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SHOULD YOU PAY FOR STUDIO TIME OR BUILD YOUR OWN STUDIO?

FIRST OF ALL WHY AM I WRITING THIS

This is a question I get asked all the time by people that I come across on a daily basis.

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"Is it worth it to pay for studio time? How much does it cost to build my own studio? 

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I'm going to break it down so it's easy for each person to figure out what is best for them!

UNDERSTANDING BASIC COSTS

Let's just say you have 10 songs you need to record or master.

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Getting one song done in a studio will take approximately 2 hours per song x 10 = that's 20 hours.

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General studio time costs $50 an hour. So that's 20 hours x $50 = $1000. Just to record your music.

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This is because you are paying for the engineer/producer's time to run the studio, set it up for you and your vocals. You are also paying for the studio gear use, and the wear and tear on the gear use.

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You also have to pay for the engineer to mix your music per song. Normally charged lets say $50 per song which is another $500.

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Budget required: $1,500

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Now that's for a basic good professional studio and a decent audio engineer. If you are going with higher up people you are looking at 2 - 10 times that price.

WHAT YOU CAN DO WITH THAT

Let's now take a closer look of what you can get with $1,500.

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If you went out with $1,500 to buy your own home studio equipment you can get:

  1. Microphone

  2. Microphone stand

  3. Computer

  4. Preamp

  5. Legal copy of Pro Tools

  6. Required cables

  7. One set of studio monitors

  8. Monitor stands

  9. Basic acoustic treatment

This is literally an entire home studio setup, assuming all of these items are of decent quality as well, below I'll list for you some benefits of a home studio compared to paying for studio time.

WHEN YOU OWN A HOME STUDIO

  • You aren't in a rush to get finished which can affect your performance and you can be a perfectionist all you want to get the best results for your song.

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  • You have unlimited takes and ties to record anything you want. You save money from all the mistakes being done at home instead of in an hourly studio time.

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  • You have the ability to practice every single day until you feel you are good enough to go into a pro studio.

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  • You are alone and will never feel stupid trying new things.

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  • You are in a comfortable environment.

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  • No travel costs to and from the studio.

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  • You can record anytime you want for 100% FREE

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  • You can charge people you know to come record in your studio. Then you can make a deal with a local engineer (if you haven’t learned how to mix yet) to send the people who record with you to them and get some of that money. Team work. And this way you actually pay your studio off over time.

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  • You get the feeling of rolling out of bed and immediately recording new ideas

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  • You get a feel for and learn your vocals without anyone around judging you.

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  • You’ll be primed in all of the Digital Audio Workstations like Pro Tools by the time you get big. This way you can understand what’s going on in your mixes. You’ll have the ability to have more say so from a knowledgeable place when you’re at the higher levels when you make it.

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  • Honestly this list is getting too long but there are massive amounts of benefits. Last benefit I’ll list is that you don’t have to worry about the guy hitting record at the wrong time and you not being ready, you can hit go when you’re ready. You’ll get recording done MUCH MUCH faster.

WHEN YOU PAY FOR STUDIO TIME

  • Honestly the best part is that you feel more professional. You truly do, but this is nothing but an ego thing that is in your head. You’d feel this way even if you had all of the same studio gear at your house. Trust me… I bought all the same gear I’d rent a studio to use.

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  • You are definitely going to get cleaner vocal takes. The thing is that with the advancement in technology, the vocal takes won’t be ‘that much better’ than they would at your home studio.

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  • Depending on who engineers the song, no one will ever hear the difference in the vocals ‘professionalism’ unless they have a trained ear. A trained ear that 99.9999999999999999% of people do not have.

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  • If you generally work alone, you’ll have an engineer to give you his feed back on your takes. The issue here is that it really depends if the guy gives a fuck about you or not.

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  • As you can see, all of the above benefits are primarily just excuses to use a big studio. Big studios primary advantage is their mixing dynamics. Their rooms are specifically built for mixing. They can hear every single detail and fix every tiny thing with much more ease. But this comes down to mixing, not recording.

It's also important to know that

"You pay for what you get, and everyone has to be on the same page going in."

- Erin Tonkon

A good recording starts at the source. In other words, if you don’t have a good-sounding instrument hitting your microphone, no matter how much outboard gear you have, it’s not going to work." - Wayne Silver

WRAPPING UP

I recommend you make your own home studio, honestly. It is going to do so many things for you. Especially if you are within the first 2 years of your music/rapping/songwriting career.

 

If you only get to practice recording while you are in the major studio then you aren’t going to grow fast enough to be able to compete with everyone else.

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Just go buy yourself a home studio set up. Have the work ethic to teach yourself how to use all of it through YouTube tutorials and forums.

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Write songs and get yourself a hit song and blow up already. 

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You’ll be recording songs daily and be known in your town in no time.

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