How to build your own home recording studio is a question I get asked quite often. The answer is usually the same, but can vary depending on your use case, skill level, and/or budget. I’ll recommend a few essentials, and some optional equipment depending on your usage.
The first thing you need to do is determine what you’ll be using this home studio for. Are you mostly making beats and producing? Or are you recording your own vocals? Maybe you don’t need to record vocals, but you want to learn to mix your own tracks and get them finalized for release. Depending on what you’re hoping to accomplish, you’ll need to get different types of gear.
Typically, a home recording studio contains the following equipment: desk, monitors/headphones, midi keyboard, microphone, audio interface, and computer (again, you may not need all of these depending on what you’ll be creating!). A lot of my close friends who produce a ton of music work off of a laptop, headphones, and a small midi keyboard. They don’t even have speakers or a specific room they work out of! The most important thing you can do is find a solution that works for you. If you enjoy being mobile, you don’t need to set up a huge space. But, if you enjoy having a home office and don’t need to take projects on the road, you can set up something a bit more permanent.
Here are my recommendations for what to get for your setup:
Keep it simple. If you do a quick search for “Studio Desk”, you’ll probably be overwhelmed with a bunch of really fancy (and quite expensive) workstations. These can be essential for some music producers or engineers, but for most use cases, I typically recommend any rectangular table that’s wide enough to hold some speakers, a laptop or computer monitor, and a small midi keyboard. IKEA has some great modular desk solutions that are budget friendly and will do the trick!
Depending on what you’re creating, you’ll most likely need to get some studio monitors (which are studio speakers) and/or headphones. This can be pretty key in influencing the quality of your work, so I would definitely invest a bit more budget into your speakers or headphones rather than find a cheap pair at your local electronics store. Monitors typically cost more than speakers, so if you’re strapped for cash, I recommend starting off with a set of higher quality headphones. I recommend the Audio Technica ATH-M30x, or ATH-M40x. If you have a bit more cash to spend, I recommend grabbing those headphones as well as a pair of Yamaha HS5 Studio Monitors. This will probably be the most expensive part of setting up your home studio.
Once you have your desk and monitors, I would find a relatively open space in your flat to set up in. Ideally, you’d be in a rectangular room, but that’s not always possible. So just find a good flat wall and set your desk up half a metre away from the wall. From there, set your monitors on the desk, and rotate / prop them up so they’re pointing right at your ears when you’re sitting down. Lastly, your monitors should form an equilateral triangle between your sitting point, and their location. I’ve included a quick graphic below to illustrate.
You most likely already have a computer you use to make music. However, if you’re looking to purchase a production computer, my biggest recommendation is to find a computer with high processing power and RAM capacity. Those are the main two things that will cap out your computer’s performance when it comes to making music!
A midi keyboard is optional depending on what you’re working on. If you’re an artist mainly looking to track vocals for projects, you won’t need a midi keyboard. However, if you’re a beatmaker or music producer, you’ll probably need one of these! There’s no need to splurge on an expensive one unless you’re a virtuoso pianist or need a LOT of room for playing capabilities. I recommend starting with a smaller 25 or 49 key midi keyboard like the M Audio Keystation. This should do everything you need to start off!
An interface is quite essential to any music creator. Its main role is to convert audio signals produced by microphones or instruments into digital information that’s readable by your computer. You’ll need a solid interface to get started. I recommend a UAD Volt 1 because they’re budget friendly and come from a reputable company. These can be a bit difficult to set up depending on your computer operating system, so make sure you look up a setup tutorial when getting everything hooked up!
My last recommendation for you is a microphone. If you’re a vocalist, this is an essential piece of gear! If you’re a beatmaker or a producer, I still recommend getting one of these because you might want to throw some vocals into your tracks! For a home recording setup, I recommend starting with a mic similar to the Audio Technica AT2020. This is a great microphone that will get you started off on the right foot!
Now that you have your gear, check out my blog post on how to get started producing music for more tips!
That’s it for this blog, happy building! If you have any questions, feel free to reach out - I’d be more than happy to assist!
Spike
