Whithin 10 years, home recording studio software had come a long way from what it once was. There have been too many  improvements to any kind of effect and sampling technology that you can imagine. Ten years ago, we’re only getting started at what we can do and now it’s 10 times better!

This is great because superior systems are now about an arm and a let less and we can truely put out quality music. Now the only thing holding us back is our own songwriting and recording talent.

Here are 3 things that have been greatly improved in the last 10 years:
More Tracks – You can run more than just 24 tracks now. There were a few software packages that let you have what’s called “virtual tracks” that let you run more than 24, but if your RAM wasn’t to par, you could only run virtual tracks.Now computers come with an excess of 1 gigabite or more of ram. Plenty to get your point across in your song.

In fact, you can run as many tracks as your computer system has processor speed and ram for. Very cool.
Better Effects – Effects 10 years ago was amazing, but most of the time, you would have to shell out a lot of money to get those amazing effects. Well fast-forward 10 years, and a lot of those crazy effects are no further than a Yahoo search. And a lot of them are free. It’s crazy, I know, but they are no cost.

You can find , even free virtual amp heads for you guitar players (myself included).

Virtual Instruments – We didn’t have very many virtual instruments back in the day, and the ones we did have was NOT free. But you can do a Google search for “free VSTI’s” without quotes and find some excellant virtual instruments. My favorite is Synth 1 It’s patterned after a famous Nord keyboard (Nord Lead 2). Imagine having that keyboard for free. Amazing. And I use it all the time and I recommend you at least try it out.

Home recording studio software has indeed came a long way, but I’d like to think of what it will be like in the next 10 years. I can only imagine how great it will be.

There are some really exciting software in development that will be ready early next decade that will completely  change the way we record.

The new generation will think how in the world could they record on such primitive equipment. The old gear will still be called “vintage” but the software we work on today will be called “archaic”.

Anyway, you can only expect things to get better, cheaper, and more effective when it comes to home recording.

I’m not sure how much more problems this thing’s worth. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s ran into problems either. Maybe if I were running on XP it would work better. There are a few things I’ve found out while trying to get it set up like:

- It won’t run on 64 bit system

- The Protools demo they give you will not work (at least on vista it won’t)

- If you go online, most people have the same problems with it.

- I haven’t heard from M Audio so apparently they aren’t supporting it.

This is fairly disappointing.  M Audio should show a little more class in my opinion.

When I’m stuck, I usually pull it up and it inspires me to the point where ideas start to come to me. Even if I don’t end up using the tracks I’ve created with it.

I wish there were more “idea generators” out there, but for me it’s mostly the stylus. Granted sometimes it happens when I Synth 1 up, but by and large it’s the Stylus that gets me started flowing ideas again.

I haven’t tried any of their other products yet, but I’ve been told they work like Stylus. I’ve never really looked in to it, but I should. Anyway, they may have a demo or something so you can see for yourself if you don’t have one.

It’s really good for generating ideas.

Now, you have to keep in mind that this vocalist wasn’t very “good” in my eyes. He rarely sang in key, which ment I’d have to use my Melodyne extensively. When we started recording, I couldn’t believe how warm and full this guy sounded. Now, whenever I heard him, he was singing through a Sure SM 58, and it sounded less than ideal.

But I couldn’t believe how he sounded through this mic. It sounded so well, I went out and got me a couple of them. That, with my Oasis preamp made this guy shine. So I decided to test while the band was on a break, and I decided to try my shittiest preamp I had. He sounded almost as warm and full with that too.

If you’re in the market for an affordable condenser mic, I would get the Sure PG42 Condenser Mic, because I’ve tried it on my shittiest of shitty equipment and it still was warm and full. This is exactally where I got mine, It’s at Musiciansfriend.com. You should really Try It Out.

Well, when I got around to it, I noticed this little USB interface and I didn’t know which product it came with. It was eating at me. So I went through the user manuals and didn’t find it in either one of them(Fast Track Pro OR Keystudio).

I just found out that it came with the Session software that came with the Keystudio. I haven’t tried it out yet, but damn, I wasn’t expecting to get an extra USB audio interface. Even if it sucks when I try it out, it’s still cool because I didn’t expect it at all.

For those of us (myself included) that get board with the same way to do things, we need to freshen up our chops from time to time. What better way to do it than recording a different style of music. Something we’re not familiar with.

Two years into recording, I was getting board with recording rock all the time. That’s when I met some hiphop artists and started working with them. It was great. It was like I was experiencing the whole learning process again.

Learning different ways to record different styles of music really starts the creative process like nothing I’ve ever experienced.

If you’re growing a little stagnant with what you’re recording, I highly recommend going out and meeting new people in a different style of music than your own. The absolute worst thing that could come out of it would be that you learned something.

After rock and hiphop, I eventually went on to country, bluegrass(one of my personal favorites to record), and synthpop.

After you’ve recorded with a different style of music, you can look at your main style of music with new eyes and come up with some really great ideas and make the recordings even better.

That’s the way it is with me. Whenever I start to get tired of doing the same ol same ol, I’ll go to one of my friends in another style of music, record them for a couple of weeks, and I pick back up on my recordings and be able to come up with new fresh ideas that I wouldn’t have thought of otherwise.

Out of all the busy-ness, I actually logged on to Amazon and ordered three things.

1. An M-audio midi keyboard
2. A peddle for the keyboard
3. A M-audio Fast Track Pro USB audio interface

I’m sorry to say I haven’t had much time to do much with the Fast Track Pro, but I plan to sometime next weekend. I’ve heard a lot of good things about it and I hope it’s up for what I have in store.

I did get a chance to play around with the keyboard for a few minutes in FL Studio. I really like it. It’s just the latency problem, I’m not really digging that because I’m not used to that much latency. USB interfaces are somewhat new to me, so I may have done something wrong or I may be using the wrong drivers or something.

The software that comes with the keyboard, I can tell you is pretty much junk. As well as the software that came with the Fast Track Pro. It came with Live 6 lite and a demo of Protools LE M-Powered. If I had my way, they would ship it with a full version of Protools LE and left the Live 6 lite out all together.

I guess the people buying those things are like me, just buying the hardware and don’t care much for the junk software they ship it with. After I get used to the Fast Track Pro, I may post a review of it.

So that’s the reason I haven’t been doing much posting. I’m too tired by the time I get finished at night.

You will hear from me very soon.

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September is a special month for me. It’s when I first started out recording. As a matter of fact, it was in September of 1999. As I round out my first decade of production/engineering/recording/mixing, I’ve found myself thinking about where I started out. I’ve learned so much. Many of the things I’ve had to learn the hard way. But in the end, it’s all been good. I’ve worked with some talented people, recorded, produced and mixed some great songs, and taken my own music further than it has ever been.

Before I started, I would save up all my money and go into someone else’s studio. The mixes would hardly ever turn out the way I wanted them. Even when I was dishing out hundreds of dollars at a time to someone who otherwise does great work. I later realized that it was because I couldn’t technically tell him what I wanted.

But I usually always ended up not liking the mixes much. This was the days ADAT machines were so popular. He had two of them and I had so much stuff I’d want to use all 16 tracks. Of course, he’d charge me extra for using the second one. And extra for mixing 8 additional tracks. He had an analog mixer, and he’d be working hard on mixes.

I’d spent so much, that I could’ve bought some really good mic’s, a nice pair of powered monitors, recording and mixing gear, and still come out ahead. That what started me thinking.

“Why haven’t I thought about recording myself. I could learn something musically that was new, and save a lot of money in the process.”

That was about the time DigiDesign came out with the first of their Lite Editions. It was called the Digi 001 with Protools LE (lite edition) with 24 tracks, and I was quickly warming up to the idea. It came with a sound card (Audio Media III) and an external IO. It came with 8 inputs 2 XLR’s and 6 TRS’s. There was also ADAT LightPipe that added another 8 tracks, a Midi IO and a S/PIDF IO.

I basically fell in love with that thing. Within a few months, I had enough money to buy the 001, a Mac G4 to run it on, and 1 large diaphragm condenser mic (Audio Technica 4040 if I can remember correct). In the time it took to save up for a few sessions, I had my whole system. And I started to add on to that whenever I could.

I’ve learned a few things in my first 10 years. Some good, some bad.

Here’s some of the things I’ve learned along the way:

Not Every Mix You Get Excited About Will Last The Test Of Time

I’ve had to learn this lesson more than once. I thought I did a swell job mixing only to find out a few weeks or years down the road they were very amateurish. One thing I did in the beginning was to not pan efficiently. And as a result, my mixes were mainly mono. I also had phase problems. Mainly as a result of my experimenting with things I ran into a bunch of problems that I wasn’t aware of earlier. It’s still hard to listen to my first mixes.

I can’t tell you how many times I wrote a song and was so excited about it that I spent all night recording and mixing it. I’d listen to the track the whole morning. Go to bed around noon, listening to it till I went to sleep. Only to wake up and feel bad I ever recorded it. Most of the songs I’ve done that way, I’ve regretted even writing them much less spending time on them.

People May Incourage You And Tell You It’s A Great Mix When They Only Want To Make You Feel Good

It feels really good when people encourage you. It’s also good to get encouragement from your recordings themselves. It’s one thing that’s kept me going this long. Just a little encouragement from the right person at the right time can mean you toughing it out or quitting the whole thing for good.

If I kept at it, I knew I’d get good eventually, so encouragement has done me a world of good. I’m sure if you can think back, it’s probably done you some good as well. It’s hard to get anywhere without encouragement from something or someone.

But I’d be lying if I said there isn’t a negative to that same positive. And it’s about the intent of the encouragement. People will give you a false sense of encouragement. What I mean is people like you. Some people even love you. They only want you to feel like a million bucks.

If they’re lying about a mix or something else telling you it’s good when deep down you know something is wrong with it, they may be just trying to make you feel good. Now, even that is actually a positive. You have someone who cares so much about you that they want you to feel like a million dollars. You can’t buy that anywhere. And if you could, you couldn’t afford it.