Home Recording Is Changing Music

Home recording has already changed the music industry. I thank God for that everyday.

Fifteen or twenty years ago, someone like me would never be able to release a record due to incredibly expensive studio rates.

Nearly twenty years ago, when I first started making music, studio rates were around $20-50 per hour. It usually got very expensive very fast to make an album when at least 10 hours are needed to record and mix a single song.

This, as everybody knows, and I won’t bore you any further by rehashing all the news stories of yesterday, is not the case anymore.

What I’m getting at here is not that nowadays you can actually record a whole album in your bedroom for spare change, but that you can actually become a better songwriter because of all that.

Having the possibility of immediately recording an idea, then adding drums, then all the other instruments plus the kitchen sink, is very useful. At least to me.

If you are a Beethoven (or Brian Wilson) style genius who can hear a hundred different arrangement possibilities and structure a whole song without even playing a note, it might not make that much of a difference. But if you’re a less than naturally gifted songwriter with scant musical knowledge, you can rest assured that this IS a great advance.

Not only can I record a rough sketch of my song, and make dozens of tentative overdubs and accompaniments, I can also edit my song to my heart’s content. With modern computer recording platforms, I can switch a song’s structure around as I like. Add a couple more repetitions here, cut short the chorus there, it’s amazing.

That in itself is enough to not only make a songwriter’s life easier, but it can also increase one’s output by making everything more immediate.

Of course it can also work the other way, and make one lazier. I can see how having all that available at arm’s reach is probably keeping many from actually working on their playing and/or studying music. But the positive aspects far outweigh the negative, I hope.

Anyway, here’s a song that will be in our upcoming CD on Cloudberry Records. Again, it’s a demo recording with scratch vocals and a rough mix. Comments, as usual, are very much welcome.

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You Should Keep It To Yourself