home recording
 

what's the best programme to get for recording guitar and bleepy stuff onto your laptop?
totally ignorant as to what's out there and what's good so any advice much appreciated

what kind of "bleepy stuff" you mean? from external source or you're about to use some internal VST synths?
because I use external sources (sampler, oscillators) only and cubase works for me just fine. but then again, i don't care about production much and I like to keep things pretty lo-fi

cakewalk, adobe audition

are you british? confess!

ableton

Sound Forge

there are two that i believe are up to scratch and one i dont like using because it has average midi at best. digital performer is a fine fine multitracker and also had very very powerful midi capabilites. protools very very good recording, average mid. ableton live average recording good midi, reason no recording brilliant midi. but if you don't want to spend money "wink" you should be able to find any of those online.

otherwise there is a good free/really cheap multi tracker called reaper which is gaining more an more popularity with home studios and is near to catching up on the quality of digital performer and protools. but it sounds like you dont want to do very much with it, so i'm not really sure what to recommend as some of this software titles have quite a steep learning curve.

you could go with cakewalk, adobe audition or soundforge, but in my opinion these are very much audio toys.

try out a whole heap of different stuff and go with what you like it the best thing i can recommend.

hardware, highly recommended. choose one. and get to know it, master it and you will be more satisfied with it than any software (speaking just from my personal experience)

I got a USB turntable for xmas and I'm afraid to take it out of the box. :(

my insanity has got the best of me and I don't know where to start. :(

what hardware shabbray?

plug play

never trust santa claus. take the whole box outside and burn it.


get a good fire propellant and good matches.

gasoline is lovely, it explodes as it lights up.

depends on what you are able to spend.
lets say with a used sampler ( I recommend something with pads, like a mpc or something out of the boss SP series, cause it really enhances the "play" feeling) you are able to cover almost anything you wanna do. the sampling capacity isnt an issue anymore, only polyphony ( if you wanna record different things at the same time). but if you want to do some record producing and want some hardware which functions a some kind of composition tool I ighly recommend these units. its a lot of fun to throw samples you recorded for yourself around an the feeling of this magic click when some parts interlocking is so much more "real" then in any software ive used.

so I would say spend 200 bucks for a really good used unit and they will be worth every cent of it.
(again just my humble opinion)



sp 303 (boss, can shott them at a bargain, and their grany-ness managed to inspired a lot of musicians)



(baby)mpc 1000 some more functions then the SPs, but a different feel, definately out of a lgenedary series, but I would recommend none over the other, its a matter of taste. definately more expansive then the boss models

these are all well and good but have limited use in a studio setup, i think bebs is more after some sort of multitracker, i could be wrong though.

ok for multitracker I would choose some which are HD based, again. pretty cheap on ebay, used. i fried the HD on my one which wasnt an issue, just replaced it and it functions like before.
again Boss, creates some üretty sturdy and good sounding units, Zooms are pretty cheap to get (got myself the old mrs802CD) which is pretty neutral sounding.
and the good old tascams...really dig their tape based series (if you are searching for less neutral more sound "forming" multitrackers

bebs justs want something for recording onto laptop so or these hardware units are irrelevant. yeah i loved some of the old tape four tracks, i had an old tascam and an old yamaha that were both great, my yamaha is still floating around somewhere, i think my brother has it, cos i need something more than 4 tracks and bouncing...

If you have an Apple or it's in the budget..... GarageBand (free with Mac's OS) will take you a long way, surprisingly. Something to keep in mind, is you'll need a sound-card / interface. M-audio has some budget gear... Lexicon too. You'll have to spend at least $500 for something nice though.

Most of the interfaces come with recording software. Assuming you're gonna need an interface, you might want to start with the software they'll come with. After that, you might want to look at the Cakewalks', Cubase, Ableton Live, Fruityloops and all. Protools isn't the best option for Midi but does accommodate it.

If you're goal is to get it to PC, and digital.... don't waste your money on outboard programmers, synths, drum machines or other hardware..... you're gonna need a decent interface to begin with. With a decent software, you can do all of that after the fact.

Consider a decent "USB" midi keyboard controller (very affordable usually). There are countless options for midi controlled synth and sequencers that plug in and work together with the recording software. Not necessary, but a keyboard will make things easy, and keep a musical element to getting into the digital.

Let us know how it goes.....Good luck and keep at it!

A newer program that I've been using is Reaper for all yr computer multitracking and mixing. I have found it to be better than Nuendo and ProTools or at least the versions I've used in various studios. You can buy an individual license for around $60. They send updates once or twice a month or so. The only downside is the EQ is a plug-in, which depending on your computer may take up a good bit of CPU if you are using tons of plugins on a bunch of tracks.

I've done about 14 projects on it in a year or so and have been very happy with it. Two other producers/engineers (Pittsburgh and Sante Fe) are also using it and have done some very nice work.

Yeah I mentioned reaper in a previous post, a few mates having using since the very first beta and the love it, they say the midi is overly complicated generally though. Do you find this?

You can buy a Yamaha RS7000 just like I have, now for really good money.
A complete workstation, combines sampler, internal synth and a sequencer (and midi, of course).
The only problem is that it only works with SmartMedia cards which are complete bollocks.

mutilate the stillborn

cheers all

i've come into this fairly blind, but someone recomended the zoom4 which looked ok, then i saw a tascam equivolant which look ok too. I had no idea such things existed and they sound more promising to me than actual software.
I think i read that they both record in WAV which i guess means i can transer it onto the computer to burn a cd?

i have a few cheap and toy (music)keyboards which have some cool noises so if i can record them sraight onto the device (through a mic) that would be ideal.
cheers again

Go for an Edirol R-09h then!
those things (the zoom too, I guess the tascam too) have built in mics, the edirol's one works pretty fine, you might be set even with no proper external mic to hook up.
Sure, you can burn wavs to audio cd, just remember to set the correct sample rate and bits "depth"!

Please tell a begineer what/how he can get started using GarageBand and what can he produce? Will the tutorial sessions whip me into shape?

if you go that way, you will more than likely be buying something else within 12 months once you are bored of it and realise how limiting it is.

tutorials will get you going pretty quickly.

http://www.last.fm/music/lamstonite/Paint+a+Zero

not so much of the bleepy but there we are.
be good to know what you think

Great stuff! wow, y'all have been busy

Funeral2; forkatie, nowhere a few of my favorites, but really, all are good.

vocals are appropriate, but could be a little more dynamic.
it'd be interesting to hear a mix of electric guitar in place of the acoustic. right now, they "jam" (w/ the acoustic), if you plugged in, especially with some of the heavy chord, ballad stuff, they would "rock"... but really, that's just personal preference.

at the beginning of every track, there's a "shaking a paint can sound"... intentional?

How did you record?

cheers, and thanks for the feedback
it's recorded on a tascam dp004 4track. Really basic but dead easy to use and properly portable so that gave a bit of freedom. It also sounds (to me) very 'bedroom' which i like. Those "paint cans" weren't intentional but i decided to keep them in as it gives it a lo fi feel which again i like.
I have no effects pedals so had to use things like running taps and hoovers to get certain effects, and the electric guitar that is on there is through a toy 'amp in a cigarette packet' which gives that fuzzy sound
anyway, cheers again really appreciate that

I record everything in sound recorder on my windows me. Sounds cool.

http://www.last.fm/music/lamstonite

i've uploaded some more stuff, old and new
click on "free download" for a free download

That's what I got

9 months later and i'm 3 albums in

http://www.last.fm/music/lamstonite/Paint+a+Zero
was my first effort (i linked to this earlier in the thread too)

http://www.last.fm/music/lamstonite/Dawn

is my 2nd

http://www.last.fm/music/lamstonite/In+for+a+Penny

and this is my new one.

(and they're all free to download too)

Can anyone recommend a good 4/8 track recorder? analog or digital

And I think I composed a pretty good doom-metal song, but I wouldn't know in a thousand years how to get the right sound

I wanna sell one...
its a zoom mrs 802CD.
been a pretty good working horse the last years, but I needed something more portable so I dont need it anymore.
only problem, the HD is faulty but already ordered a new one.

Parallel compression will be a good start to getting the right sound. I would do it on drums, bass and vocals. Also i would set a ducker to slightly duck the bass when the kick hits (depending on how much you are using kick, if there is alot of kick drum then don't do this).

So parallel compression: On drums, you want to make two mix busses to send the drums too. On one of the mix busses place a compressor on at 6:1 ration or a little harder and set your threshold quite early like -40db or so. you really want to squash the fuck out of this first buss so the lightest of hits or taps will be heard and the loudest really squeezed. On the second buss just add a fairly light compression to catch any ugly transients, maybe 3 or 4:1 ratio and threshold around -3db or so. Send to both of the busses from the drum channels prefade as well. Then we want to mix the clean and the two compressed bussed till it sounds like you want. This if you do it properly will give the drums great punch and the lightest of dynamic playing will be heard. You can then do this on the bass and vocals too, even guitars if you want. I usually only do the drums and vocals when i'm doing this for live mixes but recording I do a fair bit of it.

Make sure auot plugin compensation is on otherwise you will get phasing etc and the signal will be slighty delayed.

As far as recorders, is it to be portable?

if you still get phasing (which happened almost on any sound-prog Ive used so far) put both files in an audio editor, like peak, audacity blablabla where you can zoom as much in the waveform as possible (till you see the sample points) find a spot in the waveform which functions as a mark, and then cut both, the squashed and the dry version at this exact point, so you get rid of the shitty phasing problem manually. at least thats what I do when it happens, cause garageband doesnt have a delay compensation.

Thanks for the advice! I clearly don't have the expertise you do, but I'm definately going to try this out. Will share the result when I've got something worth sharing.

For the recorder, portable can be handy, but it's not for field recordings or whatever, so it can take up some space. Affordable has to be the main quality I guess.

i like garage band actually but i'd rather use a shitty four track or a tape recorder

^^I like to use both. both got their pros and cons.
the digital precision & the analog soul.






minidisc recorder are pretty good for that. if you dont mind the (good) compression of the minidisc format. they are a bargain used at these days, and you can switch and label the minidiscs itself.
the reason why I still got my trusty MD player