Killer Home Recording

[brandondrury]

Killer Home Recording

Claim Yours Here


(I'm obviously taking this launch VERY seriously. )

The Killer Home Recording series includes everything I can think of about the topic of music recording after eight years of recording, thousands of songs, well over 100 bands, nearly four years of running RecordingReview.com, and after thousands and thousands of posts here on the RecordingReview.com forum.

There are few dudes on the planet who are so in-tuned with the challenges of recording at home who understand your needs exactly, who want to save you this much cash, and want to see you succeed at home recording as much as I do. I've poured my guts into the Killer Home Recording series so you can jump into music recording and start kicking butt years faster than you would have the old fashioned way.

Killer Home Recording is designed to knock 2 or 3 years off the learning curve of home recording.


Goals
1.To be the most in-depth, comprehensive system to understanding exactly what you need to crank out killer home recordings in terms of gear, tactics, and concepts.
2.To ensure you don't waste a drop of blood, sweat, and tears focusing your energy on the wrong things.
3.To ensure that every dollar and every second you invest into your recordings are going to contribute directly to a difference in fidelity and musical effectiveness that will obviously show up on your recordings.
4.To tackle the process of audio recording from the real world perspective of the home recorder who doesn't have access to million dollar rooms, the best musicians in the world, hundreds of thousands of dollars in recording gear, or 80 hours a week to monkey with this stupid stuff.
5.To be honest! To tell you what you don't want to hear when it will make a long term improvement in the way you record your music. If you want your mother to smack you on the bottom and tell you are special after committing your 3rd felony, this system ain't it! I'll give it to you straight and tell you how it is even if you hate me for it.
6.To achieve all of these goals in a way that is fun to read. I may piss you off a few times, but I'm confident that you will not find a more fun recording system out there. If you are looking for a rigid, encyclopedia for recording.....This ain't it! I'm fairly positive that I will set the world record for number of Back To The Future references in a home recording system.
7.To take on popular myths and use actual audio examples to illustrate my point. I was hoping to fit all the audio files on one DVD. At this point, that may not be possible.

Delivery
I worked my butt off building a member area to access the system. While it wasn't as bad as a Nazi death march, it was horrific undertaking. In the end, I made the decision to scrap it. (There's nothing like 200 hours of work down the drain!)

The systems will be in standard ol' pirate-the-hell-out-of-me PDF. So, yes, it's an ebook. I struggled with this one for a long time and ultimately decided that this was the most user friendly format in the world. If anyone knows of any copy protection that isn't remotely annoying, let me know. Otherwise, I guess it's a damn free for all. (Yippie!) I do have future plans for dead tree version, but I've invested so much cash and passed up so many recording gigs doing this stupid system that I can probably afford to print up about 3 copies of each system right now.

Many of the systems contain a ton of audio files. Killer Home Recording: Vocals, for example, contains about 280MB of audio files in 320K mp3 form. (With this many damn audio files, I seriously considered making this an official home recording course, but I'm way too tired for that undertaking!). You will be given a download link when you order your system(s).

Most of you will be content with the mp3s. For those who are not I will give the option of ordering DVDs with 44.1Khz, 16 bit wav files for an additional fee.

Eight Different systems
In order to comprehensively cover all aspects of this gigantic craft, I've decided the only way is to bust it up into 8 different systems. See below.

Release Date
I'm close enough to put this page up. I'm shooting for late July, but I've obviously am terrible at gauging system completion times!

Affiliate Program
Do you have a website, blog, or newsletter? I'll offer a generous commission to anyone who sends buyers my way. I'm still working out the details on this one, but if you interested sign up for my Affiliate list.

[brandondrury]

Designed for the person who is just now taking the plunge into the world of audio recording. Selecting the gear necessary can be overwhelming. It's incredibly rare for a person to jump in, buy some gear, and end up with a reliable, effective recording setup that will do exactly what they intended. That's the exact goal of Killer Home Recording: Setting Up.

You'll discover everything you need to record, every factor you need to think about, and nothing you won't. We tackle everything from the Mac vs PC debate to the exact features you really need in an audio interface to what to look for in a recording computer to deciding if a computer is the right way to go. The writings are as complete and thorough as I've ever seen. They go way further than most forum discussions can go and don't leave out the details that always seem to get lost on forums and blogs. An in-depth glossary is included to explain these fancy audio terms and a thorough, comprehensive guide to troubleshooting the problems that everyone inevitably has to learn the hard way.

Killer Home Recording: Setting Up will save you hours and hours of time, possibly thousands of dollars, and will ensure (when applicable) that you come out recording with a few hairs on your head. Unfortunately, I wasn't so lucky!

Do not spend a dime on recording equipment before reading Killer Home Recording: Setting Up!

[brandondrury]

Everyone new to recording electric guitar has a zillion questions. What mic should I use? Where should I place the mic? How important is the mic? What about the preamp? Will I be happy with stock mic preamps? Do I need $2k preamps/ Do I need a tube amp? What room should I record in? How important are new strings? Should I use layering? How? Is two layers enough? What about four layers? What about 20 layers? Are the modern emulators a replacement for classic guitar gear? This mind boggling list goes on and on and on.

In Killer Home Recording: Electric Guitar we tackle all of these questions. We back them up with audio clip after audio clip all in an effort to snag killer guitar sounds for your recordings from day one.

[brandondrury]

Just like electric guitar, everyone always seems to have a ton of questions about bass. Should I record DI or use an amp? How important is the preamp? What's a hardware compressor going to do for me? What mics work best on bass amps? What bass is going to give me the character I'm looking for? What DI is best? How do I solve the usual bass tone problems? What's a high end AD converter going to do for my bass tracks?

The questions go on and on. In Killer Home Recording: Bass, we provide answer after answer with numerous shootouts and audio illustrations to make it easy to decide what gear and tactics should be utilized to achieve the your dream bass sounds. Most of us are plagued about the unanswered questions of the necessity of $2k basses, high end analog to digital converters, and more. We cover all of that and more.

[brandondrury]

The consensus is recording drum is the toughest of all instruments. We knock that out of the water and explain exactly what you should expect out of your drummer, what rooms are ideal for drums, what mics work, what mics don't, the impact of preamps, the impact of compressors and tons more. We discuss secrets of EQ that I've never given away in the past. (Doesn't “secrets” sound like a used car salesman? Ha ha) We discuss and illustrate the important of tuning. We illustrate the impact on drums and discuss advanced tactics such as parallel compression and even show a tactic or two that will royally piss some of you off.

[brandondrury]

Snagging killer acoustic guitar sounds is often difficult for the beginner. In Killer Home Recording: Acoustic Guitar we tackle all the usual beginner questions? Where should I place the mics? Should I use mics at all or use DI? What mic placements sound best for the acoustic guitar sound in my head? What mics work best on acoustic guitar? Do I need to shell out the big bucks for a high end mic preamp? Can a $500 mic preamp sound just as good as a $2,000 mic preamp or is the stock preamps in my audio interface good enough? What about AD converters?

We tackle question after question to give you the confidence to unlock the secret to killer acoustic guitar sounds.

[brandondrury]

It seems that everyone is struggling to capture their dream vocal sound. We cover the concept of squeezing exciting vocals out of singers in depth. You'll get a first hand, in depth smashing over the head of the importance (or lack of importance in some cases) of microphones, preamps, converters, mic placements, mic distances, and more. We'll talk about just about every vocal recording factor that I can imagine. We tackle vocal recording problem after problem and offer solutions to those. We provide audio illustration after illustration. You'll be making better vocal recordings in no time with Killer Home Recording: Vocals.

[brandondrury]

90% of audio engineering is a understanding of the basics and having the right attitude. In Audio Engineering Essentials we conquer pretty much all of 'em. We cover each and every piece of gear you really need to make outstanding recordings. We focus on the hidden things that the pros seem to be keeping a secret from the guy recording at home. We give an in depth look at what it takes to really make recordings work. I'm confident that this book will save many of you thousands of dollars and will have an outrageous impact on the quality of your recordings all at the same time. This book will build confidence in your recording abilities, take questions that you weren't sure about and give you a clear answer, and probably confuse the hell out of you all at the same time.

We slaughter everything from studio monitoring to control room acoustics to live room acoustics to MIDI Sequencing. We even smash the robo-physics stuff (phasing and comb filtering) in a way that I've went FAR out of my way to illustrate in the least boring, least technical way possible.

It's rare to get such in-depth advice on exactly what is required in the craft of recording in such a real world way without hype, without BS, from the perspective of someone who's been slugging it out at home year after year, recording after recording. I sometimes make wild claims that are not what you often hear in internet recording land. I'll gladly back them up with audio clips.

[brandondrury]

The best tracking in the world can only go so far without killer mixing. It seems that mixing is the most misunderstood of all recording tasks. In Killer Home Recording: Murderous Mixing we hit you right over the head with secret after secret to creating your own killer mixes. (More car salesman crap!) We cover each and every mixing tool (reverb, delay, EQ, etc) in great depth. We discuss typical problems found in each and every instrument. We discuss modern, controversial methods to transform your mixes into mega productions. (I'll call that my Lose 10 Pounds, magazine cover hype!) We illustrate numerous mixing tricks. Most importantly, we discuss overall fundamental concepts that are absolutely required for anyone looking for outstanding overall mixes and not just a bunch of tracks.

The beginner often sits down and says “Where the hell do I start?” The idea behind Killer Home Recording: Murderous Mixing is to give the beginner exactly what they need to jump into the world of mixing. I cram concepts, tricks, and tactics down your throat that took me years to understand. I'm confident in saying that I've never encountered a recording book that was so in-depth about the mixing process. (I haven't read 'em all, but I've read a bunch of recording books, myself!) You don't have to waste your time stumbling through the mixing learning curve. The idea is to completely crush it.

[TonyB]

I like the designs!