How Accessible Is Your Studio?

When creativity strikes, your studio needs to be ready and accessible. When you feel like sitting down to track your latest song, you don’t want to have fiddle too much with finding your mic(s), pulling out cables, hooking up a hard drive, etc. Ideally, your home studio should be setup in such a way that you don’t skip a beat from idea to recording.

Via Jeremy Keith Flickr

From Zero To Recording In Under 5 Minutes

In a comment on last week’s post about singer/songwriter Olivia Broadfield and her home studio, a reader pointed out that her setup was effective because everything was right there (mic, interface, computer, headphones). She could basically turn everything on and  hit record as it were. We can learn something from this.

Barring a paid studio session with a client, every time you want to record in your studio, it should take you less than 5 minutes to be up and running. Why not longer? Well, the longer it takes you to dig up your gear, hook it up, and fiddle with annoying software, the less time you have to make music and more importantly the less focus you tend to have. When you are feeling creative and energized, you don’t want to suck that energy away.

How Can You Practically Do This?

Everyone’s studio needs are different. But most home studios can benefit from some similar organizing and setup. Let me give you some practical tips that I think will help you make your studio more accessible, and keep your creative juices turning into recording realities:

• Choose a primary and minimalistic setup/signal path. Pick one main studio mic, interface or mic pre, set in a mic stand and always hooked up with a mic cable. If you only have one mic or interface, then this decision is a simple one! Otherwise, pick your best and simplest signal path and stick to it.
• Place power switches within arms reach from your seat. Make sure you can quickly power on your computer, hard drives, interface, speakers, monitors, mic pres, etc from where you are sitting. None of that annoying getting down on your hands and knees, reaching around the back of some desk, stretching for a silly switch.
• Use a recording template in your DAW. One way to be “up and running” quickly is to quit having to setup a new session, create tracks, label, and arm them to record each time you want to capture your music. By creating a template, you do the setup once and you’re done! I already have a video on this that you can check out.
• Keep a clean and clutter free studio environment. The less junk you have in your room, on your desk, and even on your computer’s desktop, the more efficient, productive, and peaceful you will be in the studio. I wrote a post on this very topic a while ago. Read it and follow the rules therein!

A Few Good Tools

If nothing else, remember that you are far better off using a few good tools in your studio than trying to use many tools. The fewer options you have come record time, ironically the more productive you will actually be. And if your simple set of tools are always setup and accessible, you will end up spending more time doing what you love, recording and creating music. And isn’t that it’s all about in your studio?