All this talk about super recording productions is all fine & good......but does the musician have the talent to First sound good & have super chops & vocals.......otherwise now you have a great recording of bad music

Point well taken, Donny.

But if you DO have the chops, why ruin it with a BAD recording?

If all anyone shoots for is mediocrity, that's all they'll ever achieve

Thats my line. Bad song, great recording, Still bad. Great song crappy recording still great song. Great Producers CAN hear great songs through the "noise".

These Arrangers have great mixes out of the box. Far better than many can accomplish on their own. Home recording is getting easier and easier by the year. Prices are way down on great gear, I remember when the AT4033 was the cheapest large diaphragm one could get at $600. I thought I had dies and gone to heaven to be able to use a Large diaphram mike!! Now you can get that "quality" for less than 1/2 the price. Pre Amps, DA/AD converters, Software plug ins rivaling the best hardware of years gone by. Never be discouraged by those in the business of selling "dreams" by the hour. Take those thousands and buy the gear and learn the process and record what you want when you want. IF you have a good song and a regular crowd, the gear will pay for itself.

There are enough players who are not technically inclined and will want to pay to record in someone else studio. That's a good thing for them and a great reason to have professional commercial studios out there.
But its not a requirement anymore. IF the studio thinks the material is good enough and wants a Master. They will see that one is recorded. If they don't like the material no matter how good the recording, the money spent making the CD was wasted when it could have gone to purchasing their own gear. Hollywood ,Nashville and NY waste bins are filled with $5000 recordings.

But if one doesn't care about recording contracts they can do it themselves. Even if they do and have a decent demo they can get a deal....ITS ALL ABOUT THE SONG. Thats what they all will tell you in Nashville. A good producer will hear a great song with just piano part perhaps and actually look forward to painting the rest of the pallet.

All well and good, Kingfrog, but you are kind of arguing circularly, here...

Either Nashville wants a ratty piano only Portastudio demo, in which case a T3 is utterly wasted, if not actually detrimental to helping it get cut, or they DO want quality and good sounds.

You want it both ways. Either the very expensive T3 helps, in which case, a very expensive mike, pre, and plug-in suite with a good engineer in the seat helps also, or the very expensive T3 gets as much in the way of success as spending time (and maybe some money) to grab their attention with quality production.

Which is it?

The point is anyone songwriter who has the good fortune of owning a T3 and some decent Home Recording gear can make a CD that will be a good representation of their music. Good enough to sell on their own or send to Hollywood.

If the song is great it will still be so if someone does not have the gear and just an H4 and a guitar.

You can have it both ways!
$3500 for a T3 and another $1500 for a large diaphragm mike, a pre Amp and decent interface (or a ZOOM HD8) is far less of an expenditure than paying a studio to produce the same CD with no guarantee of success and no more of a guarantee because it was recorded for $5000 in a Commercial Studio.

As we know $5000 doesn't buy much even in a Commercial Studio, especially if using live musicians. That money is gone forever. Whereas if someone buys the gear they can try again and again to record their music without spending any more money and LEARNING to get better quality recordings as well! WIn WIn.

I would always advocate a musician to learn how to record their own tunes ,especially on the gear thats available today. Stay off the clock.

Its the old "I can give you fish or teach you how to fish".

I don't honestly think that using an arranger is much of an improvement over using great players..!

I've been playing and recording a bit recently with a guy who played for years with James Taylor, Jackson Brown, Bonnie Raitt and many others. The day an arranger can play 1/100th as well as he does, I will pay any amount of money for it! Same with drummers (my last one was with Asleep At The Wheel for years - got a Grammy!), same with horn players, etc., etc..

Look, I'm not putting home studios down... plenty of good stuff can come out of them. I do orchestration work out of mine that sells six figures a year (for a client, sadly! ). But getting people to realize that maybe they are messing up a good thing with a terrible recording can be difficult. And no, they don't have to rectify it by paying $1500/hr and hiring the Saturday Night Live band to play on it! But something in the middle can go a long way towards achieving what they want to do. Few here are pitching songs to Nashville (are you?). Most just want to make a decent quality CD to sell on the gig (like your wife).

But telling everyone that, with a T3 and a decent mike, it is all going to happen ain't always true. You can teach a guy to fish, and he can STILL get skunked every time! Or he can go to Captain D's, or even an upscale fish restaurant, and get fish any time he wants it. Learning the studio techniques to even get a passable demo can take many, many frustrating months or even years. Few here have even the patience to learn to PLAY, yet alone work a studio (you catch my drift?) to an acceptable level (to even themselves).

I heard the one thing you posted recently, which you said was done quite a while ago... Have you anything more recent, arranger-based, that utilizes your improved recording skills? I would love to hear it. Honestly. You've got a great voice, and I'd like to hear how you've come along in the home studio. We can talk all night, but a song say a thousand words.

But, bottom line... Professional production has it's place. Not everyone needs it, not everyone DOESN'T.