If you're a solo musician or band wanting to record your own music, or just interested in how I recorded and produced Where Eternity Ends, then read on.

So first thing I need to tell you is, two years ago i had no idea how to record or use a daw (digital audio workstation) to record my songs. It was a steep learning curve that i learnt by trial and error, and also looking at manuals and YouTube videos to get the results i wanted. there is a plethora of information out there that will help so don't just stick to the manuals. the daw i use is abelton 12 standard. I selected this as i purchased a native instruments komplete kontrol s61n keyboard which came with various plugins for the daw. you can also purchase a whole load of other plugins that will give you every type of instrument or sound that you want. abelton also include a load of their own instruments, sounds and recording tools. so if you are on a tight budget, you can probably find something you like within their own library already supplied with the daw. of course there are other daws to choose from like steinberg's cubase,  image line fl studios, avid pro tools (for recording professionals),  and exclusively for Apple, apple garage band (beginners' DAW) and apple logic pro (for recording professionals) there are more out there so do your research before you choose.

another piece of software you will need is used to get your sound recording levels right. i use a software called youlean which is a free download. this type of software is absolutely crucial to getting your recording levels to the spec expected by cd manufacturers and streaming web sites. however, most of the distributors or some of the streaming platforms will sort that out for you. so all you need to do is upload a 44.1khz, 16 bit wav file and theyll do the rest. but check it out before you do it. FYI I have gone with cdbaby. Again, there are others out there. however, the levels required differ for a lot of them. Again there are others available like iZotope Insight 2, Nugen Audio VisLM 2, and signum audio bute. or for a budget friendly option, TBProAudio mvMeter2, Waves WLM Plus or Melda MLoudnessAnalyze. These all measure Loudness, dynamics, peak levels and so on. but stick with it and do your research, and you will prevail.

i am foremost a guitarist. i have limited keyboard skills but i managed to build my music in small chunks. apart from the guitar and vocals being analog files, the rest of the instruments can be produced using a piano keyboard. the notes are then reproduced as a midi map. yes, even the drums. I will show you what a midi file looks like later. you can then audition the sounds that you want by using various sounds from your plugins. this can take time to get the exact sound that you have in mind for your music. the beauty of this is, once you have created your midi map with all the midi music notes in, you just have to select a different sound option from any plugin, and the daw will play back that sound to your music. cool or what?

bass guitar

i am not a bass player although i can play some basic bass lines. however, i do not have a decent bass amp so i used a rickenbacker scarbee plugin. the notes i played from my keyboard were represented on a midi map. i will talk about the workings and options in a midi map after the next section. so lets move on. 

electric & classical guitar parts

because a lot of my music is guitar rythm or picking based, i found that if i recorded the whole song in one take - i.e. all on one track - it sounded fragmented. i soon learnt that recording guitar parts so that they flow, is best acheived in small chunks on seperate tracks. it then gives a much more fluent and rythmic sound in the recording. 

Even with the click track (which is an electronic metronome), i found that my timing wasn't the best in the world. it got better as time went on but i still had to make changes here and there. this was just a simple case of splicing and rearranging a section of the analog wave to coincide with the drum and bass. its easy to do and the only real problems I had with that was at times it would introduce a pop into the recording. but there are tools to deal with that. 

i composed all of my music on my guitar, including the melody. i also play folk and classical which are both finger picking styles, which I use alot on the songs. i'm telling you this as i wanted to focus on one of the tracks on the album called hollow woman. as I said, i am not predominantly a keyboard player and although i could play most of the parts, there was one part i couldn't play on the keyboard but could play on my guitar. the technique i used was a godsend when i by chance found it.

piano & synth parts

so how did i do it? first, i played and recorded the part in question on my guitar. once i was happy with the recording and at this point, the sound level was not of importance, but had to be fairly acceptable) I then converted the analog file to a midi map. now because the daw is extremely sensitive to picking up sound, there will always be what I call music shrapnel in the midi map. i think that this shrapnel is harmonics picked up from the guitar. so i then had to clear out (delete) all the unwanted midi notes and at the same time move some of the notes that were not strictly to timing which you can do in a midi map quite easily. so if you have listened to hollow woman in full, the bit i'm talking about is at the end of the first half of the song, and the end of the song itself. if you have not listened to it, then click on the green play button at the bottom right of your screen to play a collage of selected songs on the album. hollow woman is the 4th sample played and is the part i am talking about. 

for other piano or synth parts, again i played the easy bits, and for the more difficult bits i programmed the notes into the midi map manually rather than using the keyboard. not all guitar parts can be converted to midi simply because you cannot always play piano parts on a guitar…..unless you have a hand span of 20 centermeters that is. if i didn't like the particualr sound i had originally chosen, i simply auditioned others from my available plugins. all the notes were there, i just needed to find the right sound. its the same for drums and any other instrument you've used from a plugin. this can take hours to get the sound you want…..but it's fun as all of the recording process is.

drum parts

the drums were again created from the piano keys. all the drum parts are assigned to an individual piano key. to get the sound, just simply press the piano key. again, the drums etc are represented on a midi map.

so, what is the best approach to create your drum track. well it definitely is not to try and play all the parts, cymbals kick drum, snare hi-hat etc in one go. its best to build them separately. and when i say separately, i mean a separate track for each drum part. reason? because you can easily adjust the sound levels later in your recording. when you have all the parts on one track, it becomes not a task, but a career in getting them right. 

the way i did this was to first record a track with the kick drum and cymbal. just record the basic rhythm of the song. no fancy stuff at this point. the cymbal i would later cut and paste into another track. then i would add another track and add the snare drum. once you have those basic elements in place, you can start to add the fills to your tracks, either manually or by using the keyboard. and do yourself a huge favour. use the daws click track. i learnt that the hard way. on my first recording i ever did, i didn't use a click track and rather than turn the click track on and start again, i opted to rearrange the midi notes manually. it took me over a week to get it right. every day's a school day right! it was a fundamental error and i certainly didn't make that mistake again

so what does a midi map recording look like. see below.