Jump to content
View in the app

A better way to browse. Learn more.

Surly Horns

A full-screen app on your home screen with push notifications, badges and more.

To install this app on iOS and iPadOS
  1. Tap the Share icon in Safari
  2. Scroll the menu and tap Add to Home Screen.
  3. Tap Add in the top-right corner.
To install this app on Android
  1. Tap the 3-dot menu (⋮) in the top-right corner of the browser.
  2. Tap Add to Home screen or Install app.
  3. Confirm by tapping Install.
Football ... Basketball ... Baseball ... Other Sports ... Futbol ... 🤫995🤫 ... Gambling ... Movies & TV ... Music ... Hobbies ... Lulz ... Food & Travel ... Daily Texan ... Business & Markets ... Cloak Room ... Help ... For Sale ... Board Discussion ... Advertise... Tailgate Donations

Featured Replies

On 1/10/2026 at 4:19 PM, jimmyjazz said:

Second lesson: egg cartons don't do shit, and don't listen to anyone who says they do.

Thought the whole point of egg cartons was to get rid of reflections, not to dampen sound.

2 hours ago, sidis said:

yes? you'd like me to explain the value of sus chords? okay. a sus chord is a replacement of the third in a traditional triad chord with scale degree 2 or 4...sus2 or sus4. they are neither major, nor minor and remain as ambiguous and open as NowThis and his obsession with besthugecocks. they are used to create tension without creating unnecessarily dark harmonies and create a feeling of anticipation and delay the resolution payoff...much like tantric sex. they decide when the emotion will ultimately land on the runway while retaining forward motion. when they resolve, it is very satisfying and when they don't, they leave the listener in an emotional stasis. nothing is more effective at dictating listener expectations than some good sus.

as for bedroom production, the details of my studio are quite inconsequential…very well, where do I begin? my father was a relentlessly self-optimizing bedroom producer from belgium with mild tinnitus and a pathological obsession with signal flow. my mother was a former french prostitute who insisted that “real music” didn’t need a DAW and loudly reminded me of this during every vocal take recorded to tape on my studer. my father would upgrade interfaces, he would sell them at a loss, he would make outrageous claims like he could hear jitter. sometimes he would accuse midi of having “no soul,” the sort of general malaise that only the truly gas-afflicted possess and the sane lament. my childhood was typical: summers spent waiting for plugins to authorize, winters spent reading forum threads about converters i could never afford. in the spring we’d build bass traps out of rockwool and regret it immediately. when i clipped the master, i was forced to remix the entire track from scratch, pretty standard, really. at the age of twelve i received my first cracked copy of pro tools and learned that creativity peaks when everything is unstable. at fourteen, a man named “AnalogTruth88” and "Paul Wesley" on a forum ritualistically informed me that everything i loved was wrong and that my mixes would never translate. there really is nothing like a perfectly gain-staged signal chain, it’s breathtaking. i suggest you try it.

@Lurch , what is your plan, bud? what daw are you comfortable with? what type of computer are you planning to use? what is your primary goal? recording live? amassing an embarrassing number of plugins? are you planning to drive towards recording live drums in your room? is it for laying down tracks or more for mixing and mastering? what kind of budget are we allocating here? there's no end to this hole just so you know. but something that has been mentioned throughout this thread that cannot be emphasized enough...you can spend $10 million on the most amazing studio imaginable and if what is being recorded or created is not any good, it does not matter.

there is zero point to you allocating any budget to "soundproofing" the room if you're going to be doing live stuff - particularly drums. utterly pointless waste of money that i'm ready to spend elsewhere treating your room, getting a good interface and computer, getting a good midi controller, $50K worth of plugins, and another $50K of analog gear. i'm just kidding. but it would help to know what your specific first goals are to help decide where to spend time, effort and money. you need a good computer first and foremost. then a good interface, then some good mics, then some good monitors or headphones, then some good cable management. fill us in a little and you'll probably get some good and diverse feedback to consider.

hang this in the Louvre

Adding a little flavor to some seriously good previous posts:

-- don't overlook Reaper as a DAW. It sounds great, it's super powerful, and it's free. It's also a little quirky for those raised on ProTools or Logic.

-- I like the rec of a Shure SM57, but not two of them unless you seriously plan to track in stereo (and it sounds like you aren't, given the Vdrums). I'd get one SM57 and a large diaphragm condenser. I'll have recs later.

4 minutes ago, Rimbo said:

Thought the whole point of egg cartons was to get rid of reflections, not to dampen sound.

And they don't.

1 minute ago, jimmyjazz said:

And they don't.

Well, I'm glad I never bothered with them, then.

Actually, that's not true! I do have some egg-crate foam in my studio!

It's used to help secure my 300-year-old "7/8ths" cello inside a case designed for a modern full-sized cello. For THAT, it works great.

But even then, I don't use it so much now, since I recently bought a cello stand so that my cello doesn't have to be in the case. And by doing so, I spend a lot more time actually playing the cello.

Edited by Rimbo

Oh I left some gear out.

Shure SM57 and Audiotechnica DB125 (basically a Shure SM58 wannabe) for mics. Tannoy SBMs for speakers, powered by a Samson 120a. That's the whole setup.

53 minutes ago, sidis said:

i would definitely start with familiarizing yourself with a real daw. it is the centerpiece of being able to do what you want to do. garageband is great as an introduction and if you gave it to [insert your favorite artist], they would turn out something awesome but the reality is, it is a bit of a toy version of a daw. the two i know the best and i think fit your initial primary goals as well as long-term goals are pro tools and logic. pro tools is the standard, period full stop. every professional studio, every professional mixer, every professional of any type is going to use and know pro tools for recording and mixing. but i love logic and i think it is the most conducive to composing music because it does such a better job of integrating writing tools and samples/midi instruments than pro tools. and recording in logic is really good once you get the hang of it. you won't go wrong with either of those imo and learning how to use them is an essential first step. cubase is great for composition as well but it's a bit more niche. unless you are doing edm as your primary genre, i wouldn't really recommend ableton personally. but everyone's mileage varies and there are a million people that would disagree with me. but as someone who has been down the rabbit hole on them, if you are going to record everything with a mic or DI, then pro tools is a no brainer. if you are going to use a lot of midi/software instruments, then logic is a no brainer. logic is also one of the only remaining perpetual licenses in daws. everything is moving to annual subscriptions. other people love FL, studio one, and there are others but the horsepower behind pro tools, logic, and cubase make them the standards for most pros.

so you will need a daw. logic is like 200 or 300. the pro tools artist sub is like $150 a year or something.

you will need some external hard drives. just warning you now. recordings, plugins, software instruments, etc..., they take up a lot of hard drive space so just prepare yourself for that. the computer has the horsepower to get you going. budget some cash for that.

for basic playing and recording, the computer is the first key. next key is an audio interface/converters. sounds like you have a scarlet and that will get the job done for sure. i love them because they make it possible for everyone to do this at an affordable price and they are simple plug and play. the next step up you will take will likely be to a UA apollo. i have a neumann mt48 and i love it but it is overkill for getting the basic infrastructure in place and it is going to blow your whole first year budget...however, what is really nice about it and the apollo is that they has really good preamps built into it so you don't have to spend a bunch of money on an outboard pre amp. if you are going to be recording using mics, then you will need a preamp to boost the mic signal to a line signal. you can do some of that with the scarlet but the quality will be lacking. familiarize yourself with gain staging and also familiarize yourself with best practices with connecting and disconnecting mics, especially when to turn on and turn off 48V power to the mics after connecting and prior to disconnecting.

so i would get a scarlet 2i2 or 4i4. there's $200 down. you need xlr and trs cables to reach around the room so there's another $100-200.

next you need mics. since we are talking about basic infrastructure here and just getting things down from guitars, bass, drums, and vocals, just like the scarlet...there is a mic company called shure that is here to make your dreams come true. the sm57 and sm58 mics. affordable, durable, predictable, and damned if they aren't a part of every professional mic locker on earth. they are dynamic mics but for our basic infrastructure here, they are $100 each and they can cover so much ground for you. probably makes sense to get 1 sm58 and 2 sm57s (for stereo sound capture). there's $300.

next you need headphones for tracking and listening back and mixing as you go. there are people that will murder each other over this debate and there's nothing i can do to save you from that...but this is an area where i would probably invest some money to go above the introductory stuff. beyerdynamics is probably the most affordable. for tracking, you want closed back headphones and for mixing, you want open back. the DT770s and DT990s are good. i use audeze LCD for tracking and closed back and i used neumann ndh30s for open back but they will blow your budget again. i think beyerdynamic would be a great compromise and they are fucking fantastic cans that many pros use. they will not be the reason your music sucks. they are $150-300ish.

on monitors, i'm the wrong person to ask because i will have you selling crack to kids to pay for some top of the line shit to stuff in a tiny bedroom and that is not the right path at all. there's lots of good options out there. adam, focal, yamaha...lots of great options that suffice completely for bedroom production. but this will be a big expense. also, if you're getting decent monitors, get some decent monitor stands with iso pads or put iso pads on your desk. this is going to be a big budget suck unfortunately.

midi controller, you need to decide what kind of keys you need...synth action or piano bed hammer action. that drives a lot of what you will end up getting but unless you are creating legit piano performances through midi, you don't need 88 keys. 49 and 61 are totally sufficient for midi composition. i have the native instruments komplete kontrol S61 and enjoy it. i also have a roland a-88 and love it. this is a pretty personal thing on preferences.

third party plugins that you need regardless of whether or not you go with pro tools, logic, or whatever... FabFilter Pro-Q4, no negotiating, no arguing, you must have this. A good reverb plugin, Valhalla makes a lot of really great ones for $50 each and they are fucking amazing. on getting things a bit more pro sounding on the back end, check out izotope's products. they can really help you get more polish.

some other knick knacks to help, bass traps for the corners of the room will probably help.

with all that, you will be in business and ready to start getting stuff down. these are just my opinions formed from spending way too much time making every possible mistake going down the path you're headed. the thing you will find out about the music production world is that every asshole has a lot of strong opinions about what is wrong and what is right (gearspace, vi control, etc... will make you hate humanity at times) and you have to figure out what works for you...but i think i've touched on most of the starting points. if you want to flesh any of this out in more detail, just say it and we can go farther down in the weeds on something specific.

This is a fantastic post and you won’t regret just following it, @Lurch. I will say, you have a lot to learn. Meaning, every one of these things has a learning curve associated with it. So I would recommend starting small, leverage things that you have and already know that will suffice for now (like your PA for monitors to start), and throttle the number of deep wells you have to explore before actually getting to making music.

Which, imo, is the most important thing for you to do. Just start making your music. Not 3 months from now after accruing and deep diving on a lot of things. I mean next week with an interface, your PA, a DAW and stock plugins. You’ll encounter obstacles and feel pain in the process. Bring them here for ideas on how to mitigate them through various means. Let the problems you encounter making your personal music be your guide as to what more you need.

Edited by Goredho

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...
Football ... Basketball ... Baseball ... Other Sports ... Futbol ... 🤫995🤫 ... Gambling ... Movies & TV ... Music ... Hobbies ... Lulz ... Food & Travel ... Daily Texan ... Business & Markets ... Cloak Room ... Help ... For Sale ... Board Discussion ... Advertise... Tailgate Donations

Configure browser push notifications

Chrome (Android)
  1. Tap the lock icon next to the address bar.
  2. Tap Permissions → Notifications.
  3. Adjust your preference.
Chrome (Desktop)
  1. Click the padlock icon in the address bar.
  2. Select Site settings.
  3. Find Notifications and adjust your preference.