recording myself

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Permalink Reply by hue on February 9, 2009 at 10:06pm

The basic needs:

An audio interface. M-Audio has several affordable ones. At the lower price ranges just pick one. They are virtually all the same quality. Presonus' Audiobox comes with Cubase LE which brings us to....

Software: If you can get it with your interface, you're good to go. Forget cracks. If you can't make full use of an LE program the pirated full version will be of no use to you.

A mic, cable and stand. The "best" mic? Likely an SM57. No studio in the world without one. It's been a standard for near 50 years and I doubt that will change any time soon.

Time: Time to read the software and hardware manual. Time to experiment with mic placement.

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Permalink Reply by Stephen Verderber on February 10, 2009 at 8:53am

Hue has it right, except for the mic, I would go with a condensor mic. Or even cheaper, you could purchase a USB mic, and just use Audacity (freeware recording software for windows) as your software.

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Permalink Reply by Jeroen Wenting on February 10, 2009 at 11:11am

At the bare minimum you need a guitar (doh!), a preamp (many acoustics have one built in), an instrument cable, and a plug to convert the 6.3mm connector on that cable to a 3.5mm plug to input into the microphone input of your computer's soundcard.
Or a decent instrument microphone and a cable from that to the soundcard.

Some free recording software and you're set.
Audacity is free and quite effective, but in a pinch Windows (and other operating systems) have basic recording software included in them as well.

From there on, the sky's the limit.
multitrack recording stations, professional soundcards and processing software, etc. etc.

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Permalink Reply by henry b on February 19, 2009 at 10:08am

The Boss BR600 is a great little machine.

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Permalink Reply by Chuck Cheesman on February 20, 2009 at 4:13pm

If you're willing to deal with a computer, do it. Take the advice given here by others.

If you need to get away from a PC, I'd suggest a DAW. I use a Yamaha AW4416, but there are a lot of decent machines.These are basically computers that specialize in recording and look like old-fashioned mixing consoles. Some people call them studio-in-a-box machines. I like mine a lot, but looking back I think a Mac-based Pro-Tools system would have been a better investment.

Depending on your budget, put the bulk of your money into a "keeper" microphone. In my opinion, that's the best place to start. You can upgrade your signal path as you go, but a quality microphone will get you off to a good start.

Good luck & and be sure to share your recordings with us!

Cheers,
Chuck

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