Modern technology allows music artists to record vocals at home and achieve a decent sound quality, depending on your knowledge and practice. Should you be recording your vocals at home or paying for the studio time which can become pricey overtime?

recording at home for rappers and singers


Recording At Home

Advantages of home studios

  • Record whenever you want for free
  • Feel free & not limited in expressing raw emotions, especially if you're shy or have some sort of anxiety which a lot of beginners experience in one way or another
  • Upgrade your studio step by step and learn how vocal recording works
  • Spend as little as 200-350$ to start recording vocals at home on an amateur level
  • It sharpens musicianship. Whether we record a single phrase in a practice room or a full-length concert performance, we can stand back and listen as if someone else had produced the music.
  • Time. There are many features to master and many things to understand before you will get intuitively how to record and what’s needed for the special moment in your track. In your home studio, you’ll have all the time in the world to master your delivery and performance.

Disadvantages of home studios for recording

  • Less professional sound (most of the time, depending on the scale of your "home studio"). So, in the end, it sounds much less professional and “clear” than a studio version. Again, there are many ways to improve it and you might be able to improve the quality gradually, with investing in your home studio, equipment, etc.
  • You need a decent room with no other people in it. And preferable you should be living alone or with people who won't be making any type of unnecessary noise during your recording sessions
  • You can record from day 1, however, it takes a lot of practice to start getting clean, quality recordings


Recording In A Professional Studio:

Advantages of professional studios for upcoming artists

  • Its name speaks for itself. You'll get top-notch sound with great balance in the highest quality.
  • Learn to be a professional artist/vocalist even before you sign a deal or gain your fan base. Whenever your day to be the next rising star comes - you will be prepared for it.
  • Get insights from engineers about what parts of your performance you should improve
  • Connect with other artists in a studio. Collaborate with them and potentially make friends in the music business

Disadvantages of professional studios for upcoming artists

  • Hourly payments. Most studios require hourly pay and it gets really expensive if you come unprepared and don't have a lot of money to spend
  • Less time to be really creative and record multiple takes, vocal parts and try different effects if you're on a budget


My opinion

In my personal experience, a combination of both is a win-win situation. If you're an artist (let's assume you're a really creative artist) who constantly gets great ideas out of nowhere and wants to implement them instantly. In this case home studio is a must! You should be able to make demos whenever you feel like it. Decent home setup for demos shouldn't cost more than 500$-1000$, in some cases you can build something for less than 350$ if you look for discounts or purchase used gear and use free software (or pay for it monthly, should cost you no more than 10-20$ per month).

Then, use recording studios when the time to drop a single comes. When you have your home studio to record demos you can actually come prepared to the professional one and pay less as the result (knowing what you're doing and having some demos recorded means you be spending less hours to record the final version of your song, mixtape or album).