My Songwriting/Podcasting Studio Is Ready To Go

Over the last week I have been busy getting everything ready for the next phase of my songwriting. My studio is ready to go. It’s all hooked up and it works.

Having my own space and my own studio to work in has been a dream of mine for a very long time and now, with these tools at my disposal I can explore my songwriting ideas further, pre-produce possible songs for my first CD and record songwriting demos for my band.

I also want to use the studio for producing podcasts. I can see a Songwriting Zen podcast being rolled out very soon

As well as getting my studio hooked up I also purchased a camcorder so I can start producing videos of my music to put up on YouTube and the like. I’m excited by all of this technology however, I’m going to be very mindful not to become a slave to it.

In order to keep myself mindful I constantly remind myself of a friend of mine who, a few years ago, was in the same position as I am in now.

He and I wrote many songs together pre-studio and I always had a lot of fun working with him, no matter what the end result was.

Once we started working together using his studio and not pen, paper and two acoustic guitars the dynamic between us changed dramatically.

Collaboration was starting to become a chore.

A lot of our songwriting time was spent trying to fix studio problems and when we were recording he was more interested in getting the perfect guitar effect rather than putting song ideas down.

Instead of being a songwriter with access to a studio he was becoming an amateur studio engineer and part time songwriter. He became a slave to the technology.

Needless to say we worked together less and less over time. Last time I heard he wasn’t writing at all. That’s very sad. I don’t ever want to end up that way.

I’m all for learning new things and expanding my horizons as long as it doesn’t get in the way of the big picture.

I can see that with new technology it can be very easy to get bogged down in all of the small stuff and forget about the reasons why you got the technology in the first place.

Ah, that’s right! To write songs!

Until next time, happy writing,

Corey Stewart
Singer/Songwriter/Musician

Keywords: songwriting, songwriter, songwriting tip, songwriting idea, songwriting help, songwriting blog, corey stewart

Tags: Corey Stewart, Creativity, lyrics, music, song, Songwriter, Songwriting, songwriting blog, songwriting tip, Songwriting Zen, writing, zen

Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 Home Recording, Songwriting News

1 Comment to My Songwriting/Podcasting Studio Is Ready To Go

Matt says:

July 23, 2008 at 10:17 am

That is a very real risk with having the home studio. There’s a great article somewhere about that, about how people who previously made music can disappear down the rabbit hole of tube pre’s and acoustic tiling…it becomes more about “the sound” than it does about the music.

The biggest irony of this is that the performance is 99% responsible for the sound that is often attributed to “this sweet rack tube pre,” or “this awesome condenser mic.” Meanwhile, a great performer will blow away anything recorded in that home studio with a $150 mixer and an SM57. Great article about that here: http://www.studioreviews.com/performance.htm

I’ve made an effort to avoid over-complicating my home studio…it is the aforementioned $150 mixer and an SM57, hooked into my laptop. My recent record was made with this. If I needed more, like for recording drums, I hired mics from Derringer’s and a room and kit from Frank’s Custom Music for a day.

All instruments are real unless otherwise indicated (I’ve used midi, and acknowledged it, though there is no midi on the recent record.

All effects are digital, even amps…I own an amp, but it’s 120volt (American) and will blow up unless I use a power converter (I have it, but it’s noisy and wasteful), so I never use it.

Every sound is recorded digitally in 24bit using Garageband. It’s the only DAW that doesn’t make me wish I had hair to pull out.

These limitations have enabled me to stay productive. I record every rehearsal and archive to DVD for self-critical/if something great happens, I have it purposes.

Anyways, you seem like you have the right idea about this, it’s good that you’re aware of the issues before you get into it, because that black hole of studio oblivion is very real and very dangerous to creative productivity as you said.

Seeya tonight.