Music Software?

Question

How does a recording studio music software work?

Answer 1

The question isn't very clear - do you mean how does it work technicly (like how does it store the data as sound and arrange it together) or how do you work it? I don't know a lot about how the software works on the technical side, but I have some experience about how you use it.

Essentially a home recording studio is an advanced version of the sound recorder that comes as standard with windows - it takes inputted data from your sound card (not necesarily from a microphone) and enables you to edit it, although sound recorder only allows basic edits. With a home recording studio like Cakewalk (cheap and pretty basic) or ProTools (very expensive, but the best there is) you can move the sounds around on a timeline. If you want to get an idea of what it looks like it's very similar to the Windows Movie Maker that comes with windows XP. You get a set (usually a multiple of 8) of tracks which you can arm to record, mute and solo.

Once you record something on the track you can move its position around, change the volume of it, and put effects on it such as reverb and chorus. The amount of effects (or plug-ins) the studio has depends on how good (essentially how expensive) it is. Each time you make a recording it is saved as an individual file, which means that many recordings have huge databases of files behind them, especially if you make a lot of takes. For instance some friends of mine are recording a CD, for the 20 tracks we've recorded it has taken up over 5 GB of space.

One particularly good thing about a home studio is that you can do multi-track recordings - for instance you could record a drum part first, then go back to the begining and record a guitar part. This means that if your drummer is useless and takes 100 takes to get his part right, and your guitarist only takes 1 then your guitarist only has to record once.

Answer 2

The first guy explains it pretty well. Think of the computer as your multi-track recorder. Like the old reel to reel machines that studios use to use but with a billion more options and advantages.

I have about 75 plug-ins or effects and about 25 soft synths running on my machine.
The song I'm working on right now has 56 tracks in it.

Listen to my demo on Myspace.com
http://www.myspace.com/mechanicalvamps

That entire thing was recorded on my computer I couldn't do it without it.