Fans of “The Basement Tapes” by Bob Dylan or Bruce Springsteen’s “Nebraska” know that there’s nothing new about turning homemade demos into full-fledged albums. But thanks to the marriage of computers and digital sound technology, musicians can now take the do-it-yourself ethic further than ever, right down to the finished product.
It’s now possible (and increasingly cheaper) for an artist to create a home studio that not only records, mixes and assembles an album, but also presses the CDs, all while posting finished songs on the Internet. While the possible combinations of studio gear are endless, the keystone to making homemade albums is a computer fitted with a CD drive that can record information onto blank CDs.
This home recording revolution is only now coming to fruition. When recordable CD technology was unveiled in 1991, it was a toy only the likes of Paul McCartney could afford — the least expensive CD recorders sold for $7,000 and blank discs cost $50. But in the past year, prices of the recorders have plummeted, as computer users are employing CD writer drives for storing data. Now, the drives can be found for under $250, and blank discs ordered in bulk sell for less than $1 apiece. The good news is that musicians benefit, too, since CD writers can record music that will play in any compact disc player.
Of course, the capacity to make CDs at home does not guarantee great studio sound: Few people have the space and/or budget to fill their garages with top-flight recording equipment. But with a little ingenuity and minimal expense, it’s possible to give home studio tapes the pro studio treatment, then make the CDs yourself.
“That’s very common today,” said Hank Neuberger, vice president and general manager of the Chicago Recording Company. “We have many artists who travel the world and find portable gear very convenient for recording. And we have entry-level artists who find our studio convenient for bumping up things they’ve done in the home studios. The acoustics and gear in our studio make it ideal to finish and polish a record.”
To show how the process works, I will retrace the steps behind a musical project I completed in September (besides reviewing music for the Tribune, I am an active producer-songwriter and session musician). The project started in my own home studio — which is outfitted with some admittedly cheap equipment — but resulted in a disc professional enough to be played on radio and TV.
Over the summer, the Tribune’s KidNews section sponsored a songwriting contest. After three winning lyrics were selected, my job was to set those entries to music and find a practical way to produce CD copies on demand.
With a limited budget, I decided to record all of the music at home on a Tascam 388 reel-to-reel recorder. Most pro studios have 24-track machines — meaning that for any given song, 24 separate sounds can be recorded onto tape. My machine, which I bought used last year for $450, only holds a third that amount. But it was just enough space to get the guitars, bass, drum machines, keyboards and sound effects down for each song.
Big-studio assistance came with the next step. I brought my tape machine over to Kingsize Sound Labs in Bucktown, where the music tracks were loaded onto a computer, an Apple Macintosh. Thanks to a software program called ProTools, the computer was able to edit sounds, add effects like reverb and echo, and record additional tracks. Since the project employed up to seven singers at one time, it was far more practical to use Kingsize for recording vocals than my home space, which is just big enough for me to work in solitude.
All the additional recording, mixing and mastering took place in the Kingsize computer, the end result being a three-song compact disc. In all, the project took 36 hours, and would have cost in the neighborhood of $1,700 if the entire project had been done at Kingsize. Instead, it cost half that much and gave me the best of both worlds: A sharp, big-studio sound at an inexpensive price.
With the finished compact disc in my hands, I can make as many copies as I want at home. Using a PC with an Acer CD writer drive and software by Adaptec, I not only can print CDs on demand at double speed, but also can design artwork for a stick-on CD label. Since I can only print one CD at a time, this type of setup is most practical for small runs of discs. But if I need to make, say, several hundred in 24 hours, I can rent a high-speed CD duplicator for roughly $100 a day that prints two discs at a time.
Increasingly, more home studios are moving over to the computer, using recording and editing software like ProTools. I’m not ready to make that step yet, and enjoy mixing up the home and professional environments to give me maximum flexibility on a project. A home studio is ideal when I need unlimited time, and a studio like Kingsize is staffed by expert engineers who know how to make ProTools do some impressive feats (like changing the pitch of an off note, fixing the entrance of a part, or flipping a guitar solo in the computer to make it play backwards).
But even with all the independence my computer and tape machine give me as an artist, I still face one musical challenge no software program has even been able to master.
“The other side is once you’ve made a record, there’s still the challenge of finding an audience,” Neuberger said. “It’s key, and that’s something that is really hard to do from your basement.”
———-
The finished songs from the KidNews contest can be heard on computer by going to chicagotribune.com/leisure/kidnews.
