Music

Home Recording 101

new program at the Eau Claire Music School provides the basics to young, soon-to-be music producers and engineers

Eric Christenson, photos by Eric Christenson |

ON THE LOOSE, HOPING TO PRODUCE. One of the many perks of home recording is the ability produce and engineer tracks anywhere.
ON THE LOOSE, HOPING TO PRODUCE. One of the many perks of home recording is the ability produce and engineer tracks anywhere.

Eau Claire is a music city. There’s a palpable creative energy flowing through the Valley that makes people here want to create stuff. Music stuff. Really good sounding music stuff.

There’s never really a dry spell around here as far as music goes, but with new lessons on recording and production at the Eau Claire Music School taught by instructor Justin Andersen, the tools to understand sound and facilitate gorgeous recordings are being put directly into the hands of the next generation of Eau Claire musicians.

Andersen himself has professional training in recording and production and a degree from the Institute of Production and Recording in Minneapolis. He’s played in bands, recorded records, scored films, done sound design, and more. He has a wide breadth of experience in music production, and he said basic audio skills stretch way past music into tons of other fields.

“It can be really intimidating on the surface, but once you understand what you’re doing, piece-by-piece, I think it breaks down that barrier and gives you the confidence to go at it.” – Justin Andersen, EC Music School

“People may look at the course and think it’s a really narrow field, but once you start to understand audio and what you can do with it, there’s a ton of things you can do,” Andersen said. “Anything and everything that you hear, someone got paid to make it sound really good. It might start with you recording your friends in a basement, but who knows where it can take you.”

For a long time, the recording skill set was pretty much limited to professional sound engineers. If a band wanted a recording of their music, they had to unload their wallets at an actual recording studio to do so. But it’s 2016 now, and the technology to do rudimentary recordings (at the very least) exists on personal computers and mobile devices at the tips of your fingers.

And a lot of Eau Claire artists – particularly in electronic and hip hop genres – have produced their own stuff, made it sound really good, and found success doing so without ever setting foot in a recording studio. That’s not to undercut the value of professional recording studios such as Eau Claire’s Pine Hollow Audio. Not at all. Professional sound engineers are professionals for a reason. However, Andersen’s course can help scores of artists do a lot of the heavy lifting themselves, experiment with different sounds, and craft the exact sound that they’re going for without dropping the whole band fund piggy bank on recording fees.

But there is a lot to it. Andersen can see how a lot of people might get intimidated by the complexity of audio recording and all its bells and whistles, but one of the main ideas behind the course is to tear those barriers down and make it less daunting for newbies.

“It’s a convoluted industry. There are tons of computer programs, plug-ins, software, hardware, thousands of options of interfaces and mics – it’s like where do you start?” he said. “It can be really intimidating on the surface, but once you understand what you’re doing, piece by piece, I think it breaks down that barrier and gives you the confidence to go at it.”

Andersen’s just getting started with some one-on-one sessions at the Eau Claire Music School, and he truly believes in the power of the home recording. Putting that power in the hands of the artist themselves is a big, important tool to have. It can truly make some amazing work happen in the music community and bolster the whole scene because of it.

“The symptom is more people will be recorded, so there will be more music out there,” Andersen said. “The reason there’s been a resurgence of local music is because it’s easy to do this stuff on your own. You can record on the cheap and make an awesome sounding record.”

To get in touch, learn more, or schedule some lessons, contact the Eau Claire Music School at (715) 514-0475 or at www.eauclairemusicschool.com.