Tech: best 'demo' recording program via puter

Subject: Tech: best 'demo' recording program via puter
From: erinmaidin
Date: 02 May 06 - 06:10 AM

I'm a songwriter just coming into the 21st century in the aspect of promoting. Want to be able to find an easy, efficient program for recording via computer. Advice, dos and do nots...etc. Would like to be able to do 2 or three track recording. Anyone out there doing the same thing successfully and with relative ease?

Subject: RE: Tech: best 'demo' recording program via puter
From: Grab
Date: 02 May 06 - 06:54 AM

Audacity - it's free, and works pretty well.

Graham.

Subject: RE: Tech: best 'demo' recording program via puter
From: Nick
Date: 02 May 06 - 07:28 AM

Depends on what you want to spend I guess.

Here are two or three suggestions -

Audacity is a free program which will allow you to do what you want

Kristal Audio Engine is again a free program which will give you up to 16 tracks and allow you to use VST plug-ins. Have tinkered a bit with this one

I've used Cakewalk Guitar Tracks II to create tracks - it allows up to 8 tracks (later versions more) and used to cost about £40. I think it has now been superceded by more up to date (and more tracks)

If you want some examples of things created with Guitar Tracks then there are some music examples here - the style is not folky but it gives some idea. Some of the tracks have 8+ tracks on them. Never done anything like it until a few months ago so it isn't too hard to learn.

If you have pots of money to spend you could go for one of the programs like Nuendo - Cubase - proTools etc but the basic principles are the same on any of them. The freebies should give you an idea of what is involved.

If you have a reasonably modern soundcard you should be able to record through it but a better quality soundcard makes a difference - you can pick up something like a Soundblaster Platinum card off ebay for a reasonable amount.

You need a reasonable microphone(s) and the ability to plug into the soundcard which may need a little adapter. You will also likely need a pre-amp of some sort to boost the signal from the microphone to the correct level - I actually put the mic through an old stereo cassette recorder and use that as a preamp/mixer. Very Heath Robinson but it works on my low budget! I record bass - piano - vocals - electric and acoustic guitars and after the initial setting up it is just a case of turning computer on, launching software, check levels and record. I did a backing track of 13 songs to practice singing in the car which took a bit under an hour, so it can be straightforward. On the other hand I'm currently trying to mix something which has about 12 vocal parts in and that takes me a while.

Hope that is of some use. I enjoy it - a friend I play with finds the process a pain and has nil interest in doing things like this. Each to their own I guess. It's not hard getting going if you are that way inclined and the results can be reasonable with some care. There is a wealth of info about Home Recording on the web and in the local library.

Subject: RE: Tech: best 'demo' recording program via puter
From: erinmaidin
Date: 02 May 06 - 07:48 AM

OMG...thanks...and AND it sounds as if I wish you guys were here helping me learn the ropes....but I'm a smart woman...a bit impatient, but smart...and with some effort (again, something I'm not great at..sure isn't it enough that I penned the songs?? I have to go thru all this too?) and the expertise available here at Mudcat, I'll fly!

Subject: RE: Tech: best 'demo' recording program via puter
From: Nick
Date: 02 May 06 - 08:01 AM

The other thing you'll find is that music eats storage space - most of my hard drive has disappeared so I've recently gone and got a 320gb one. On the Cakewalk program I use when I'm recording with a friend the songs with multiple tracks take up to 250-300mb in size. When I last looked I had about 40 gigabytes of our recorded music on disk.

I think there are various threads about hard disk recorders on mudcat which would be another option.

If I can be of assistance PM me or post and I will if I can.

Subject: RE: Tech: best 'demo' recording program via puter
From: erinmaidin
Date: 02 May 06 - 08:39 AM

ooooo...i already downloaded the "Audacity" program and recorded just a simple phrase from a song...playing ...changing things...I think I'm going to be a junkie for sure...thanks...and by the way..Grab, when you first suggested audacity i thought you were being cheeky...mille pardons!Thanks again guys...already in market for memory card..etc. thanks ...did i thank you enough? THANKS!

Subject: RE: Tech: best 'demo' recording program via puter
From: Grab
Date: 02 May 06 - 09:55 AM

*grin* Sorry, forgot that some people might not have heard of it - should have given a link. It's not got the world's greatest user interface, but it works and it's free, so that's good enough for me.

Graham.

Subject: RE: Tech: best 'demo' recording program via puter
From: M.Ted
Date: 02 May 06 - 12:59 PM

For the best results, you will need a 7200rpm hard drive, and you should store only music files on it--until then, be very careful recording, because those big sound files can eat up memory very quickly, and there is a danger of maxing out your hard drive--

Also, consider the recording options--

Instead of a sound card, you might want to consider an Audio/MIDI Interface which connects to your computer on the USB port and allows you mix audio and MIDI with real nobs--this device, or similar ones, comes with professional recording software, and gives you full home recording capability for about $200(and this one can be used with either mac or pc!)

Or you might consider getting a Stand alone multitrack digital recorder/workstation which is like a cassette recorder, without tapes--nice thing about these things is that you can take them anywhere, record live, etc without the computer--and if you want, you can upload the soundfile to your computer and edit--

The good thing is that with new, relatively inexpensive technology you can make really good quality
recordings--the bad news(and it's not really that bad) is that most of the books in libraries and even bookstores were written before this stuff was developed--so you have to find users websites and online support groups--

Subject: RE: Tech: best 'demo' recording program via puter
From: GUEST,Sandy Andina
Date: 02 May 06 - 01:03 PM

If you have a Mac, then Garage Band is terrific, and comes with the machine. Its interface is based on Pro Tools. Speaking of which, if you are running OS 9 or earlier on a Mac or Windows 98SE or earlier on a PC, you can download ProToolsFree, which allows up to 8 tracks.

Subject: RE: Tech: best 'demo' recording program via puter
From: jeffp
Date: 02 May 06 - 01:15 PM

I strongly recommend that you find "Home Recording for Musicians for Dummies." It will get you going and save you a lot of money buying stuff that either you don't need or won't do what you want it to.

Also, the Home Recording Bulletin Board is a source of great knowledge. Be careful, they are not always kind. There is a Newbies forum, though, where people are generally helpful. Over there, I am know as irishfolker.

Subject: RE: Tech: best 'demo' recording program via puter
From: M.Ted
Date: 02 May 06 - 04:27 PM

Check the publishers sitefrom Home Recording For Musicians For Dummies, 2nd Edition there are a number of chapters summarized there.

Here is a thought from there:
"After all, great albums and #1 hits were recorded on lesser equipment than you'll find in most home studios today. Focus on the song and the arrangement, practicing good solid recording techniques, and you can get by with any of the pro or semi-pro recording system"

Subject: RE: Tech: best 'demo' recording program via puter
From: erinmaidin
Date: 03 May 06 - 04:38 AM

Right so...even playing around with this thing can compromise my hard-drive? (not the brightest puter tech in the world)Surely this would only apply if I stored the work on the computer. What if I loaded all the files onto a disc and deleted???

Subject: RE: Tech: best 'demo' recording program via puter
From: Grab
Date: 03 May 06 - 08:03 AM

Don't worry too much about the hard drive. If you're only recording a few tracks at a time (most cheap soundcards can only record two channels at a time, ie. stereo) then any hard drive will do.

You won't actually damage anything by running out of hard drive room, but it *will* stop you doing anything on your PC until you've cleared some of the unwanted files out. You might also have problems booting Windows, so you might need to use "Safe mode" to do the deleting if you've really stuffed it full.

You can't record direct to MP3, it has to be recorded uncompressed, so you're talking at least 5MB per minute per channel, and that's at fairly low quality - better quality (24-bit, 96kHz) you're talking 15MB-20MB per minute per channel. See how much spare hard drive space you've got, and do the sums to see how much you'll be using up. Even more than digital photos, you can get through a lot of space very quickly if you don't delete or archive things that you're not really wanting to keep.

If you can't justify getting a second hard drive, then a good idea is to partition your hard drive and keep one partition just for data (sound recordings, digi photos and stuff like that), and reserve some hard drive space just for use by Windows. This makes your one hard drive look like two separate hard drives to Windows. Then even if your recordings burn through all your "data" hard drive section, Windows will keep going quite happily because it has its own separate section to work with.

The idea of having two hard drives is that the recording program (eg. Audacity) often needs to read DLLs and stuff while recording is going on. If you're doing it all on one hard drive and recording lots of channels at once, then you can end up with problems where the hard drive is trying to do too much jumping around between them, and either things crash, or the recording stops, or the recording is corrupted. If you've got two separate hard drives, then the "jumping around" just doesn't happen. You can also use separate IDE channels (if you're still using IDE drives) to ensure that they aren't even limited by both trying to send/receive data down the same wires. But if you're only recording a couple of channels (or even if you're doing more), it's not usually an issue, and it's not such a big deal anyway these days, since hard drives and PCs are faster. My PC will happily record 8 channels at a time, 24-bit, all on the same hard drive that also has Audacity on it.

Graham.

Subject: RE: Tech: best 'demo' recording program via puter
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 03 May 06 - 08:38 AM

suggest folk checkout these reasonably affordable 'guitarist / singer friendly'
USB audio interfaces..
which include usable bundled software..

[good lower prices available from ebay or shopping around...]

http://www.line6.com/toneport/overview.html


and this recently price reduced [£99] alternative..

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/MAudioBlackBox-main.html

Subject: RE: Tech: best 'demo' recording program via puter
From: M.Ted
Date: 03 May 06 - 12:54 PM

I will respectfully beg to differ with Grab on the bit about maxing out the Hard drive, as I had it happen. You risk damaging the directory--and rendering everything on the HD useless. (which happened to me--fortunately, I do backups) This can be avoided by simply setting the maximum file size--but, at least with some programs, you have to know to do it--