Experience is Much More Important than Gear
Experience is Much More Important than Gear.
Although, most people with decades of experience also have used and prefer higher end gear,
where the mistake lies is in that people seem to think the shortcut is to simply mimic the gear.
As if, buying a race car makes you a race car driver. Of course, it doesn’t.
But telling you to do what I did for the last 30+ years doesn’t sound like a good solution for those wanting to record right now. So the next best thing is to simply use what the pros use.
But the real answer is that neither way will get you the desired result. Settling for cheap gear or buying expensive gear. As expensive gear in the wrong hands isn’t going to do anything meaningful for you except line the pockets of the people that make it.
But like I said. Nobody wants to hear this and it’s even more difficult to sell a product based on this conclusion. Whether it be a book, bass traps or plugins that emulate expensive vintage gear.
But the good news is that you are getting more experienced every day.
I hope this message finds you. Well…
Kenny Gioia
Kenny is spot on!
If you’re new to audio recording keep the faith. Experiment and get the best recording with the gear that you have.
Record the best sound you possibly can with what you have so you don’t have to fix it in the mix.
When I was a poor kid back in the 80s I had five mics. 1 SM57, 2 1960s Shure Unispheres, 1 EV Mercury 911 from the 50s (awesome on kick!), and an AKG D202 ES. I had an Acoutic mono six channel powered mixer, an Ashly CL52E compressor, and a Digitech DSP 16 multi effects unit.
All that fed into a Fostex X-15 four track cassette recorder. That’s it!
I learned to gain stage theough my bosrd to tape. Then I’d bounce the four tracks to two track stereo so I’d have two more tracks to play with.
My on location recordings I did to help bands in pre-production got so good that a very well known producer (who passed on recording a Metallica album) couldn’t tell my work from his rough mixes recorded to an Otari 24 track 2″ nachine in a John Storyk designed studio.
My point? Kenny is right! It’s the ear, not the gear.