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"  1. The Setup If you bought a computer within the last few years, you already have the beginnings of a good home studio. Either a PC or Macintosh will work equally well. The important thing is to max out your RAM--it takes plenty of horsepower to work in a multi-track environment--and get an external hard drive with at least 160 GB of storage to hold your tracks. Beyond that, you&amp;#039;ll need mixing software and a good audio interface--look for multiple audio inputs and a USB or FireWire output. For vocals and traditional instruments, you&amp;#039;ll record with mics and pickups, but if you want to fake a 26-piece orchestra--or just experiment--consider a MIDI keyboard, which works with software to create any sound imaginable. Finally, buy a decent set of neutral-sounding loudspeakers. Listening through headphones can quickly become fatiguing.     2. Laying It Down Before starting your session, rehearse all the musical arrangements, including both vocals and instrumentals. Turn off all speakers before turning on any microphones--unless you enjoy piercing feedback. Move your mics as far from the computer as possible; even cheap ones can pick up PC fan noise and ruin the track. Record the same track multiple times. Sure, the performance might sound great on the first take, but you&amp;#039;ll want plenty of material later for polishing the final product in the edit bay.     3. In the Mix Once you&amp;#039;ve laid down all your tracks, it&amp;#039;s time to review them and splice the best pieces together. With your mixing software you can cut out any part of the music you don&amp;#039;t want, and add effects such as distor-tion and reverb. Use cross fades to smooth over your edits, but don&amp;#039;t edit out &amp;quot;breath sounds&amp;quot; in vocal tracks, or the result will sound robotic and unnatural. Use level controls to boost the excitement in the recording. For instance, when a horn solo comes up, give that track more emphasis in the mix, then dial it back when the solo is over. When you&amp;#039;re done, save your master track as an uncompressed WAV file for maximum quality. You can make MP3 copies later to e-mail, or stream the song on the band&amp;#039;s MySpace page. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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