Pt.4 Should I Record DIY? – The Ultimate Guide to Creating Your First Release

By Daniel Nesci

Every musician’s scenario is different, from budget constraints to skill level and whether or not they are making music on their own or are a part of a larger team. I’m going to assume for the sake of this article that you’re on your own in making your release or at maximum have one other person with you, regardless all these principles will apply if you have a band of 10, it doesn’t matter.

I’m going to do the comparison between making a release on your own/with just the people directly in the band verse bringing in external players and engineers and create a summary at the end for you to help inform your decisions going forward.

DIY. Now, I say DIY (do it yourself) but really this just means without any external third party help. Doing a release this way, especially the first time has a lot of pros and cons but it certainly is harder. Doing the first release completely on your own entails learning how to mix, master, record yourself and of course getting used to your own writing style. That’s just the music aspect too. There is also cover art and marketing which is important to consider and ultimately more areas you need to learn about and understand.

If you’re doing a release as a hobby and you want to just see what happens I reckon this is the best avenue because you’ll learn a lot through discovery, keep costs low and it’s all at your own pace without any commitments to deadlines.

This route will take significantly longer though, being the first release means that you’ll be learning a lot about your own writing process and if you decide to take the burden of all the other processes on at the same time you’ll need to be learning a lot about numerous elements of music. If you feel fine taking the time, learning the processes properly to get to a standard where you feel comfortable and confident releasing I applaud you.

Don’t expect to have world-class mixes or recording abilities straight away though, there are people in the industry who have dedicated 20+yrs to one single process such as mixing and still search for that sound they want. Expect it to be a slow and at times straining endeavour but if it’s done to completion it will be rewarding and satisfying. This is an example of one of countless youtube channels and resources out their new engineers can look at to start taking notes and experimenting.

Team effort. So, you’ve got yourself a decent budget or you’re seeking to do this professionally and want to know some expenses. Well, there can be a lot or a little it’s up to you but what I can guarantee is that bringing in someone who is a specialist in a certain area is absolutely going to produce a better job than you will.

It all doesn’t have to be at once too, you can bring in a mix engineer and master engineer for the first release. Second release you bring the same people on but you now you add a recording engineer, third you add a proper drummer for example (an instrument you don’t play essentially). In the world of DAW (digital audio workstation) and countless plugins, it’s easy for a guitarist to write a drum beat and an orchestral line but real players will always bring a level of extra awareness.

This will cost a lot more than doing it yourself, you will have to commit to some extent to delivering music at a certain period of time and work around other peoples schedules. Will it sound better? It should. Otherwise, I’d question who you’ve brought on to help you. In some instances depending on how serious you’re getting there may be contracts involved, always get a lawyer, no elaboration on that, always get a lawyer, a music lawyer, someone who specialises in musical agreements.

If you have a limited budget but you still want to get a few people but aren’t sure who is going to help elevate a release my recommendations are these three. Recording engineer, mix engineer and someone to help with marketing. A mix is only as good as the recording quality and the feedback from a release only happens if a release gets in front of people.

Those three roles are the roles I outsourced on the first release and on the second I expanded, same with the 3rd, 4th etc. Eventually, you develop a list of go-to people for certain tasks and roles and if you’ve developed a good relationship then you should be able to book in your go-to musicians with ease.

To wrap this up I’ve made a little summary table for you including the points I’ve mentioned and a few others. Hopefully, this makes some of your decisions easier on whether you bring in aid or not.