Home Recording

Home Recording

I've started this page in order to share hints and tips on home recording and song writing that I've picked up over the last few years and which may be useful to newcomers (and maybe others). Click on one of the following topics to learn more:

Introduction

Midi

My Midi Sounds are Cheesy - Help!

Soundfonts and Soundcards

Recommended Software

Useful/Essential Web Sites

Songwriting tips

EQ Chart

Introduction

Just a few short years ago, music recording meant a serious investment in studio equipment, but today it’s perfectly possible to make "release quality" recordings on a home PC fitted with a suitable soundcard and running inexpensive music software. But it takes a long time to become reasonably proficient in a home studio; after all it's a life-long career for professionals in the music industry and I'm sure they never stop learning new techniques, particularly as the pace of technological development is so fast and accelerating all the time. It's this pace of change, mainly in computer technology, and the consequent plummeting of prices, that's enabled musicians like you and I to own home recording studios that used to cost the earth.

When I started home recording about eight years ago I found it very difficult to know where to start. I had a bundle of manuals to study from my initial purchase of equipment and every day I had dozens of questions about how to connect things together and I got stuck and frustrated many times. Even when I got some results they didn't sound 'pro' or even like the sounds in my head. So, my first tip would be - start small and learn thoroughly how your equipment works. This will pay dividends when things apparently go wrong, because they will invariably go wrong due to your own ignorance! Thankfully over the last few years there have been internet forums to turn to and these are wonderful tools. You can get stuck, ask for help on an appropriate forum and within hours someone from across the world will chime in with help.

Now a big warning.. All this wonderful technology can beguile you. The next best thing is only around the corner and when you own that new software it will do wonders for your music. No, it won't. There are two paradoxes involved with having all this technology within easy reach:

Music is an art not a science; however, the whole palaver of recording is a science. So there is conflict. You will spend many hours in your home studio trying to get something to work, leaving little or no time for making and recording your music. Or, when you do get around to the creative part, the juices have stopped flowing. As one contributor to the Yahoo Band In A Box forum succinctly put it: "The right brain is creative while the left brain is technical. I want software that doesn't force me into left-brain mode so that my creativity is stifled by the process of making it all work."

The infinite number of monkeys using the infinite number of typewriters haven't yet typed Hamlet. Despite an explosion in the numbers of home recording setups and the exponential increase of recorded music, virtually all of it is dross. That's not to say it hasn't given an awful amount of pleasure to those who made it, it just doesn't give any pleasure to those who might listen to it. If you don't believe me check out the numerous internet sites that host amateur tracks and let me know if you hear anything really artistically worthy. (I'm not saying my music is any different..) Contrary to what some might wish, record company A&R men and song publishers don't spend all their time surfing the net looking for the next 'Unchained Melody' or James Taylor.

Notwithstanding all that, it's great fun - even the tinkering around with the equipment! So go for it.

Midi

Knowing what MIDI is, and the difference between midi and audio, is crucial in learning how best to record your own music; but it's not all that difficult to grasp. Let me try and explain in layman's' terms.

MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is an electronic communications protocol that represents music in digital form but not the sound of the music itself. An important concept that newcomers to music technology often have trouble with is the difference between MIDI files and audio files. MIDI files can always be distinguished from audio files because they have the file name extension .MID whereas audio files can have various extensions, e.g. .WAV or .MP3 or .WMA and so on. But most importantly, audio files are recordings of actual music and sound performances already made at a point in the past whereas MIDI files only contain digital instructions that can be played on any MIDI-compatible instruments or software to make performances in the future - anytime, anyplace.

MIDI is used extensively in the professional music scene as well is by hobbyists. If you see any major band in concert it's pretty certain they'll be playing their songs in time with MIDI tracks that will be triggering string and/or brass sounds, for example, from synths. My live band, 'The Skyline Band' does this.

One reason for the popularity of MIDI files is that, unlike digital audio files or even compact discs, a MIDI file does not need to capture and store actual sounds. Instead, the MIDI file can be just a list of events which describe the specific steps that a soundcard or other playback device must take to generate certain sounds. This way, MIDI files are very much smaller than digital audio files, and the events are also editable, allowing the music to be rearranged, edited, even composed interactively, if desired. The best analogy for MIDI is to liken it to the linking of two computers via modems. The same way the computers share information via the modem, electronic devices share it via MIDI. It does not send the actual musical note, but the information about the note. It can send messages to synthesisers telling them which note was depressed, how long to sustain the note, to change sounds (use trumpet instead of piano), adjust volume, modulate notes, and more.

The universal MIDI standard began its evolution way back in the early 80s. Dave Smith and Chet Wood, then working for a company called Sequential Circuits, devised a Universal Synthesizer Interface and their proposal was presented to the Audio Engineering Society in autumn 1981, providing a starting point for the development of the MIDI standard. Over the two years from autumn 1981 to 1983 most of the major manufacturers collaborated in the development of the first version of the standard, which was published in October 1983.

Things became official around 1985 when the MIDI Manufacturers Association, (MMA), and AMEI in Japan, were set up to enable companies in the music industry to work together to discuss and agree the common standards that ensure compatibility among all their products, e.g. synthesizers, drum machines, software, etc. One of the standards, for example, is the specification of the MIDI cable for connecting MIDI-compatible pieces of equipment, including PCs. Since 1985 the MMA/AMEI has produced 11 new specifications and adopted 38 sets of enhancements to MIDI. Work continues to improve MIDI and a current project for example is High Definition MIDI. If you have a piece of studio equipment conforming to the MIDI standard it may well have the MIDI logo on it somewhere, and another indicator will be standard pages in the back of the manual headed 'MIDI Implementation'.

In 1991 the GM (General Midi) standard was agreed and you'll see the term GM in many places. There are 128 designated GM sounds which are listed here. MIDI is not that complicated. Once you master the simple basics you'll appreciate what a tremendous invention it is!

I strongly recommend you buy a book on MIDI so you get a grasp of important things like MIDI In, Out and Through, which will help you connect together your keyboard and your sequencer program (Cubase, Sonar, Logic, etc) running on your DAW* (PC or Mac Digital Audio Workstation) running NB: The commercial programs just mentioned are still referred to as sequencers because they have their origins in DOS programs that enabled midi files to be played and manipulated, although today these programs do much, much more with MIDI as well as audio at the same time.

Warning: the internet abounds with countless MIDI files of all types of music which you can download for free and then play on your sequencer via your soundcard. Almost all of them are amateur and sound bloody awful. It may be tempting to download these to play along with and so on, but unfortunately the internet bad guys know people do this and some of these sites will also pass you viruses such as trojans and the like. If you want free midi files use only sites you can trust, but my tip is simple: DO NOT TRUST ANY. If I want ready-made MIDI files I use the commercial sites I've listed below under Useful Web Sites - they're safe and even though you pay for the files they are top quality professional songs prepared by people who know their craft. All of them provide shorts demos.

Familiarity with MIDI is essential to get the best out of your sequencer. To find out more try the midi tutorial here on Computer Music magazine's site. Better still, buy one of the many books on the subject. An excellent one is MIDI for the Technophobe by Paul White, Editor In Chief of Sound On Sound magazine, which is also essential reading if you're serious about home recording.

My Midi Sounds are Cheesy - Help!

When using music software like Band In A Box, Jammer Pro, and others that play MIDI tunes/files/notes, the sound quality of the musical instruments you hear will depend on the MIDI capabilities of what you play those sounds through. These are your choices of sound source:

Soundcard: This will have very cheesy sounds if it's just the cheap card that came bundled with your home PC. If you want to stick with a soundcard for your sounds then you will need to (i) upgrade the card and (ii) decide whether you're going to acquire soundfonts or soft synths. They both do essentially the same thing, that is play midi using samples of real instruments.

The soundfonts route is cheaper; you'll probably be ok just upgrading the soundcard and you can find soundfonts on the Internet - see below. The soft synth route is more expensive because you'll not only need a better card but also perhaps more memory, at least 2GB, plus plenty of disk space and the soft synths themselves can cost upwards of £200-£300 and are difficult to use if you're a beginner. The choice is yours, but re-read my warnings in the Introduction at the top of this page!

Keyboard synthesisers: You will get excellent midi sounds if you connect the MIDI Out of your computer to a quality keyboard synthesiser. These are sometimes called workstations where they have other facilities onboard such as sequencers. If you watch professional bands playing you will see names on the front of their synthesisers like Roland, Yamaha, Korg and Kurzweil and these are some of the top names; the current favorites being Roland's Fantom range, Yamaha's Motif range and Korg's Triton range.

If you are in the market for one of these, go to your local music shop and listen to some products first-hand, paying close attention to the quality of the drums, bass, piano, guitar etc. If you visit the four manufacturers' sites above you can hear demos of sounds - but they will have been sweetened to impress and this is no substitute for hearing them in the shop. They will all be MIDI compatible, but double-check which ones have the best (to your ears) GM sound set, and that they have a wide variety of patches (sounds). For these purposes don't bother with 'stage pianos' and the like - they're designed for pianists and will have first class sounds for a very limited number of instruments and probably no drum sounds at all. Also, some synths are aimed at the dance market and may come with a plethora of 'pad' and novelty sounds that amuse Italian DJs and their spaced-out Ibiza audiences but may not suit your more discerning needs...

Modules are synths without a keyboard and the popular synths mentioned above also have module versions for musicians who already have a keyboard synth/workstation and want to increase their palette of sounds by adding a different manufacturer's module - remember all MIDI gear is compatible. Edirol (a subsidiary of Roland) have a sound module specifically aimed at MIDI musicians, the SD-90, but I've a feeling this product is being phased out as similar models in the range are already gone. You can check the specification here. If you haven't already got a MIDI compatible keyboard then a module like this is no use to you, unless you just want to use software like Band In A Box and Jammer Pro with your PC keyboard only, and many home recording enthusiasts do.

Software synthesisers or 'soft synths': are what the names imply, sounds made by software running on your PC as opposed to software ('firmware') running inside the printed circuit boards of a keyboard synthesiser or module described above. For that reason they're often referred to as 'virtual instruments'.

Soft synths subdivide into two main types: those that synthesise sounds and those that enable samples of real instruments to be loaded into memory and played. Good examples from the former category often sound as good as - or better than - examples from the second. This area has experienced a boom in recent years and there are hundreds of soft synths available ranging from freeware easily found on the Internet all the way up to high-end products costing a lot of money and found only in top professional studios. More money buys more quality, and in this arena that usually means higher quality samples requiring higher amounts of computer power. Real samples became too large to load into memory all at once so new technology was devised and implemented in some products called 'disk streaming' whereby the samples are steamed rapidly from hard disk to memory as needed, with no glitching.

A key feature of soft synths is that they are designed to operate as 'plug-ins' which means they can be launched from within a main sequencer product, such as Sonar, that's already running on your computer. Two protocols were developed for this to work, VSTi (Virtual Studio Technology) and DXi but sequencers tend to give you both options now. What goes on 'under the hood' is not so important as the fact that plug-in technology is extremely useful and you'll encounter it elsewhere in your journey to learn all about home recording! For the moment it's enough to know that plug-ins adds extra powerful features and/or tools to your main sequencer package, and in the case of a soft synth you can load it within your sequencer so that your tracks play via the synth, just as if the tracks were being fed out to an external hardware keyboard synth or module.

Check out some soft synths and soft samplers (sometimes called 'Romplers') below. They all have their admirers and
detractors, i.e. choice is very much to do with your personal preferences and music interests. Most have demo versions that you can try first, and I strongly recommend you also search for relevant reviews in Sound On Sound magazine.

Gigastudio by Tascam - Big, expensive, first class quality. Uses disk streaming.
Native Instruments - A market leader with many different synth products, including Bandstand - see below.
Sampletank 2 by IK Multimedia - Another leader with Sampletank the flagship.
Hypersonic 2 by Steinberg - A best seller using both synthesis and sample playback.

Also have a look at this web site Soft Synths and Samplers which has a lot of useful information on about three dozen of these products.

MIDI Yoke: Let me tell you about 'The world's greatest MIDI utility'. That's what the writers call it and I'd agree. And what's more it's free! Why might you need it? Well, the ability of your sequencer to run plug-ins trouble free will depend on the spec of your computer and the more processing power and RAM you have the better. My DAW* has a 2.2GHz processor and 2GB of RAM and that's a minimum for relatively hassle-free working. I find plug-ins such as Hypersonic 2 and Bandstand 'sticky' when running as plug-ins, i.e. windows and drop down lists, etc. tend to be slow and stuttery, and there are sometimes audio problems like missing MIDI notes and general glitching. I personally think that 'plug-in' is a misnomer since it implies a 'separateness' that doesn't exist. In reality the program code of a plug-in becomes subsumed inside the host program with all the compatibility issues that can (and usually does) entail. Instead of running these memory-hungry and processor-busy applications as plug-ins, MIDI Yoke allows you to run them in standalone mode, linked to each other so that Sonar - in my case - sends its midi data to its outputs and Hypersonic 2 or Bandstand receives the data at their inputs. Although Sonar and the particular synth/sampler program are running at the same time and presumably take up the same amount of memory as if the latter were in plug-in mode, the applications run more freely as separate entities rather than one being wrapped inside the other. You can download MIDI Yoke here.

Amplifier and speakers: Whichever sound source you adopt out of those set out above you will need of course to plug that source into an amplifier and speakers so you can hear the final results! My advice here is don't make this final link the weakest in the chain: invest in quality equipment compatible with the other gear. For example, if you've invested in a decent sound card and some music software including a soft synth, don't feed the end results to a pair of cheap PC speakers with built in 3watt amplifier! A home recording studio should have a good amplifier, near-field monitors and good quality headphones.

Soundfonts and Soundcards

Soundfonts* are small real samples, i.e. real audio recordings, of actual instruments; simply .wav file samples that have been transformed by a Soundfont editor, such as Vienna, into MIDI-controllable instruments which can be loaded onto your soundcard and triggered by your sequencer. They're usually referred to as .sf2 files which is the name extension of a file which might contain an individual instrument soundfont or a bank of instruments. A Soundfont Bank will contain definitions of up to 128 instruments and some drum sets all complying with the General Midi standard.

The Soundfont standard was developed in 1993 by Creative*, the makers of the Sound Blaster range of sound cards, but the technology is 'open' so that others can use it if they wish, which has helped make it so universal. The advantage of this technology is that a Soundfont-compatible soundcard is a low-cost sampler within your PC and the Soundfonts don't take up much room in computer memory. The disadvantage is just that: they're small samples which don't take up much memory so they're not as realistic as large samples that take up a lot of memory. It's a trade-off. Technology has significantly narrowed the gap between Soundfonts and 'pro' samplers in terms of functionality and quality. In fact, the sound quality of a well constructed .sf2 file can be just as good as any 16-bit sampler. To get started in the world of Soundfonts, you will need a Soundfont-compatible soundcard like Creative's Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinum Pro or the newer Audigy 4 and X-Fi Elite Pro.

Creative cards come with banks of soundfonts, but better sets can be obtained free on the internet. Before I give you a couple of recommendations though, here's a caveat. I've found from forum discussions, etc. that the relative authenticity of soundfont sounds tends to be a subjective issue rather than an objective one, which seems strange to me. So if you want more convincing soundfonts try out different banks and see which ones you like for adding realism to your music. The ones I use (in approximate order of preference) are:

SGM-128 - download free here. This 123MB bank is the one I use most of the time. You need to register to get this one but I haven't noticed any ill-effects of having done so. The home page for where it's available from is sf2midi.com where you can also hunt for other banks (i.e. sets) and individual instruments.

GM 2006 - Buy here. This 201MB set by German software designers Papelmedia is worth the £35 they charge for it. Sometimes it's on offer for less. Check out the demos on the site.

Fluid - download free here. This 145MB set comes from the Hammersound.net web site where you can also find other banks and sets.

SGM-180 - download free here. 179MB bank.

Sonic Implants - Buy here. Sonic Implants is a commercial samples site and along with other prestigious products they sell a good 24 MB GM set for £45, which is worth having although you may not think it as good as the free ones above. But as I've already said, it's a matter of opinion! The site has demos, but bear in mind that these will have been 'sweetened'.

Others you might wish to Google for and try are 'Merlin' and 'Titanic'.

A soundcard is the device that enables your PC or Mac to talk to the outside world. You fit it inside your PC and sometimes they come with an external 'breakout' box for ease of cable connection and operation. Connectors will enable you to input and output digital audio, analogue audio and midi via separate plugs and sockets. There are many different varieties of soundcard, all offering various levels of sophistication and audio fidelity. Generally, the more you pay the better the sound quality and choice/quantity of inputs and outputs. There's an excellent explanation of soundcards and what they do on the site PC-Music, together with a short review of most of the popular ones currently available.

Professional recording studios wouldn't use 'entry level' cards such as the Soundblaster family, because the sound fidelity isn't pristine enough for their requirements, but millions of these cards have been sold to home studio hobbyists due to their relatively high quality, numerous bundled features, ability to be used for sounds in PC games, and low cost. After starting out with a Soundblaster card home recording enthusiasts more often than not trade up to something more 'pro', but bear in mind if you do this you will forgo the convenience of inbuilt Soundfonts and instead will have to acquire a software sampler to play them instead - although this is not a big problem. However, one of the more frequent questions newcomers pose on forums is "I've replaced my Soundblaster with a better sound card and now I can't get any sound when I try and play a midi file". You now know the answer. The new card has no 'onboard' sounds.

So, what's my recommendation if you're just starting out? Well, buy the best Soundblaster you can; the Audigy 2 Platinum Pro is about £125 new or you can find a few on Ebay nowadays. As your knowledge and sophistication begin to grow you can always upgrade to a 'pro' card later on - you'll have enough learning curves to climb without trying to figure out how to use one of those straight away.

* SoundFont^® is a registered trademark of Emu Systems Inc.

Recommended Software

Audio and Midi Sequencer:

The main DAW* package I use is Cakewalk's Sonar 7 Producer. Click here to visit the product's home page. It began as a DOS program many years ago, became Cakewalk Pro-Audio and then Sonar. Choice of sequencer is a lot to do with personal preferences, but I like Sonar because it looks more 'Window-y' than the others which makes it easier for me to move around in. There are many other sequencer programs out there, for example: Cubase, Logic Pro (MAC), Performer (for MAC), PowerTracks and Pro Tools. You may have seen Pro Tools mentioned in the music recording press and sometimes in the credits in music CD booklets. This is a 'top-end' program that goes with dedicated hardware (although a 'lite' software version is available) which has gained a lot of acceptance in professional studios and has become the generic name in those circles for a computer-based audio and midi sequencer.

Packages such as Sonar are almost complete desk-top studios. You can record both MIDI and audio tracks; edit them; manipulate them with sound effects like reverb, chorus and echo; apply EQ; and then mix and master a final product. The keen competition between the leading products has meant they all try to steal a march on each other by introducing new features and providing regular updates - both minor and major. In Sonar's case a major upgrade appears every year around November time, the next one being Sonar 6 presumably. The disadvantage of this 'arms race' is that you feel the need to fork out every year for the upgrade just for the contentment of having the latest version. However, Sonar is extremely well supported, the company tends to be very responsive to its customers' needs and there is a very active forum where you can get plenty of help. A big advantage over its competitors is that you receive with Sonar a very thick paper manual, and I'm one of those people who much prefers a paper manual to a cheapskate print-it-yourself PDF version. I like to browse manuals to stumble across features I never knew about, and you can't read a PDF file in the smallest room!

Most of the large sequencer packages provide a try-before-you-buy demo version and the Sonar 5 one can be downloaded here.

* Digital Audio Workstation = posh name for your PC or Mac.

Composer/Auto Accompaniment:

Band In A Box is an excellent software product for helping compose songs and instrument parts for you. You can also use it to play along with for practice purposes as well as use it as your backing band for playing live. It's successful because it's easy to use. Anyone with just a little knowledge of computers and music can create their very own songs or backing tracks. To create a song, all you need do is type in the chord sequence on the blank page placing the chord changes on the appropriate bars ( any type of chord i.e. C, Fm7 or even complicated chords such as C13b9) then select a style from the hundreds provided. Press play and your backing is complete, or hit play again to have the program re-compose again slightly differently. If the style you choose does not suit your song, select another, with so many to choose from there's almost certain to be one that fits the bill. If you wish, you can create your own style from scratch or use the "Wizard" to convert a Midi file to a style. Once the backing has been created you can record your own melody or counter melody parts. You can even let Band In A Box create an automatic solo from one of the 100 soloists included in the program to let you hear how you're backing sounds with a choice of instruments improvising the melody. Add lyrics and your song is complete. Many printing options are included such as the popular "leadsheet" with notation, chords, guitar tab and lyrics to give a professional looking musical presentation of your songs. Your song can be saved in a variety of formats such as MIDI file for use in another program or keyboard, save as a .WAV audio file, or even burn the song to a CD for use on a standard CD player.

Drawbacks with BIAB? If your musical tastes only run to heavy rock and death metal then it won't help you too much. The programmers who originally devised the product are very jazz-biased and, well, mature, so a lot of the styles are jazz-based. There's also a fair amount of country and strict tempo styles. If that's what you're looking for you'll be extremely well catered for, but some of the attempts at modern rock and pop styles are stilted and in places cheesy. Having said that it's an invaluable tool for guitarists like myself - I use BIAB mainly to compose bass, keyboards, strings and brass parts for my original songs. I export the results as a MIDI file and open it in Sonar to add audio, e.g. vocals, and finalise the piece there.

A big plus of BIAB is that because it's a successful product it is extremely well supported, with regular updates and enhancements and a very active forum where you can get some first class help from seasoned users. The UK's leading music production magazine, Sound on Sound, dubbed Band In A Box "one of few music productions that sits in the must have category" and I agree.

Jammer Pro is a similar tool to Band In A Box. You type in chords to a stave-like grid, choose a style from a number of ones provided, and the program will compose - and recompose - to choice. A major advantage over BIAB is that you can have more than one output. For example, if you have an appropriate midi interface you can route drum data to a drum machine, some instruments to one synthesiser and some to another. Another advantage over BIAB is the provision of separate drum styles so you can adopt a band style you like and then swap out the drum style for another one if it sounds better. As with BIAB you can also devise your own styles.

Unfortunately Jammer Pro has not been as successful as Band In A Box and now seems to operate on a shoestring. Updates and new styles aren't published very often and there's no forum (although there is a small Yahoo News Group). However, they are still alive and well and a new version, Jammer Pro 6, was published early 2006 as well a new style set, Rock Basics. Jammer Pro 6 costs $129 US direct from Soundtrek, but I recommend you also buy all the add-on band and drum styles which totals $289 US.

I prefer the screen layout in Jammer Pro and the final results always seem a little 'tighter' musically than in BIAB. The styles are a little more modern also. When composing a song I tend to use both BIAB and Jammer Pro to try out accompaniment parts to my chords, choosing one or the other depending on the results they come up with, so my recommendation would be to buy both if that's similar to the way you wish to work.

Soft Synthesiser - Bandstand:

Bandstand is a great soft synth from Native Instruments concentrating solely on the sounds required for General Midi. It's very easy to use but also very versatile, having a useful amount of editibility but not at the expense of complexity. It uses real samples from a supplied library of some 2.5GB and you can simply load a standard midi file and play it back straight away with authentic sounds instead of the usual lame ones often associated with GM files. It has tools for adding reverb, chorus, limiting and EQ as well as midi manipulation features such as quantisation, transposition, etc.

Bandstand can be used in standalone mode or as a plug-in within Sonar where it works extremely well. It can also be used as a plug-in within Band In A Box where it greatly improves the BIAB experience, although I find it works more smoothly if Bandstand is in standalone mode linked to BIAB via Midi Yoke, a free utility which works as a virtual cable linking the output of BIAB to the input of Bandstand. Bandstand costs £150 in the UK.

You can read more about the features and hear examples of some of the instruments on Native Instruments' Bandstand product page here. Here's are some examples of tunes using Bandstand. These are three demo styles that come with Band In A Box. I exported them as midi files into Sonar, changed the volume, effects and panning settings slightly and processed the audio files (gently) through FinalPlug5. These instrumentals show off some of Bandstand's samples very well I think:

"So Cold " - BIAB demo of style ASHANT1

"Sad Tale" - BIAB demo of style LA_PBAL

"Carly" - BIAB demo of style ABRA

Final Mix Tool - Wave Arts' FinalPlug:

FinalPlug is a peak limiter and volume maximiser. It's an extremely useful tool to give your completed track that 'sparkle' and 'loudness' you associate with professional recordings.

One of the biggest frustrations encountered by home recording enthusiasts is that the recording they've spent many hours labouring over just doesn't sound 'pro'. This usually means it doesn't sound loud enough or 'in your face'. This is a huge topic that I won't go into here, but if this is a problem area for you I recommend you first do a lot of reading up on mastering and EQ. That's where the 'secret' lies, and where you'll learn what you need to learn from the base up. This isn't an area where you can acquire the knowledge 'top down' from a handy summary, trust me.

But in brief: remember that professional engineers have many years of serious training behind them as well as far better equipment, and this is probably the most highly skilled and difficult part of the whole business of recording. The trick revolves around the careful application of EQ, compression and limiting techniques appropriate to the recorded material. Untrained ears will usually use these tools excessively. making the track totally lacking in light and shade and fatiguing to listen to. (I'm not talking here about hardcore dance slammin' tracks where you can bash the daylights out of the sound spectrum because all the listeners want is excessive bass and sonic monotony.) EQ is used most often to separate out the different instruments and voices - often called 'carving out a space' in what's going on. In very simple terms it means tweaking the bass, middle and treble on each track but that really is putting it very simply. Tip: Things usually sound better if EQ is reduced on other tracks to make a track more prominent, rather than increasing the EQ on that track. Check out the definitions of compression and limiting in the Glossary below.

FinalPlug is a simple one-screen tool (pictured here) with very few controls which attempts to give you that final mix 'sparkle', applying the techniques above. It compresses and limits and will bring up the apparent overall loudness of your track. You can either use the small number of presets provided or devise your own. Used sparingly this is an excellent tool, but it's easy to overdo it - if that sounds good then turning the knob up will make it sound even better. No - it won't, I promise you! It's available direct from Wave Arts for $175 US.

Blues Guitar Video Tutor

If you're a guitarist you'll love this product. I'm including it here because it's so useful and such a bargain. It's available from PG Music, the makers of Band In A Box at a ridiculously low price of only $19US! It's a video tutorial you run on your PC which gives you all the lowdown on 101 blues guitar riffs, particularly all those fruity ones purveyed by Eric Clapton, Peter Green, et al. The real Stat guitar is locked in place on the screen as the licks are played and the screen also shows the guitar tab and music. As the player, Danny Casavant, performs each piece he explains precisely what he's doing, repeats tricky parts slowly, and passes on particular tips on getting the right sound, picking technique and so on. What makes it even more exciting is the live backing band. I'm very envious of this guy - he gets a tremendous sound out of his Strat and has first class chops. You can read more about over at the PG Music site here and also see a screen shot. I can't recommend this product high enough and at $19 it's really a no-brainer! Oh, and they also do a Volume 2 as well as similar products for rock guitar.

Useful/Essential Web Sites

MIDI Files:

BandTrax - Australian commercial midi file seller.

Comtracks - UK commercial midi file seller.

Elite - Australian commercial midi file seller.

Hands-On-Midi - UK commercial midi file seller.

Tran Tracks - US commercial midi file seller.

Midi Hits - .US commercial midi file seller.

Music Technology Information:

Cakewalk's 'Desktop Music Handbook' - The information packed into this section of Cakewalk's (Sonar) site is pure gold. If you're just starting out home recording then some time spent here will get you off to a flying start, and even the more-experienced will find something they didn't know before! Highly recommended.

tweakheadz lab - This is a MUST-visit web site, especially for beginners. Contains dozens of articles on setting up and using studio gear.

Scott R. Garrigus' DigiFreq site - Another first class site for home recording news, tips, offers and lots more. Scott is an excellent author - I can particularly recommend his current Sonar companion volume, 'Sonar 5 Power'.

Sound On Sound magazine - The best project studio (and pro) magazine bar none. Search here first for any gear or software reviews.

Harmony Central - A first class site for all things musical including instruments, technology and up to date news.

Home Recording.com - What it says on the tin.

PC Music Guru - Robin Vincent works in the home recording industry and has many years experience in making music with computers, which he shares on his must-visit site.

Fantomized - site for owners of Roland Fantom S and X keyboards. Good forums for getting help.

Music Technology Forums:

Studio Central forums - The excellent forums attached to the tweakheadz lab site listed above.

DigiFreq - Forums at the DigiFreq site listed above.

Sound On Sound Magazine forums - The forums attached to the Sound On Sound site listed above.

Band In A Box forums - Forums for PG Music's Band In A Box composition/accompaniment software.

Sonar forums - Forums for Cakewalk's sequencer.

Other:

Chordie - Guitar tabs. (Guitarists know what they are..)

Chord Finder - Another indispensable site for us plank spankers.

Rhyming Dictionary - Very handy when you're stuck on that song lyric!

Movie Poster Collector - My son's web site! He's an avid collector of vintage movie posters. You can see one or two on the walls in my studio.

Song Writing Tips

Songwriting is a craft, so don't expect to pen classics straight away. But if you never start you'll never arrive, so learn through practice - write and compose often, even if you don't end up with a complete song every time. If you're like me, you'll end up with a valuable folder of fragments and half-completed songs that you can go back to later if stuck for a verse, chorus or lyric.

I don't sight read music or write notation. I've learned all I know from experience and that's what I'm aiming to pass on here. Trained musicians should either tune out now or proceed if they want to find out some useful tips that formal musical training has not given them!

'Show - don't tell': Most important! Listeners will enjoy your music if your songs communicate feelings to them which they identify with. This happens best if the meanings are shown or hinted to them rather than told to them. If their imagination has to work a little they'll empathise more with what you're conveying. For example, don't say "The sun was setting" - which is merely a blunt fact with no other undertones. Instead, describe the scene in terms of colours, emotions, time, etc. so that the listener has the option of conjuring up their own feelings about such a scene, for example "Fading reds across the bay..".     Or, "Ain't no sunshine when she's gone" instead of "I'm so lonely without her". This is the technique most used in poetry. Use simile, "Easy like Sunday morning" and metaphor, "We're just two ships passing in the night".

Getting started: There are four usual ways of starting a new song; vary your approach, especially if you hit a 'dry' period:

Chords: Noodling around with chords on the guitar or piano often reveals interesting patterns with potential.

Melody: You think up a fragment of catchy melody and go to the piano or guitar and try out pleasing chords under it.

Lyrics:    You have an idea to convey and it suggests itself in words first. Get it down on paper before you forget!

Rhythm: Going through the patterns on a drum machine/soft synth very often suggests a whole song.

Let your ideas flow: Don't worry about getting stuck. Just go around the problem and work quickly - the muse when it comes upon you will not last too long! Getting your ideas down is more important than honing each one to perfection; you can always edit things later.

Reverse a couplet that isn't working: If you have a couple of lyric lines which you're happy with but one half of it is stronger than the other, swap it around so that the stronger line comes second, for example: "We're making two hearts black and blue, And there's nothing I can do." will have more impact at the end of a verse if reversed to: "Now there's nothing I can do, We're making two hearts black and blue."

Always have something changing: We all get bored quickly with music that drones on without changing. This is the reason songs have structures involving Verse, Chorus, Middle Eight, etc. as well as other common techniques designed to make you stick around and listen to the song all the way through. Some common arrangement moves are:

Start very simple with just solo piano and voice

Introduce tambourine halfway through to add excitement

Introduce strings and/or brass at successive stages

Use the dreaded key change (!) near the end of a ballad before the last chorus.

Can't get started? Listen to some music: I often find that a good way to get started is to play some CD tracks in the style I'm looking to write a song in. This doesn't prompt copying, subconsciously or otherwise, but it fills my head with music patterns, chords, sounds, etc. puts me right in the mood and 'primes the pump'.

Composing melody - the hard bit! A song's melody is at least as important as any other component of your song. In fact, your audience probably won't bother listening to your song at all if your melody is weak. Articles and books can't tell you precisely how write a melody because if there was a formula it would be too valuable to share! Here are some of my experiences though:

Noodling notes on a keyboard (even if you don't play properly, like me) can turn up interesting melodies. This doesn't work on a guitar, probably because of its bias towards chord playing, but playing chord changes on a guitar often enables you to 'hear' and then sing out a melody that's woven in those changes.

Beware monotony: vary the range (high and low notes) of the melody to make it interesting. Don't fall into the common beginner's trap of composing a melody largely following the root notes of the chords; try and use other notes of the chords, or even ones not in the chord but suggested by it. Experiment by playing different chords under the same melody to see if that's more harmonically appealing. By experimenting like this you sometimes find it's an iterative process whereby your original melody changes for the better and the chords also change as you try different combinations.

If you're stuck putting together a melody resist the urge to just change the chord - this won't substitute for lack of a clear melody line. Great songwriters seem to devise clever melodies using a few simple chords. Check out some of Brian Adams' big hits. He writes big, memorable rock songs around a handful of chords in what we guitarists call the first position, i.e. the easy chords like C, G, Ami, D, at the beginning of the fretboard. The most outstanding example of this is the Mavericks' 'Just Want to Dance the Night Away' whose verses, choruses and middle eight are all entirely different melodies sung over the same two alternating chords throughout the song - E and B7!

Keep it simple: you're not writing an eight minute classical piece. If the milkman could whistle it, then you've got a memorable and catchy melody. Pop music is a lot about repetition and a short, catchy melody can be made very effective by repetition, c.f. the Stones' '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction'.

Make a variation on the main melody in the middle eight, which is the portion of a song (usually eight bars long) that breaks things up just when it might become boring, e.g. the part in the Commodores' "Easy" that starts "I wanna be high, so high.."

Hooks: Hit songs have one or more hooks. This is the industry term for the bit in the record that makes the listener want to play the record over and over again, i.e. buy it! It's important that you include at least one hook very early on in your song; you need to grab the audience's attention, and keep it. Making the first lines to your lyric interesting is one way of achieving this.

Hooks can take many forms from a clever title (The Beatles' 'Eight Days A Week'); a catchy intro; a key change; a 'funny' noise; interesting guitar tone (fuzz guitar intro to Ike and Tina Turner's 'Nutbush City Limits'); novel guitar riff (Roy Orbison's 'Pretty Woman'); catchy rhythm fragment; sweeping strings interlude; sax solo (Gerry Rafferty's 'Baker Street'); vocal oddity; technical effect (flanging on the Doobie Brothers' 'Listen To The Music'); 'ear candy', etc. I'm sure you can think of as many as I can. They're not compulsory of course, but if you can introduce one, either on purpose or otherwise (what I call 'a painter's accident'!) you can add that certain attractive something to your finished piece.

Give the listener some structure: Don't make your song so 'interesting' that it's weird. The listener may feel so disoriented that they quickly lose all interest. They won't mind being challenged and will enjoy something new and imaginative, but on the other hand their minds will be attuned to pop music they've grown up with. They will feel more receptive if some of the 'norms' are present to enable them to mentally navigate through your song. Common architectures are as follows; use different ones to provide variety and to suit the song:

Intro, Verse 1, Chorus, Verse 2, Chorus, Middle Eight, Chorus, Chorus, Outro

Intro, Verse 1, Verse 2, Chorus, Verse 3, Chorus, Middle Eight, Chorus, Chorus

Intro, Chorus, Verse 1, Chorus, Verse 2, Chorus, Middle Eight, Verse 3, Chorus, Chorus

Verse 1, Verse 2, Verse 3, etc. (Narrative songs, e.g. Bob Dylan's 'Wesley Harding'.)

Don't confuse the listener: Beginners do this by putting in too many ideas, asking too many questions and generally not giving the listener enough of a story to grab onto and be taken away with. You want the listener to hear your song once and immediately be attached to it. Songs need to have a simple central theme running throughout. The theme is generally encapsulated in the chorus, where it bursts out after the verses set the scene, however, sometimes the title of the song is the summary of the story. In writing terms this central idea is called the "through-line". It's the central idea that ties up all of the loose ends together. e.g. Bacharach and David's 'Walk On By' is about a lover asking her ex to walk past her if he should see her again in the future. The verses explain why. That's it. That's the song. For the listener a song with too many ideas running through it gets in the way of the power of immediacy that a song can produce. It gets in the way because it confuses the listener with too much choice and in doing that sends out mixed messages and the listener won't have anything to connect to. Convey your message, invoke the audience's emotions and paint your aural picture - one idea at a time.

Keep it short: The average length of a pop song is about 3m:30s. Don't outstay your welcome. Above all, don't indulge in protracted guitar or other solos - you might think they're really cool but the listener won't hear most of it - they'll have switched off. Let a song breathe; a common beginner's problem is trying to fill all the spaces up. Great hooks can come from the contrast between sections and the spaces between.

Always be prepared: Always carry a pocket dictaphone or special notebook. Inspiration for that next great song won't come into your head spontaneously. Sessions where you decide to sit down tonight with your guitar and write a great song always end in disappointment and the feeling you'll never manage it. Ever had a superb thought for a lyric phrase in the car only to completely forget it when you got home? Great writers, and comedians, know this. That's why most of them jot down things they hear and see during the day that amuses them, hoarding it for later use. Benny Hill, the famous comedian, always carried a large notebook with him and he'd often sit for hours in restaurants and pavement cafes watching and listening to people. He'd jot down the everyday funny or odd things people said or did and go through them later when he was writing shows, so that he had something to spark his inspiration rather then having to sit down with a pile of blank paper and nothing else. Some writers are inspired by the titles used in magazine articles. These are often snappy, and can make great starting points for songs.

Get into the habit of seeing at the world as an infinite ideas machine. As a songwriter all you have to do is to tap into this amazing resource and translate what you see into songwriting ideas. Of course doing this takes a lot of practice and a willingness to become much more observant and mindful of what's going on in your life.

Break the rules (when it's better to do so): Don't forget, we're dealing with art here and not science. Human creativity is a wonderful but unpredictable thing and sometimes breaking the rules makes magic happen, and if it feels right and sounds right, it is right. The Beatles were the masters of this during their psychedelic creative period - deliberately breaking the rules to see what sparks would come off, e.g. stitching two different songs together in 'Day In The Life'. But learn the rules - your craft - first!

Don't ask relatives and friends what they think of your songs unless you need some comforting, but perhaps misguided, feedback! Ask for honest, constructive opinions from other songwriters, or post your MP3s on forums for like-minded folks to give you comment and suggestions. Sonar has a songs section on their forums here and Studio Central forums have a song review section here. There are songwriting sites with similar forums also.

Listen carefully to other music: With some of the above points in mind, now listen carefully to some of your CDs (and maybe those of some friends) and look out for the tricks and techniques that the artists and arrangers have used. For these purposes ignore whether you 'dig' the music or not; you're conducting a practical exercise here. Try and tease out why certain songs hold your interest and others don't. Why are some tracks simply great and others dull by comparison? What draws you in almost without you realising it? The lyrics? The steady layering of sounds? Where are the hooks?

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