Keep Things Simple in Your Home Studio Part 2: Don’t Do Everything Yourself

Yesterday, I provided a couple of tips on keeping things simple in your home studio. These are just a couple of things that I’ve learned in my own experience. Just like many home studio enthusiasts out there, I’m always learning a new trick or a best practice. As a follow up to yesterday’s post, I wanted to provide you with another quick piece of advice. This is something that I’m constantly finding myself being guilty of and can be applied to really anything in life – Don’t Do It All Yourself. Let me explain:

Find Your Specialty

If you haven’t already, you have to figure out what you do best. Perhaps you already KNOW what you do best, but you’re still trying to do everything on your own. First and foremost, I’m passionate about drums. I don’t claim to be an expert at it by any means. However, it’s what I love and what I know the most. Of course I enjoy the recording, audio, geeky stuff just like the rest of us. But at the end of the day, I’m building my studio around my drum kit. Not the other way around. Make sense?

Collaborate with Others

I’m a HUGE fan of collaboration. Online collaboration opens the door to a world of creativity (literally). Perhaps a part of the songs lyric strikes a different emotion with another musician. Maybe that guitar solo sounds like crap because you’re an awesome guitar player, but suck at playing solos. Granted, a lot of good music can still come from the one man show. Especially if you’re Dave Grohl or Lenny Kravitz. Even still, these guys tap into their community and friends for help and inspiration.

Hire an Expert

In addition to collaborating with other musicians, start working with individuals who are masters at their craft. For example, are you thinking about redesigning your website but have no design experience? Does your band poster or CD artwork look half-ass? Think about and define what your specialty is and start reaching out to people who are professionals in their field. Will doing so have costs involved? Of course. Don’t expect people who do what they do best to do it for free. The bottom Line: Just like in the above picture, sometimes doing everything on your own can get messy.

Thoughts? Leave your comments.

Photo Credit

Be Sociable, Share!

• 

Tagged as: collaboration, home studio, recording