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It doesn’t really matter that you buy the latest, best, most amazing high-tech home music studio equipment and software. If you don’t have the ideas—and the necessary talent—to put some good tracks down, then you may need some more help. It’s really the quality that ultimately matters, more than anything else. If you are technically perfect, but the song stinks, then, well, the song still stinks. Perfect production can only take you so far.

The flip side of this problem is that a good song, well-produced, can be a great song. Considering details, attending to the small stuff, and being a bit of a perfectionist with the mixing and mastering may leave you with a stellar product, one you can really be proud of.

Learn how to use the hardware and software that you already have, and use it to its maximum potential. Take online courses, read the manuals, join the blog forums, and really dig in to the features. There are so many resources available for anyone interested in home music production using a home computer, taking advantage of them is critical for success.

Just remember, equipment—both hardware and software—is only part of the equation. Concentrate on writing great songs and tracks to record, and then spend your efforts recording them and mixing them perfectly. Focus on the fundamentals, take your time with the production, and you’ll get the best results. Anyone can record anything—you want to stand out and be the best!

When you are making your own music and using music samples, there are certain guidelines that will help you make the best tracks and grooves possible. Certain guidelines will help you with artistic direction, and others will keep you out of legal hot water.

Music sampling truly inspires and defines hip hop music, often seen as a critical component to a successful song. Legally, these waters are still quite murky. Initially, sampling was used by live DJs, mixing loops and beats into dance club mixes. When artists began using the music samples for records, things got a little more sticky.

When you use someone else’s copyrighted material, not be the entire length of your song. This ensures that the sample is adding some depth to your track, especially if it’s well-known, but does not overpower the entire song. Also, even when you pay the fees for use, you still don’t want to be plagiarizing another person’s work, this is supposed to be your own work!

Include only one sample per song. Filling up your own song with bits and pieces from the work of others does not usually result in a high-quality track.

Be careful during production that the mixing and mastering you do smoothes out the levels of the samples you use and the additional pieces you record yourself. Often these recordings are noticeably different and careful production is necessary.

Consulting the pros at www.ixlproductions.com is a good idea. Here you can get tips on how to incorporate music samples seamlessly into your tracks for excellent results. After all, music is what you make it!

You’ve set up your very own home music recording studio. You’ve researched the hardware and software, and you’ve got everything you need. You are ready to record your first track!!

Getting decent quality in your home music recording studio can be a daunting task. You don’t want your great songs to sound like they’ve been recorded in a basement studio (even though they have). A couple simple techniques can minimize the amateur sound to your home recordings and give you a much more impressive product. This way, when your friends and family tell you how great your songs sound, you can believe them!

• A good microphone makes a huge difference. Cheap equipment will often make a cheap recording. Using the right microphone and placing it correctly, whether for vocals or instruments, can result in a more direct sound recording and eliminate any echo or redundancy present in the room.
• Know the difference in instrument output. A voice puts out a different signal than a guitar, at a different distance; a signal from a guitar through an amplifier sounds very different than the direct signal from the guitar. Experiment to find the sound that you are looking for, then focus on getting the highest quality of that output.
• Soundproof your home music studio. Learn about soundproofing and acoustics. Using diffusers correctly, and sealing off cracks and openings, can make all the difference when you are recording.

Your home recordings may never sound as good as a store-bought or professionally recorded CD, but you can definitely improve the sound quality of your recordings and have an end product to be proud of, with a little planning and effort!

Using the right tool for the job is pretty important, for any task. Especially when it comes to making your own beats and using your home computer to make music. With all of the home music production tools available now, finding quality software is not hard, but can be overwhelming. The new Elastic Time software from Digidesign offers amazing audio quality and incredible control. With Elastic Time, you can get automatic beat-matching algorithms when making your beats. Fine tuning of the beats is easier, thanks to the directly applied editing methods.

Elastic Time is considered to be basically a “plug in,” but it really functions more like an additional channel on your mixer. Learning to use Elastic Time will be a little bit of work for you, but totally worth it in the long run because it provides many mixing options previously harder to find.

Elastic Time matches the beats easily and quickly, using practically a drag-and-drop method. Select the type of plug-in, select your loop, and play back your loop immediately to hear what you’ve got so far. Decide right away if you are going to keep it or scrap it! How easy is that? Keep the loop by dragging it to the new track, and go on to the next one.

Elastic Time is a huge improvement in home music recording. Using professional quality tools gets you closer to professional quality results. Investing the time necessary to learn how to mix and master your tracks properly will pay off!

For the most effective soundproofing and acoustic balance, a home studio should be built right into a home at the time of initial construction. Okay, this is really unlikely, unless you are building your dream home. Realistically, you will be retrofitting a studio and trying to soundproof a small room in your basement. So, how can you best take care of this problem? Here are a couple of tips that will make your home music recording and home music production the highest possible quality.

• The basement is often best; in general, rooms that share the fewest interior walls with other rooms will be more quiet to begin with. You also will have limited outside noise seeping in.
• Fill all tiny holes and any cracks you find. Walls need to be solid and very sturdy. Add rubber fittings to doors and windows to tighten up. You will also need to patch the gaps in electrical boxes and outlets to prevent sound loss.
• You don’t need a studio window—constructing one that’s soundproof is harder and more expensive than a basic video monitor system.
• Diffusers make sure that walls are not parallel, and sound does not reverberate between them and echo. You can purchase expensive diffuser materials, or you can get some foam egg crate and attach it to your wall. Nearly the same effect, and the egg crate material is very cheap.

These are just the most basic tips for soundproofing your home music studio. You’ll have to experiment with the results, and make adjustments that suit your particular situation. Think detail. Because music’s what you make

Making your own music on your home computer can be very rewarding. Here are some common mistakes that you should avoid, to make sure your home music recording has the highest quality possible:

• Avoid dull drum tracks. Bad drums make bad sounds. You need a strong rhythm and a full drum sound, whether you have a live drummer or a drum machine. Drums give a lot of depth and structure to a track, make sure you get this right. Come up with your own sound, your own loops and beats, and get them right for the recording.
• “Bass is Boss” when it comes to dance tracks. Make sure you get a nice, full, booming bass sound, with no distortion or muddiness to balance out any power chords you include. Pump it up!
• Just because you wrote the song doesn’t mean you should sing it. You may be a great writer, but, let’s face it, not every one can sing. You know who you are…….get someone else to sing or rap for you.
• Along those same lines, just because you wrote the song doesn’t mean you should do all the technical mixing and mastering. If you don’t know what you’re doing, get some technical assistance. All of the popular software programs have online assistance available, and there are many great forums and blogs to refer to for advice. Ask for help!

Avoiding these simple, amateur errors can add incredible dimension to your home music recordings. Because music’s what you make it!

It shouldn’t have to cost a fortune to make your own music using your home computer. You will have to make some investments in quality hardware and software, but there’s a lot of free and/or cheap stuff available to help the average music lover get started in a home studio.

Follow the blogs of the big ones. There are so many others out there making their own home music, why not learn from their mistakes and take their advice? For example, http://erikhawkins.berkleemusicblogs.com/ is Erik Hawkins’ blog about making your own music. A popular site for current information, this blog can point you in the right direction for a lot of technical issues. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel, so to speak, when you are starting out with your own home studio. Recommendations about hardware, software, and recording techniques are plentiful.

If you really want to save money, find as many free VSTs as you can. A massive VST database can be found here: http://www.ixlproductions.co.uk/index.php?pages=vst_search and this is free software that save you a bundle when you’re shopping for the home studio. Just about any instrument or plug in you can imagine is here; make beats and create music that’s interesting and unique with the choices you’ll find here.

Really, you can make big sounds on a little budget, if you take the time to investigate the options. Spend money on the big items; get a great microphone and great speakers, but find some free software and free advice wherever you can.

One of the most important skills you need to make your own music on your home computer is to use EQ effectively. This is a pretty technical piece of the recording and production process, and doing it wrong will leave you with a lousy product. Doing it right, however, can make a decent song sound great!

There are really two distinct things you need to know about mastering EQ. First, you have to be able to hear the sound accurately—this is a skill that takes some time to master. Having good monitoring equipment is important for this, and good speakers are a necessity. Placing the speakers in ideal locations is part of the monitoring you’ll need to perfect. Second, you need to really know how to work the controls of your equipment. Another skill that takes some time to master. Understanding the difference between the different meters and controls is not really for the novice. Experimenting and adjusting will be necessary and learning the intricacies is a part of the process that cannot be skipped over.

Without these two parts, using EQ is not going to be effective, and will result in a low-quality, poorly produced music track. Every track requires EQ on some level, and not everyone can do it right. Without good EQ, you’ll be left with some bad karaoke; with good EQ you’ll have some beats and tracks you can be proud of. Take the challenge and see what you can come up with!

The term “sampling” means to take part of one music recording and use it in another track. Music artists have been doing this for decades, and hip hop artists are especially well-known for blending samples together to make beats that are high quality and infectious.

Music producers know that quality samples captured properly can make a good track become really hot. Bringing together a variety of sounds into a new composition that’s a smooth track requires a trained ear along with the right hardware and software equipment. It’s not as simple as just copying someone else’s work, or just cutting-and-pasting. Unfortunately, many legal issues have been brought up about this particular point, and those artists who use samples have to be careful about how much copyrighted material they use.

Samples can be recordings of loops of drum beats, different instruments, spoken word pieces, or really any other sound (think noisy household items, sirens, horns, laugh tracks, gun shots, etc.). The sounds and samples you choose to use can make your tracks unique—even when you are using a familiar sample. Everyone knows that one of the best examples from hip hop history is probably MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This” using the “Superfreak” sample from Rick James.

Whether you use popular and familiar samples or obscure bits of music from other places or even a variety of the “extra” sounds mentioned above, the production of the track is critical. Make sure that when you make beats your timing is impeccable, you use the right production software for compression, EQ, and boosting. Attention to detail is important!

For some quality samples to start your collection, take a look in the iXL Productions shop

Just about anyone that wants to can make music on their home computer today.  There is a whole generation of new musicians that will never have to rent countless hours of studio time or tinker with old-fashioned recording and production equipment, thanks to some amazing technological advances in the last few decades.

There is a vast array of computer software programs available, something for every age, every music genre, and every skill level.  Whether you are looking for online music lessons or you are making high quality commercial-grade tracks, you can find what you need to use your home computer to make music.  Virtual recording studios have changed the way songs are recorded and produced, flooding the market with choices.

The easy-to-use software allows producers an accessibility that’s not been available to many historically.  Even kids can make some pretty professional-sounding songs!  A great way for anyone to build music skills, computer skills, and confidence, home music production means you can give it a try, no matter what your ability level is.  There’s really nothing to lose.

Beginners should consider trying out FL Studio to get their feet wet with recording and producing, its extremely good value and can be used all the way up your career if you wish as it can be expanded by VST plugins.  With that said, intermediate musicians and producers may find great success with Reason 4.  Those of you with more experience and advanced skill levels will find amazing features and sounds with Cubase 4.  There’s something for everyone!  Get out there; see what you can find, and start making beats and recording songs today.