Off and on, I've experimented with recording at home. With my old, plastic chunk of computer, my results with GarageBand have been shaky at best. Sure, it's charming to create a dinky little song with a dinky little internal microphone. Inane, but charming.

If you're serious about creating and recording music (as I, surely, am not), then you would do well to listen to Jeff Southard.

Jeff Southard is a true blue Tacoma man. A fixture at many a live show, he has integrated himself deeply within the Tacoma music scene. At his home, he will often help his friends record-including the likes of the Nightgowns, Paris Spleen, the Makeup Monsters, et al. It's to him that I turn when wondering what you need to do a proper home recording.

"Well, you need a microphone, for sure," says Southard. "You need to decide between a computer or a cassette-based four-track or an open reel machine. You can actually get really good results with a cassette four-track without much effort."

How do the recording capabilities of a four-track compare to a computer?

"With a computer, you're not limited to how many tracks you can do, how many overdubs," Southard says. "And with computers, normally you have built in effects processing, equalizers, reverbs, stuff like that. But the processing that actually sounds good is pretty expensive. You're going to be better off recording with a cassette four-track in a really nice-sounding room than you would be recording in a closet with a cheap software reverb. ... With cassettes, they're kind of magical. They warm up the sound. You can get a similar sound out of a computer, but not without working at it."

Speaking of nice-sounding rooms, what kind of room is best to record in?

"The size of the room is important," Southard continues. "Whether it's carpeted or not, or tiles or hardwood-all of these things affect how the room is going to shape the sound. ... Just try as many areas as you have access to, and listen to it. Just sit down and play your guitar and listen to how it sounds."

Do you remember that great scene in Once where, after they've finished their recording, they take a drive in a car to listen to it on shitty speakers? Jeff Southard is one hundred percent behind that.

"One of the biggest pitfalls in home recording is that mixes tend to sound good where you mix them, and kind of don't sound so good anywhere else," says Southard. "It's important to check your work on as many different systems as you have available to you. Take it out to your car and see if it sounds good there; play it through your laptop speakers and see if you can hear everything. ... That's one of the hardest things to do at home is get a good, balanced mix."

Lastly, be sure to never release recordings of you shouting at the GarageBand on your laptop. It sounds like a good idea now, but - trust me - it is not.