How to Produce Music With a Digital Audio Workstation

A digital audio workstation is a computer set up specifically for producing music recordings. The workstation digitally records to a hard drive and the converter changes the signal into waves for editing. Recording and producing music in a digital audio workstation allows you to record, edit, cut and blend music.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

1. Use the mixing boards and routers when producing the music. The mixing board raises or lowers the volume of the different elements in the recording. The router allows you to combine music and send it to a specific area. For example, the router lets you combine the sound of the score and back-up singers and send it to the vocalist while he is recording.

2. Do a run-through or first pass. This gives room for you to adjust elements and change the composition of the audio tracks for the actual recording.

3. Adjust the level of the recording so it inputs at between -10 to 0. Watch the wave lines in the digital audio workstation. When the levels are good, the waves stay between the border lines.

4. Compile all of the good takes or parts of takes. Edit them together to create the final song. Do this before the plug-ins so everything sounds uniform when the plug-ins are used.

5. Use plug-ins to alter the sound of the recording. Plug-ins are small programs that accomplish workstations tasks like compression, reverb and pitch.

6. Save the produced recording and burn it to a CD.