Setting up your recording environment

Before recording your audio, you want to be in a location free from background sounds. Ideally, you would be in a soundproof environment.

If you record audio and find there is some consistent background static or hum, it’s not the end of the world. If the unwanted sound is at a low volume level, you may be able to remove the unwanted noise using a gate plugin effect. We discussed gates in Chapter 6, Compression, Sidechaining, Limiting, and Equalization.

You’ll need to obtain headphones so that you can listen to your music playing while you record your instrument or vocals. You don’t want to hear your song playing in the background on speakers while you’re recording sounds, or else the background noise will appear in the recording.

Recording instruments

Recording instruments appears simple on paper, but it takes a surprising amount of effort to do. If you’re recording an acoustic instrument, position...