Dan's House Studio, services offered

Recording your music at Dan's House Studio

The information on this page can be helpful to some of you, and old hat to others. If you are new to recording, keep in mind that none the stuff on this page is required reading. No specialized knowledge is needed to go into a studio. All you need to know is your music - I'll do the rest.

Today, the software for home recording is readily available to anyone willing to shell out a few hundred (or thousand) bucks, but doing the DIY thing means a good deal of time clawing your way up that learning curve. Recording your own music is kind of like fixing your own car - anyone can do it, but by the the time you're done you wish you'd just taken the damn thing in to the garage.

I play the same role as your erstwhile auto mechanic (I hope that's a good thing), getting paid to do the grunt work so you can devote all your time to getting your music out. Leave all the knob twiddling and cord untangling to me.

Of course, for those of you who want to get into the nuts and bolts of the process, I am happy to oblige, and always willing to answer any questions you've got.

The three basic phases of recording your project are tracking, mixing, and mastering.

tracking...

...is that stage during which we record your music, including the initial recording session and any subsequent overdub sessions. If you're coming in with a full band, the aim at the initial tracking stage is to get a good foundation down - solid bass and drums at least. Getting that solid rhythm foundation is essential to producing a great recording! Then the overdubbing sessions will fill out the picture - recording and fine-tuning the vocals and backing vocals, maybe putting down horn parts, guitar leads or keyboards, fixing a few goofs made in the initial tracking session.

At the end of each session, you'll get a rough mix of what's been done that day so you can hear how the project is progressing.

mixing...

...is where we take all those elements we've recorded, and balance them the right way. If we see the tracking sessions as providing the raw ingredients, then the mixing stage is where we blend those raw elements into the finished product. Of course, as we're tracking the material, I'll be tweaking the sounds along the way, always molding the mix toward it's final shape, so that when we get to the mixing stage we'll already be a good part of the way toward our goal.

It's best not to try to get a final mix on the same day you're tracking. When you mix, you want to approach the recording from the most objective viewpoint you can. It's fine to get a rough mix done the same day as tracking, and those roughs will definitely help propel us toward the final mix, but you'll want to include a phase where you confront the mix with fresh attitude and a clear head. You want to be listening to your sounds with ears that aren't ringing from three hours of shrieking guitar overdubs. Take your rough mixes home and live with them for a bit before coming in and getting that perfect, final mix.

mastering...

...is that final step before getting your music delivered in its final format, whether it be CD, mp3, or vinyl. (I've got more info on mastering a little farther down on this page.) Mastering is something you can choose to have done here or at a separate mastering studio. I also provide mastering services for projects that have been recorded elsewhere.

Pricing is very straightforward - one hourly rate covers all time spent here, from setup to mastering.

I'm often asked if I charge for setup time when the band comes in - my answer to this is "yes". Getting the mikes in place and the headphone mix set up is a big part of getting the right sound.

Studio time

$45.00 per hour for mixing, recording, mastering

$320.00 for a full day (eight hour block), $40/hour for each hour past eight that same day.

Recording & Storage Media

no charge for CDR's

if you choose to buy a hard drive, prices vary, but about $80.00 will probably buy you all the drive space you need.

Recording Options

Your drive or mine...

We can either record to a hard drive I've got here on my system, or you can record your project to your own dedicated hard drive that we can pop in and out of the computer as we need to. You can either bring in your own drive, or purchase one through me. Contact me for details.

All active project data is backed up to a separate backup drive, but once your project is completed, it's up to you to take your data for archiving. All the files created here for your project will be here for a while, but it's your responsibility to take the stuff with you if you ever think you want to reopen the project at any time, unless you make a specific arrangement with me to archive it.

Using a click track

You can choose to record to a click track, if you want. Apart from simply providing a steady beat to keep you in line, the click also provides a real edge when it comes to editing. Since everything is recorded to a grid when using a click, it's a real snap to cut, copy, and paste sections of the piece, whether you need to copy entire multi-track chorus sections or replace a single misplaced kick drum hit.

A word of advice, though - it's generally not a good idea to try recording to a click if you've never practiced with one before. If you want to go with a click, make sure everyone in the band is comfortable working through the whole song with a metronome beat going, and get plenty of this practice in well in advance of coming in to the studio.

Recording live & overdubbing tracks

If you want to record your stuff live, we have enough room and isolation capabilities to get everyone's track down with negligible bleed between the tracks. If you're happy with the result, we can go with the live tracks, but you'll always have the option to replace tracks that you're not satisfied with.

Importing tracks recorded elsewhere

If you have a partially completed project that you want to mix or add further tracks to here, just contact me and let me know what the format is. I can import tracks from TASCAM DA88's DTRS format (I've got three TASCAM machines in great working order), or if you can bring the tracks as WAV files on a hard drive, CDR, or data DVD, I can import the tracks easily into my system. I can also export tracks recorded here if you need to take them elsewhere for further tracking, mixing, or editing.

Mastering is the final step in your recording project, the final "polish" before the CD is duplicated. The mix sounds good, you've hit the right balance between the instruments, got all your effects in line - you've taken each song as far as you can. But as you've been mixing, you've been treating each song as a separate entity - levels and overall sounds are going to differ from song to song. Mastering looks at the collection as a whole, and subtly tweaks each song's final mix just the right way as to make the whole thing hang together as one, and make the CD sound as punchy and powerful as any other release on the store shelf.

Where should you have your project mastered?

The short answer, of course, is here, at Dan's House. The longer answer is below...

Top-notch, reputable mastering studios can charge over $1,000 to master your project, and while the results you get will most likely be great, you've got to ask yourself if an expense like this is within your budget.

On the other end of the spectrum are well-intentioned folks (we hope) who offer to master your stuff for a tiny fraction of that cost. While the price may be attractive, it's important to remember that you need someone who, simply put, knows what they're doing. Anyone with a computer and T-Racks software can claim to be a "mastering engineer" the same way anyone with a socket wrench set can claim to know how to replace your car's head gasket.

In between these two extremes you might find CD replication firms that will offer to master your stuff for around $300-$500, as part of your disc replication package. This may or may not be a good deal, but I don't recommend taking this "package" approach to finishing off your audio. You need someone closer to the music, someone who cares a bit more.

I've had experience with all three scenarios - the pricey mastering studio, the disc duplication package deal, and the basement studio approach.

The pricey studio... One of my clients, whose project I'd been working on for over a year, decided to take his final mix to a hot mastering studio in Manhattan, a studio that masters a lot of bigger, indie bands. The music was very delicate stuff, light and airy, a lot of space, and a lot of ambience, so it was important that whoever mastered it had to improve on an already wonderful sound. They did a great job, and charged him $800.00.

However, it sounded no better than what I had done for him, for quite a bit less. In fact, their mastering job was a touch too quiet compared to mine, so he took it back to them and had them boost it to more closely approximate the levels I had hit.

The package deal... Another client approached me with a CD already mastered by one of the biggest names in disc replication. The cost was $350.00, as part of their package deal. He had gone back and forth with these guys trying to hit the right sound, and never quite achieved it. Because of the amount of time and money he'd already spent on the project with them, he was really reluctant to abandon their work. I convinced him to let me master the material, ignoring the work they'd done. In truth, the mastering they had done was atrocious - some songs were way too quiet, some too loud, and a lot had messy, booming, muddled low ends that sounded terrible. I got the distinct impression that these guys just did not care about what they were doing, or didn't know. Either way, the CD was a mess.

I spent an afternoon on the material, and improved it immensely, much to my client's delight.

The kid next door... As far as the basement mastering engineer goes, even if the rate is super-cheap, you're paying him to learn his craft, and while learning, he may deliver something to you that sounds worse than the original, depending on how much he's learned. You may say, "But Dan, isn't this how YOU started out?" Yes! Ten years and a few hundred bands ago. I don't begrudge anyone their chance to learn the craft, but when it comes to your music, you need to do what's best for the music.

I can master the material you record here, or your project recorded elsewhere, and charge my basic studio rate of $45.00/hour.

What does mastering accomplish?

There are a few specific things that mastering is intended to do...

1) Trim the beginning and ends of the tracks.

2) Adjust the length of the pauses between songs.

3) Trim or boost certain frequencies. For example - adding some high end to make it shine a bit more, or trimming some boominess off the bottom.

4) Ensure that all the tracks are loud enough in general, and in relation to each other.

5) Judicious use of compression and limiting to tighten the sound, bring the instruments closer to each other, and give more punch and solidity to the mix.

Some of this work is very simple stuff, like trimming the ends of the songs or adjusting the pauses between tracks, and doesn't require any special knowledge or experience. But the "meat" of mastering is quite a bit tricker. Things like deciding how much high-end polish to add without ending up with a brittle or harsh sound, how to clean up a muddled low end without robbing the bass of its power, knowing how to pump up the level without wrecking the dynamics, getting the acoustic tracks to sit right with the electric tracks - these are tasks best entrusted to someone who's got a lot of experience under his belt.