How Professional Sound Studios Can Benefit Musicians and Performers
There are many reasons why the majority of professional musicians use professional recording studios to help them produce and record their music. While many upcoming artists often use their home studios and their own gear, the technology, enhancements, and knowledge available in professional sound studios are invaluable. These studios are designed specifically for recording, meaning their rooms are acoustically treated and soundproofed, and the technology available in professional studios is usually of higher quality (and quantity) than most musicians own personally.
Sound studios are typically spaces where musicians, singers, and performers can rehearse, compose, produce, and record their music. In addition to music, many studios offer recording services for other mediums, such as voiceovers for film and dialogue recording for audiobooks. Recording studios are typically divided into several rooms. The studio room, which can also be referred to as a “live room” or a “tracking room”, is the main room where the musicians play their instruments. There are usually also several smaller rooms, or booths, where a certain instrument can be isolated to prevent bleed-through of that instrument’s sound to the microphone of a different instrument and vice versa. Usually, vocalists will perform in separate vocal booths so that there is no (or minimal) bleed of other instruments into their vocal mics. Oftentimes, drums are placed into separate isolation booths as well because of their extra high volume. The control room is where the producer and sound engineers work and record the sounds through a console and into their DAW (digital audio workstation)/computer. Studios often have separate machine rooms as well.
For electronic musicians, in most circumstances, the studio is also the place where the composing occurs. Electronic music composers and producers usually work together to create compositions on DAWs, such as Ableton, Logic Pro, or Cubase, using samples and MIDI. For most musicians, composing is usually done before entering the studio. They typically bring in a demo recording or idea to the studio for rehearsal, arrangement/producing, recording, mixing, and lastly, mastering.
As mentioned, the musicians/performers play in the live room, which is usually positioned in such a way that performers can see into the control room through glass, where the producer and engineer are. There are two recording approaches that musicians/performers and their teams choose between: either parts of the performance (i.e. different instruments) can be played and recorded separately (a process called “over-dubbing”) or the entire composition can be recorded with every musician playing together in real-time. While the musicians/performers play, engineers monitor the sound, record it, and use hardware/technology to manipulate the sounds as needed, often
