Although it is advisable to get a lot of practice in before you spend any money recording your music, taping rehearsals with an inexpensive cassette recorder is a good way of hearing what you’re doing right and what needs to be changed. Many cheap recorders have a hard time picking up the bass frequencies so you may have to adjust your volumes to allow for more bass to the microphone.
It is terribly difficult to objectively judge your band’s performance while you’re actually playing so having a tape to listen to helps a great deal. A video tape can work even better but be prepared for a potential shock as sometimes the truth hurts. But as you improve, that too, will be noticeable on the recordings.
After you’ve gotten at least three tunes down tight, with the instruments working together as a team and the songs edited if they’re too long and repetitive or if the solos aren’t impressive enough, then you can consider going to a demo studio and getting a demo tape. There is a very wide price range of demo studios these days because of the popularity of home digital recording equipment. If you ask around you’ll probably find someone in your own neighborhood that has a decent multi-track recording set up in his home. You shouldn’t have to pay over $25.00 an hour to record but at that rate you should still budget for around $300.00 for a finished demo.
A lot of time in the studio is taken up by micing the drums. Some studios have small pads that attach to the drum heads and relay the beats into a computer that then recreates the drum sound onto digital tape. The drummer is still playing whatever he wants to play but the sound is able to be manipulated in a variety of ways to give you whatever drum sound you could possibly want. Otherwise, it does take time to adequately record an acoustic instrument such as the drums or an acoustic guitar. Most of the time the electric guitars and bass can be plugged directly into the recording console by way of a small preamp that simulates a variety of different amplifier models. Don’t expect to get each song down in the first take. A whole new set of nerves take over in a recording studio and it is often times more stressful than playing live. For one thing, it’s costing you money.
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