I want to share something with people starting out with their home studios that will help them. This could also be a good reminder for more experienced people.
A lot of times i hear people record a song and then being frustrated with how the song sounds. People often assume that well, it can be fixed by mixing it better, so they try to learn how to mix better or gives the recording to somebody else to mix it for them thinking it will sound a lot better after that.
It's not going to sound better, i'm sorry.
The problem appears before the mixing stage. Yes, you can always record better and then it WILL sound better. Going even further than that by changing guitar strings and having nice sounding instruments, that works too. But i want to go deeper...
If you want to make your recording sound awesome you have to go back to the SOURCE.
If your PERFORMANCE on the recording sucks, trust me, it will suck even after mixing it. You can't change that in a computer.
When you record a song, you have to make sure that the structure of the song is right, that the tempo is right, that the right guitar parts are being played.
If you have great sounding recordings, the mixing will be so much more fun and it will always sound like gold.
Hope this helps.
-T
