Heck even the title is long and boring! It’s something most everybody new to recording flat out ignores. We will spend lots of money on guitars, recording software, PODs, etc. only to plug them into our computers with their tiny speakers (and maybe a subwoofer) and expect to get great results out of that “premium sound system” that came with the computer. We have successfully “stuck it to the man” who owns the studio that charges “outrageous” rates for studio time, broken the chains and are free to make music that will change the world! All it costs now is time, and that is free.
You go out and create the greatest song the world has ever heard, mix it up on those tiny speakers, and post it or send it to the world and….you get a few “hey that’s nice” or even worse, the dreaded silent treatment. If you are lucky somebody may point out that it sounds a little funny, pumping, too much bass, shrilly doesn’t quite sound right or whatever.
If you are luckier, before you sent it to the world you brought it on the iPOD into the car to crank it on the way to work and it didn’t sound so good. You had a chance to go back, made adjustments, got it to sound okay in the car, threw it up on the stereo to rock out only to find something else weird. At least you saved your chance to give a good first impression, so that’s better, and remember….time to do all this is free supposedly!
You continue to play the engineering equivalent of “whack-a-mole” a bit more, and over time get the mix to where it sounds mostly okay on everything you try. Satisfied, you wake up the next morning to crank your gem and it sounds messed up again. It turns out you listened so many times your brain turned what you were hearing into what it wanted it to sound like, and in the morning the ol’ noggin was reset and heard reality again. But time is free, right?
So you work on it more. Over about a month. For one song. That you had to listen to a million times to get it to “good” and now you’re sick of it. That killer guitar tone you had on the PC speakers doesn’t have the same fire in the car. And you wonder what else you could have been doing with all that time?
Okay, this is actually my story 
but judging by the questions I get probably resonates with a lot of you. If it does…read on, though it gets into more boring things but these will actually help!
I didn’t start out with any intention of starting a studio business. I simply wanted to record some songs I had written (they were the greatest ever! 
), so I bought some equipment to record on my PC and went to town. I knew about acoustics but chose to ignore them, because I didn’t want to spend the money when I thought I could get “around” them by using time as my free alternative. There’s plenty of people on forums who will tell you this is doable.
The first song I wrote sounded great! That was, unless I left the 6 inch circle right in front of my speakers. If I backed up a foot, it got dull. Across the room the vocal was too bright. If I walked towards the corner of the room it got very bass heavy. In the car, well don’t ask! So I ran around to every device I could play it on (I think 8!), took notes, went back and changed things, went through the circle again…and again…and again. After a month I was sure I had the best mix ever done! I proudly posted it to the world, and it’s still out there if you know where to find it. It doesn’t sound bad, but the quality isn’t there. Not only the mix, but also the sound of the guitar and the vocals. In a sense I had thrown a thousand darts and hit the board some times but no bullseyes.
Bottom line, you might get lucky, but even then if you can’t hear it how will you know?
(to be continued…WAKE UP! BUZZ!!!!!! 
)
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I'm J.J......and I'm a Gator!