How much does it REALLY cost?
"A Demo's cost is approximately $1000 minimum. The price includes putting the songs onto a physical disc (the increasingly popular hard drive or traditional CD format.) It takes roughly two hours per song to lay the track; each song would cost a minimum of $150 each for that time."
Fabian Camacho, Miami Recording
"...You could go to a project studio and maybe spend, you know, a few thousand dollars. Or you could go to a big studio and spend, you know, 10, 15, $20,000 to cut a track."
Rick Camp, RC1 Productions & Master Mix Live
"Typically, that (Demo recording) is handled hourly in a production room at around $85 an hour for the studio, $50 an hour for the engineer. A session like that might run about four to six hours, and then after that, there's a production component to it. They'll get all the takes and elements they tracked with the artist and spend four to six hours assembling and cleaning up, tuning, comping, adding to the vocals, and then getting a rough mix together.
If the heavy lifting is done at a home studio you should be able to save your budget for tracking and mixing. I've seen budgets on indie projects in the $3500 per song range turn out great."
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Steve Foggin, 31st Street Studios
"In the world we live in today, you can make $2000 go a long way - much farther than previously. Back in the day, it would cost you $2000 just for recording quality tapes to get you in the front door."
Bill David, Virlouise Recording
The world we all live in now is ridiculously expensive, in every sense possible. We at Otsuka Bangerz Studio understand this and want to alleviate some of that cost! We roll together the costs of studio rental and engineer fees into one smaller price! The numbers may still seem large, but in the long run of the work they are considerably smaller than you would imagine.
"Big name" studios are going to charge you an arm, a leg, and possibly your first born just so they can slap their name in your credits. We only want to help you out, then we will slap an add up in our building and our site FOR YOU! We are here to bridge the gap between musician and sales by making the toll to cross smaller and more manageable for everyone.
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Tips and donations to the studio will be going to sit in an account to pay for someone to record that couldn't otherwise afford it. I could be wrong, but I'm not too sure there is any other studio out there doing that. We want everyone, regardless of race, creed, walk of life, religion (etc, etc) to be able to live the dream of getting their music heard!
How to be ready for the studio?
Have your set ready! Make sure you have your songs you want recorded down good so that when you come in it isn't costing you extra time and money!
Come prepared! Make sure you have all of your instruments and equipment with you and ready to go! This includes your petals, stools, drums, or any other specific gear you use to get "your sound." We are just capturing it for you, we need you to dish it out!
Have your creative differences resolved beforehand! It not only reflects ill on your band but it ends up using a massive amount of time that you shouldn't have to pay for. We are here to help out a united front, not to help you mend broken bridges!
Do I need mixing and mastering?
There is no real short answer here! The art of mixing and mastering is there to take a 'good' sound and make it more even and better. Nobody is going to listen to your song if it is 3 minutes of crash cymbals with a small backing instruments and someone whispering into the mic. Recording is in and of its own a different animal, as in we are trying to capture the exact sound you make. Whereas this is possible to an extent, if you want someone to feel like they are sitting in front of your band listening, you are going to want your song mixed and mastered so that all of the instruments are coming out at the right volumes, levels, pans, and with the same amount of energy and determination you put into it!
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Things you may not have even considered that only come with mixing/mastering:
Reverbs or Delays
Quantization
Echoes or Choruses
Equalization
Phasers
Compression/Limiting
Saturation
Extra Panning
Autotune
Ambient Backing
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