1. By Jack Tanner, Elliot JonesAnd Charlie Macarthur

2. In the 60s a 4 track tape recorder was often used torecord albums, this 4 track Studer J37 to the left wasused at abbey road for recording The Beatles worldfamous album Abbey Road These days however digital recording techniques are used, microphones which convert sound into digital files and back into sound again such as this Shure SM7B in the picture below. 3. Studio LayoutThe layout of a studio is very important. Proper planning and work youre unlikely to getthe end product you were hoping for. One of the most important things to bear in mindwhen your planning out your studio is speaker placement, speakers should be at ear leveland should preferably be high quality active monitors for example. . .KRK RP10 3 280 WATTSAnother important thing to bear in mind when laying out your studio is where your headis going to be facing most of the time during production. Usually its going to be facing acomputer screen with a large multi-track mixer in front of it which means having amonitor either side of your computer screen is Ideal. The basic idea is to have yourmonitors pointed towards your ears and at the same height as your ears as well.The main desk in the control room will nearly always have a MIDI keyboard and a multi-channel mixing desk on , the more mixer channels you have the more expensive yourstudio looks. 4. The control roomThe control room is the part of the studio where all the post production is done, from thecontrol room you can adjust and tweak all the different pieces of hardware e.g.compressors, equalisers etc. The main centre focus of a control room is nearly always thecomputer, which will be linked to all of the instruments so everything can be recordeddirectly to the computer which makes things easier for editing and mastering. 5. WindowProfessional studios will nearly always have a window between the control room andsome will have an intercom from control room to recording room so the producers andengineers can tell the artists exactly what they need to do or change to get the perfectsound. 6. Recording RoomsRecording in different rooms changes the type of sound thatsrecorded; this is because of reverberation and the varyingabsorbency co-efficiency ratings of different rooms.Because some producers like to have the option of changing theeffect their recording room has on recording they will sometimeshave different rooms these are called live rooms and dead rooms.Live room Live rooms are larger than dead rooms and becauseof this any sounds created give off a lot more reverberation thana dead room. The walls of a live room normally arent padded so alot less sound is absorbed than in a dead room.Dead room Dead rooms are small rooms that give off a lot lessreverberation than live rooms. 7. Different recording systemsNon-Linear recording systems such as Cubase, reason and logic pro enable a producerto fully edit and a record multiple audio tracks, their able to move sections of the song,loop different parts and add computer generated sounds.Non-linear is newer than Linear recording systems and has totally replaced it , this isbecause linear recording systems allow you to do so much more than non-linear.Linear recording systems are very limited to the number of tracks you can record , thefirst ever linear recording system was a one track tape recorder. 8. SequencersSequencers allow you to create patterns and loops using various different audiotracks. For example you can have a kick drum, a hi-hat and a snare drum on separateaudio tracks and draw in your own pattern to create a drum pattern.