWs have the option to record audio within them, going through any audio interface and composing beats, while others will be more specialized in one of those 2 fields. I personally use 2 different DAWs: one to compose and mix (LMMS), and one only to record (FL Studio). However, I could’ve done it all on FL Studio if I chose to, as FL Studio supports both options.
The reason why I’m putting these 2 in the "same box" is because you will not be able to record from a microphone through your PC if you do not have an audio interface. Let me explain to you with an example: Bob is from the USA, and he meets Oscar who is from Spain. Bob can only speak English, while Alex can only speak Spanish. However, there’s a someone named Anna who can speak both language and will help Bob and Oscar understand each other’s by translating what Bob says in Spanish so that Oscar can understand, and vice-versa.
This is exactly what the audio interface does. It translates a physical real-life signal (the vocals) into a language that the PC can understand, which will then appear to you as an audio file. So, if you’re using a laptop, you’ll notice in your DAW settings that it’s giving you the option to use your PC’s built-in audio interface…
Don’t ever record tracks for an official song using this. Still wanna try? Well, go ahead and give it a try… you’ll understand exactly why I’m saying this 😊
Anyways, this is where you will have to start investing money (if you don’t already have one of these): an external USB audio interface, and of course, a microphone. You will basically have to plug your microphone into your audio interface and record that way. Here are some good ones for you to start with.
When you will be your recording your artist (or yourself), you will need to make sure they can hear the instrumental while singing, but you don’t want it to be heard from the microphone. So, you will need headphones.
While the artist’s voice will be recorded, they will have their headphones on with the beat playing in their ears and not out loud. That way, your artist will be on beat, and in most DAWs, you will be able to see on the screen the progress of the recording. Pretty nice, right?
Now imagine the artist is done recording a verse, and you grab your headphones back from them to do the mixing, and then you give it back to them every time they wanna hear it… Not so cool, right? So here are two possible solutions: a headphone amplifier and monitor speakers!
A headphone amplifier is a tool that lets you plug more than one pair of headphones into the same jack port. The sound signal will be split into the number of headphones plugged in. That way, you will be able to both keep your headphones on without removing them for a whole session, and always both hear what’s going on. Here are some nice and cheap ones you can find online:
Monitor speakers will be great when you want to listen to the whole finished product (or unfinished) together with the artist without having to remove their headphones. You could just do it with regular speakers of course. But I advise you to start with monitor speakers; they will give you a more realistic and neutral representation of your sound, which will help you a lot in your mixing process. Here are some affordable monitor speakers that can be interesting for you if you’re starting out in this:
Do you remember those school events where the principal would speak into a microphone and every word that starts with the letter B, P, or S, would feel like a strong wind blowing during a storm? Now imagine recording a song like that. Don’t even think about it.
Although this can probably be “hidden” with some very precise editing and mixing, there’s a very simple solution: a pop filter. This little tool will prevent all those disturbing things from happening without having to do any edits. This is a must-have, and you can easily find a good one that’s not too expensive.
So… remember what you need? A PC with a DAW, an audio interface and mic, headphones, a pop filter… and of course…. your imagination and skills! Yes, that’s about it. You might also want to invest in a XLR cables, TRS cables and jack connectors, but there’s a lot of chances that most of the gears you’ll get already come with those.
At this point, you’re all set and physically ready to start recording your rapper friend and begin making that rap album come to life. However, all those things are tools. Your brain will remain the core of the sound that will be coming out of your home studio. For example, you will have to learn how to mix vocals correctly and edit your beats in a way that will make the artists voice stand out the way you want to.
We’ll go through this in another article! In the meantime, keep perfecting the skills you already have, and make sure to do your research on the tools you will purchase for your home studio!
Cheers 😊
You have your own personal computer at home, with one or several digital audio workstations installed. You have been improving and making high quality beats. All your friends ask you to send them some beats so that they can write some bars and eventually hop on it. Your peers who were laughing at the sound of your music 6 months ago are now praising you and telling you that you’re so cool! You’re the boss!
However, deep inside of you, you’re still not satisfied enough. Composing instrumental is a passion, which is why you keep doing it, but you feel like something is missing. You feel like you’re still not even a little close to reaching your full potential. Then your best upcoming rapper friend calls you and asks you if you want to book a session in a recording studio one day and work together. And that’s when you realize what’s missing…
You want to work with your friend and have control on the sound, and not just letting him hop on your beat and watching him from far away. You want to wear all the hats at once! The producer’s hat, or the sound engineer’s hat! Or even better, you want to bring your own vocals to the song!
However, you know that you would need to invest a lot of money for all that gear they have in recording studios and you can’t do it in your apartment anyways, so it’s already a dead end for you, you’re sad… until… until one day you visit www.beatuniversity.net and YOU FIND OUT THAT YOU CAN DO THIS WITH VERY FEW EQUIMENT AND WITHOUT BECOMING BROKE ! But how?!! Keep reading this article to find out how!
First, let’s start with the basic knowledge. In order to make a rap song, you will need:
That’s about it. You might think I’m joking but I’m not. No, you don’t need those expensive mixing board you see engineers working on in professional recording studios.
The DAW will be the most important part, as this will be where you arrange the different tracks together and mix them. Most popular DAWs have the option to record audio within them, going through any audio interface and composing beats, while others will be more specialized in one of those 2 fields. I personally use 2 different DAWs: one to compose and mix (LMMS), and one only to record (FL Studio). However, I could’ve done it all on FL Studio if I chose to, as FL Studio supports both options.
The reason why I’m putting these 2 in the "same box" is because you will not be able to record from a microphone through your PC if you do not have an audio interface. Let me explain to you with an example: Bob is from the USA, and he meets Oscar who is from Spain. Bob can only speak English, while Alex can only speak Spanish. However, there’s a someone named Anna who can speak both language and will help Bob and Oscar understand each other’s by translating what Bob says in Spanish so that Oscar can understand, and vice-versa.
This is exactly what the audio interface does. It translates a physical real-life signal (the vocals) into a language that the PC can understand, which will then appear to you as an audio file. So, if you’re using a laptop, you’ll notice in your DAW settings that it’s giving you the option to use your PC’s built-in audio interface…
Don’t ever record tracks for an official song using this. Still wanna try? Well, go ahead and give it a try… you’ll understand exactly why I’m saying this 😊
Anyways, this is where you will have to start investing money (if you don’t already have one of these): an external USB audio interface, and of course, a microphone. You will basically have to plug your microphone into your audio interface and record that way. Here are some good ones for you to start with.
When you will be your recording your artist (or yourself), you will need to make sure they can hear the instrumental while singing, but you don’t want it to be heard from the microphone. So, you will need headphones.
While the artist’s voice will be recorded, they will have their headphones on with the beat playing in their ears and not out loud. That way, your artist will be on beat, and in most DAWs, you will be able to see on the screen the progress of the recording. Pretty nice, right?
Now imagine the artist is done recording a verse, and you grab your headphones back from them to do the mixing, and then you give it back to them every time they wanna hear it… Not so cool, right? So here are two possible solutions: a headphone amplifier and monitor speakers!
A headphone amplifier is a tool that lets you plug more than one pair of headphones into the same jack port. The sound signal will be split into the number of headphones plugged in. That way, you will be able to both keep your headphones on without removing them for a whole session, and always both hear what’s going on. Here are some nice and cheap ones you can find online:
Monitor speakers will be great when you want to listen to the whole finished product (or unfinished) together with the artist without having to remove their headphones. You could just do it with regular speakers of course. But I advise you to start with monitor speakers; they will give you a more realistic and neutral representation of your sound, which will help you a lot in your mixing process. Here are some affordable monitor speakers that can be interesting for you if you’re starting out in this:
Do you remember those school events where the principal would speak into a microphone and every word that starts with the letter B, P, or S, would feel like a strong wind blowing during a storm? Now imagine recording a song like that. Don’t even think about it.
Although this can probably be “hidden” with some very precise editing and mixing, there’s a very simple solution: a pop filter. This little tool will prevent all those disturbing things from happening without having to do any edits. This is a must-have, and you can easily find a good one that’s not too expensive.
So… remember what you need? A PC with a DAW, an audio interface and mic, headphones, a pop filter… and of course…. your imagination and skills! Yes, that’s about it. You might also want to invest in a XLR cables, TRS cables and jack connectors, but there’s a lot of chances that most of the gears you’ll get already come with those.
At this point, you’re all set and physically ready to start recording your rapper friend and begin making that rap album come to life. However, all those things are tools. Your brain will remain the core of the sound that will be coming out of your home studio. For example, you will have to learn how to mix vocals correctly and edit your beats in a way that will make the artists voice stand out the way you want to.
We’ll go through this in another article! In the meantime, keep perfecting the skills you already have, and make sure to do your research on the tools you will purchase for your home studio!
Cheers 😊