recording studio questions....

[guitartesta]

Re: recording studio questions....

Yo, in regards to studio rates it does indeed vary, however you can usually find a good studio for about $40/50 an hour, but check for ones that offer cuts in price in booking day times. The studio I interned at this summer's rates were $60 / hour, but they made bigger cuts in rates with larger amounts of time booked. If your just starting up I see people posting things up about the Mbox.
I am currently loaning an Mbox for my Tech. Of Audio V course, the things are cool and everything... However for the price, your better off buying a Presonus Firepod, I love Pro Tools and all BUT running programs like Cubase or Steinberg Nuendo it frees up way more processing power on a pc. I do use both PCs and Macs regularly; but undoubtedly its much more cost efficient to start out with a pc for recording for novice and intermediate users. If you want to go ProTools, also check out M-Audio's website, they have some pretty good stuff on they're and if your going legit, there is however a $300 fee for the M-Audio version of ProTools, yet another good program is Ableton Live, which Beck uses in the studio quite often.


Live long and prosper.
- Testa

 

[J Moose]

Re: recording studio questions....

ive got a few, even though i dont plan on going to one anytime soon...just personal knowledge...

how much does it cost? is it hourly rates? day rates? week rates? do the prices normally include the tapes (or hardrives)? rates include engineer?

When I ran a commercial studio this same question arrived in my email about three times a week and even more often on the phone. I still get asked it but thankfully it's far less often now!

How much does it cost to go to a studio? Anywhere from $10 an hour to $1000 an hour and you're going to be paying more for experience, better room & equipment at a real studio.

Generally, the question that people SHOULD ask is "How much does it cost to make a record?" because it's FAR more relevent and usually that's what they want to do. In over 10 years I've never seen anyone book a day just to muck around and not make a CD or EP for release. And really, the truth is that by the time your done with the recording costs, album artwork, mastering & duplication at the most basic level to optional esoteric things like equipment rentals, catering, taxis & limos, hiring a hot-shot mix guy because the A&R mook at the label needs the name so the promoters will push it to MTV and the rest of the world or spending six months to a year on the thing PURELY because you can...

You could spend anywhere from $5K to $500K by the time the disc is actually 100% done and ready for sale. The first step is to define your goals and your budget because they're pretty closely related.

If the goal of recording is to demo up new songs & show 'em to the rest of the band or something simple and "non-critical" then you can totally use just about anything including that used $100 cassette 4-track you saw at the pawn shop. If the goal is a little more lofty, say you want to record a basic EP or CD for commercial release & have the intent of promoting your music to clubs & management types then about 80% of the time you're going to be better off going to a studio or hiring an engineer to relieve some of the pressure of doing it all yourself. Just like guitar players, drummers or anything else...all engineers/producers are not created equally and you should do some serious shopping around to find one that will work with you, not against you but that's a whole other rant for another time!

If the goal is ultra-lofty and you want to release a CD that hangs with the in-crowd and won't get blasted off the planet when it's played next to whatever’s on MTV/CMT/VH1 or commercial radio at the moment...then you pretty much need a producer/engineer type to at least help out & keep the ship away from the rocks if not plot the course. Besides if the record sucks and six months after it's done you hate it you'll have someone to blame!