The Future of Music Production, is at Home
When you imagine a band recording an album, you probably imagine 3-5 people in a booth or studio room with mixers and producers sitting in a separate room. With those mixers and producers, you probably picture a huge table of lights, switches, knobs, buttons, and fade adjusters. If this is the image you create in your head, then you would be absolutely correct! Well, you would be if this was 20 years ago…
Ever since the revolution of technology where practically every home is filled with home computers, tablets, and laptops, the process of recording and editing music has drastically changed. From the point of view of those who simply listen to music and are not musicians themselves, they will hear practically no change at all. But the reality is that recording studios are a dying industry because the availability to record at home for free has opened up within the past few decades.
One such program that makes this possible is a free software called Audacity. I know from personal experience the potential it has. Any microphone that has USB capability is able to be used to record. audio files can be dragged onto the audio tracks to be used, cut, and edited. For a free software it is quite versatile and advanced. Countless audio layers can be recorded and stacked on top of each other. Along being layered and stacked together, Audacity can add effects (Reverb, reverse, Wah-Wah, Phaser, Echo, Paulstretch) to add flavor and style.
Audacity, Garageband, FL Studio, and many others have the ability to turn your laptop into a portable studio that’s capable of creating high quality songs right from home. This innovative convenience allows one person to record and layer drums, guitar, vocals, bass, keyboard, or any instrument, over each other. This is not a new concept as musicians like Stevie Wonder were doing this back in the 70’s. The difference now is it is much cheaper because you no longer need to pay for studio time and rush through the creative process. You can take your time and create professional quality music right from your home, on one device.
This evolution of technology and convenience has allowed people, including me, to pursue passions without breaking the bank. They can export their music and upload it to media like Soundcloud or Youtube, growing their music’s popularity. This is because evolving tech has given an entire generation a chance to create and strive in a universally loved art form.
Here is an example of a piece of music that was recorded and edited using only Audacity…
Josh Chadbourne
