Getting Started can be Rough

Recording your music at home can be one of the most rewarding and free methods of expressing yourself. But there is a lot of gear and software out there, and even the fanciest gear in the world will not produce a quality recording for you unless you know what you're doing.

We run into that sort of thing a lot here in Portland. It seems like everyone is a musician, and everyone has a home studio. And though there is plenty of high-quality production going on around here, a lot of what comes out of Portland just sounds awful production-wise. It's true that a lot of people are actually going for that "lo-fi" sound, but many just use that to cover up for the fact that they don't really know the first thing about production.

I've definitely fallen into that category in the past. Hey, I learn something new every day. It's great to have such a huge community of musicians and producers to share techniques with, and to help each other directly on projects. Every project is filled with more and more learning experiences, and there's no end to what you can learn in this field.

About.com's Home Recording Guide has dozens of tips and tricks, do's and don'ts, and whatever else can fall in between to help you along your way.

So if you're new, and your recordings aren't turning out exactly the way you want them to, don't get discouraged. The best thing to do is to work with and learn from your community, and your second best friend is good old trial and error.