How to Make a Minimalist Recording and Setup

March 31, 2021 by Klaus Crow

photo by Dan Taylor
What a great joy it is these days to be a musician or a songwriter. Big studios are no more a necessity to record your music.

Better yet, you don’t even need a home studio anymore. All you need is a laptop (with proper software), an interface, a guitar, a mic and you are ready to roll. High quality recordings at your fingertips.

Mobile and minimalist.
Now you can pack your whole studio in and onto your guitar bag. You can put your guitar and mic in the bag and your notebook and interface in the front pockets of your guitar bag. Yes you do need a solid bag with multiple pockets. Composing, recording, editing and mixing your music everywhere you go. It almost sounds like an ad, but it is just to demonstrate how mobile and minimalist you can be as a musician. That is true freedom.

The minimalist musician / songwriter
We are musicians so we do need an instrument to play with and equipment to record our music, but we are aiming for the minimalist approach here as much as possible. We don’t want to buy a lot, but buying less doesn’t necessary mean it is good to buy cheap. On the contrary it is better to invest a good sustainable product that will last longer and deliver you high quality recordings.

Here are some tips for an awesome minimalist recording setup:

– Laptop: Macbook pro – Apple
– Interface: Duet – Apogee
– Software audio workstation: Logic Pro – Apple, Cubase – Steinberg, Sonar – Cakewalk
– Software plugins: Superior Drummer 2.0 – Toontrack, Trilian – Spectrasonics, Ivory pianos – Synthogy
– Condenser microphone: Neumann, AKG, RØDE

My recording setup:

– Laptop: Macbook pro – Apple
– Interface: Mbox pro – Digidesign
– Software audio workstation: Protools – Digidesign
– Software plugins: Superior Drummer 2.0 – Toontrack, Stylus – Spectrasonics
– Microphone: Neumann

A slightly disadvantage of protools relating to the minimalist approach is that you always need the mbox interface at your side even if you just want to edit or mix your music. You can get a small mbox usb-stick if you don’t want the hassle of a device attached to your laptop.

Logic Pro, Cubase and Sonar are standalone audio workstations and don’t necessarily need an external interface for editing or mixing your songs. That being said, I do think Protools is the most flexible audio workstation out there and it has an amazing workflow.

Minimalist recording
Besides having an minimal setup you can also create a minimalist recording production.
This means you create a song with minimal arrangements and try to use the least amount of audio tracks for your recording. You can also use less or no reverb at all and cut back on effects, etc.

A good example of the minimalist sound is producer Rick Rubin

If you listen to the album “Californication” from the Red Hot Chili Peppers that he produced, you will hear no reverb or delays. Rick Rubin also applied the minimalist approach to many other artists like Tom Petty, Johnny Cash and Neil Diamond.

To give you a place to start with, here are some track sheet examples for a minimalist recording:

Approach 1

1 – Vocals
2 – Guitars

Approach 2

1 – Vocals
2 – Guitars
3 – Bass guitar

Approach 3

1 – Vocals
2 – Guitars
3 – Bass guitar
4 – Drums (mono)

Approach 4

1 – Vocals
2 – Guitars
3 – Bass guitar
4 – Keyboards (mono)
5 – Drums (mono)

Approach 5

1 – Vocals
2 – Vocal harmony
3 – Guitars
4 – Bass guitar
5 – Keyboards (mono)
6 – Drums (mono)

Approach 6

1 – Vocals
2 – Guitar
3 – Guitar
4 – Bass guitar
5 – Keyboards (mono)
6 – Drums (mono)

Approach 7

1 – Vocals
2 – Vocal harmony
3 – Guitar
4 – Guitar
5 – Bass guitar
6 – Keyboards (mono)
7 – Drums (mono)

Approach 8

1 – Vocals
2 – Guitars
3 – Bass guitar
4 – Keyboards (left)
5 – Keyboards (right)
6 – Kick
7 – Snare
8 – Hihat
9 – Crash
10 – Ride
11 – Tom
12 – Tom
13 – Floor tom

Approach 9

1 – Vocals
2 – Vocal harmony
3 – Guitar
4 – Guitar
5 – Bass guitar
6 – Kick
7 – Snare
8 – Hihat
9 – Crash
10 – Ride
11 – Tom
12 – Tom
13 – Floor tom

Approach 10

1 – Vocals
2 – Guitars
3 – Bass guitar
4 – Kick
5 – Snare
6 – Hihat
7 – Crash
8 – Ride
9 – Tom
10 – Tom
11 – Floor tom

Approach 11

1 – Vocals
2 – Guitars
3 – Bass guitar
4 – Piano
5 – Kick
6 – Snare
7 – Hihat
8 – Crash
9 – Ride
10 – Tom
11 – Tom
12 – Floor tom

The beauty of a minimalist recording is that you can really hear the essence of a song. Every instrument can really stand out in the mix and the song will sound really authentic. The result is a pure song with true character. Isn’t that what we all want?

Feel free to leave a comment. I’d appreciate it.

Thanx, Klaus Crow