As the music industry is getting more and more saturated, artists are trying to outperform each other in sound quality. It’s become more often to invest in a lot of advanced equipment, and many artists (mostly bigger) are splurging on mixing and mastering engineers with expensive studio set-ups. But this shouldn’t discourage everyone else! At the core of everything, music is about creativity, expression and unique sounds. As bigger artists are focusing on sound quality, smaller artist can still find their way by putting out something that doesn’t have an immaculate mix, as long as they have a signature sound and can take us on for a ride. The biggest example of this is TikTok. I have noticed that a lot of the artists getting famous on the app are bedroom producers with noticeably imperfect mixes. But they obviously have something that is appealing enough for a larger audience to give them a platform.
How to record from home? Instead of trying to perfectly isolate your space and spend your hard-earned money on specialised microphones, try using your phone! Phones released in the last few years have good audio quality, they can record WAV and some better phones can even do stereo (mine is stereo and goes up to 24bit 48kHz). Recording with a phone leaves more room for spontaneity, because you can just press record while something cool randomly starts happening. For example, 2 of my friends were playing guitar in the lobby and I just quietly put my phone down on the table between them, with each microphone pointing at 1 of them. I then signalled them that I am recording and that they shouldn’t stop playing. The wooden walls/floor actually gave it a very nice slap-back/ short reverb effect, which fit perfectly into the recording. I then used this recording to create a lo-fi track. Every microphone has its own specific coloration and EQing- so do phones. You can use this in your advantage to give your track unique colouring, instead of using the same industry-standard microphones/plug-in that give you a sound similar to 80% of other music in your genre. Lo-fi effects are actually a great way to go when recording on phone microphones. They will mask the quality imperfection and at the same time give a cool flavour to your tracks.
Also remember- you can use just one sound to create literally anything you want, thanks to all the different effects and sampler we have available nowadays- a lot of them for free! I have done this “challenge” multiple times in order to force myself to get creative and make a whole track using just one sound as the basis.
Here is a video from a Sound Designer using objects he has around the house on order to create a cool beat:
Sources
https://ask.audio/articles/5-unusual-things-every-sound-designer-should-try
