Topic: Home Recording and/or Producing (Read 5666 times)

pat101 · « **on:** 26 Oct 2006, 10:55 »

Now I'm sure this thread has been started before but I can't find it, I'm looking to do some recording and producing of existing material, nothing fancy just some bare bones stuff and I'm wondering what equipment the all-knowing QC boards would recommend for someone on a rather tight student budget? Again if this thread has been around recently I apologize.

Scytale · « **Reply #1 on:** 26 Oct 2006, 12:30 »

Audacity.

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

pat101 · « **Reply #2 on:** 26 Oct 2006, 18:54 »

well that works, any suggestions for actual hardware?

Thrillho · « **Reply #3 on:** 26 Oct 2006, 20:05 »

Depends how much you're going for. If you just get one decent condenser mic you should be fine.

KharBevNor · « **Reply #4 on:** 26 Oct 2006, 21:14 »

What are you going to be recording?

If, for example, you are going to be recording just you on vocals and maybe guitar, get a cardioid microphone rather than an omnidirectional.

Also, invest in a digital four-track and record in your bathroom. It's almost certainly going to have better acoustics than your bedroom: anywhere particularly devoid of soft furnishings, curtains etc. would be good.

BrittanyMarie · « **Reply #5 on:** 27 Oct 2006, 00:06 »

If you're a student at a University, does it have a campus radio station? Radio stations have production equipment, and the students need to learn how to do it anyway, so that'd be another option other than doing it yourself. You could even just play live and record that.

Johnny C · « **Reply #6 on:** 27 Oct 2006, 01:20 »

If you're just using acoustic guitar and your voice, here's the equipment you need:

-guitar
-voice
-computer microphone
-piece of cloth
-headphones

Record guitar separately from voice. When doing voice, sing into the microphone but stretch the piece of cloth taut and hold it in front of your mouth so the mic doesn't pick up air puffs. Voila.

Slick · « **Reply #7 on:** 27 Oct 2006, 01:36 »

My favorite trick for the voice is put the mic above you, angled down and tilt your head back so you've got a straight line from your mouth right down your throat. Helps it come out clearer, if that's what you're looking for.

Thrillho · « **Reply #8 on:** 27 Oct 2006, 02:39 »

Doesn't that make it harder to sing? You end up wrenching the notes out of your throat.

Slick · « **Reply #9 on:** 27 Oct 2006, 03:35 »

Don't tilt all the way back, it takes a little bit of trial and error, but it's good when you get it. It shouldn't be uncomfortable.

pat101 · « **Reply #10 on:** 27 Oct 2006, 12:11 »

thanks for all the help, any suggestions on a digital track recorder?
I will not just be recording voice and guitar I'll be recording a wide variety of things, guitar, voice, drums, keyboard, some horns, and if we get our shit together a few string instruments.
I'm not a University student (well not right now)

Splunkle · « **Reply #11 on:** 28 Oct 2006, 13:17 »

>_<

Thats a lot to be recording. How much money are we talking here? Well, regardless, I'll give my suggestions for doing it on the cheap, and then a few tricks to do stuff on the really cheap.

I'm not familar with using a multitrack as the recording medium - I always used a computer. To use your computer you should get a a good, simple, high quality audio interface, like the EMU 0404? or the M-Audio Audiophile 2496 both of which will cost you less than US$100.? Of course, this limits you to recording to the room where your computer is, which brings me to my next point.

How is ambient noise in your house? Assuming that you will be recording in your house, that is. For example, my bedroom is right near the front of the house, so I always have some car noises - even fairly late at night. There is also my computer, with its whirling fans. Sometimes the kids next door run around as well. Now, for some microphones, this isn't an issue. For others it is. For a good condeser, it will pick up everything - even noises you didn't know where there. A dynamic microphone won't pick up all that background noise, but it isn't as sensitive - but if you put it right up close to whatever you are recording, its fine.

Another consideration is power. A condesor mic needs Phantom power - called so because its transfered along the signal cable. So if you want to use a mixer, or pre-amp, or whatever to supply the power. This isn't too much of an issue, because you should probably get a preamp or a small mixer so you can actually plug your microphone's XLR cable into something.

Anyways, since you want to record a lot of things, I reccomend the Shure SM57 as a microphone. Its dynamic, so you don't have to worry about ambient sounds sneaking into the recording, it is rugged as all hell, versatile (even though its a instrument mic it can do vocals just fine, believe me), and relatively cheap for a pro microphone. Less than US$150, though I find that these things are so prevalent one can eaisily find a store that is having a sale, and pick it up for US$100 or so. If you have little ambient noise in your recording enviroment, you can grab a condensor, which has the advantage of being able to record more than one thing at a time. I don't have too much experience with condensors, so I shan't make a reccomendation for them. I've micced up pianos, acoustic guitars, and electric amps with the 57, and its all worked great. Not sure about drums, though - I think you would need a condesor for that, or lots of dynamics, up near all the drums... hmmmmmm. The condensor is probably easier, but just keep in mind the ambient noise - its not too bad, especially with noise gates and all that jazz, but just try to make sure you record fairly loud, so the noise is almost unnoticable.

Now the SM57, or any pro microphone, uses XLR as a connector, so you are going to need something to plug it into. If you plan on getting more microphones later, grab a mixer - cheap, small ones can be had for under US$75. If on the other only using one microphone ever, get a preamp - it will give a wee bit more quality for the price, and gives you some more control over the sound. A cheap tube preamp should add warmth to your recordings, and should be a wee bit cheaper than a mixer.

Lets do some sums. I'm pulling the prices from Zzounds.com, which is where the links go. Not that I'm saying you should buy from there - they just have prices fairly cheap.
Audio interface - EMU0404 - $100
Microphone - SM57 - $100
Mixer - Berhinger UB802 - $45

$245. not bad for a fairly good setup.

But if you don't have that kind of money, and need to go really ghetto, here's how:

For vocals, use a computer headset mircophone - you know, the type you would use to talk on skype. you can get suprisingly good results with one of these - its the only microphone I use for mystuff, but then, I don't sing - I only record my voice so I can vocode it. ^_^

Any good Keyboard will have a signal out.? So grab a 1/4" (thats 7mm for you people from civilised parts of the world) cable, and a 1/4" to 1/8" (again, 3.5mm) converter, and plug it straight into your computer.? Ideally, you should use a DI box to balence the signal, but we are being ghetto.? In fact, this applies to any instrument with a 1/4" output - acoustic guitars with internal mics, electric guitars, whatever.? You might also have issues because the signal from the guitar will be mono, whereas you computer is probably expecting stereo, but again, ghetto.

NFI for horns or drums.

I hope this OMG-I-Didn't-realise-it-would-be-so-large post helps. Good luck!

EDIT: I fogot all about USB microphones! I've never used them, but folks who have inform me they work just fine. Simply plug 'e, in, and away you go... well, you might have to install some software, but apart from that, all good. So you could save yourself the soundcard and a mixer. Nice. the Microphone will probably be a bit more expensive then the 57, but you shoudl still be ahead. You might also need a huge ass USB cable, but again, you should still be ahead.

Scytale · « **Reply #12 on:** 28 Oct 2006, 14:19 »

I do things pretty similar to Slunkle, cept on way more of a budget, I use the sykpe mic to record the guitars as well

I sit it up next to the amp. Sound isn't too bad, then again I record metal and don't give that much of a crap about production quality so you're milage may vary.

When recording distortion I"ve heard two different schools of thought. If you have a good amp you can record straight up using you're amp to provide the overdrive etc, or you can manually add distoriton through you're recroding program. I've tried both method haven't noticed much difference between the two. Same thing with effects pedals.

A few notes on keyboard.

Keyboards I've used a few different methods, I program drums as well so I tend to use midi for a lot of this stuff. If you have a decent sound card midi may be the way to go as a good sound card will have a good set of midi tables. I've played around with using sound font patchsets as well, this works well for things like drums, because usually midi drums sound like shit. A few notes on midi , I dunno what keyboard sounds you're trying to output but have a play around somethings are better through midi then other things, choirs and strings I'd say is a no-no but organs, pianos and electric pianos sound semi decent. Other option is to sequence everything on your're computer then output it through the keyboard and record it all as one track, this also makes it a lot easier to use the pitch wheel and DSP effects and things like that as you can queue it all in advance.

I use an EDIROL UM X1 to connect the midi ports in my keyboard into a usb port on my computer, cost me about $90 Australian a few years ago, probably get a similar device for a lot cheaper these days.

Audacity's big weakness here is it doesn't have a midi sequencer, so you'll have to google for one you like, I'm a tight arse so I just use some POS opensource sequencer. I was lucky enough to find some modulation software someone else had written for my keyboard (Yamaha PSR) on the net, makes signial procesing and things a lot easier. see pic

hope this helps

Splunkle · « **Reply #13 on:** 28 Oct 2006, 19:04 »

Oh shiz, I fogot to talk about using MIDI to make your keyboard sounds not suck. right.

OKAY. We all know that MIDI is just note data, right? yaye? don't need ot cover that? good. well, yes it has stuff other than note data, but its mostly stuff related to the note data. whatever. the point is, it isn't sound data.

since its just note data, you can send that note data to synth - eve if the synth is just a piece of software on your computer. These are know as softsynths. Anyways, to get some non-sucky softsynths, I reccomend you check out KVR audio. Its a website that exists for the sole purpose of linking you to every audio pluging that ever existed, whether it be a soft synth, effect, or host, free or costly. Awesome site.

Anyways, to use a softsynth, you will need something called a host. These programs host the synth, feed it MIDI data, and collect the outputed sound. Yay. Most hosts are also sequencers. Free hosts do exist, but I have no idea how good they are. Demos exist for all the big name ones, and there is also the unfathomable realm of piracy. Don't do that, though. Music software developers aren't like microsoft - their market is rather small, so they need every sale they get to eat. k?

The particulars of sending MIDI data about depends on the sequencer and the keyboard, so can't give much advice here. Though keyboards do tend to come in 3 types:

1) No Midi. No love here. No matter what you do, you are stuck with on board keyboard tones. I hope they are good.

2) Standard Midi connection. Strangely, less standard these days. ANYWAYS. This looks like a round jack. To use this you are going to need a Midi cable, and a port on your computer that accepts Midi data. Most sound cards do, but I don't think you will have much luck with integrated audio.

3) Midi via USB. Since less and less soundcards have Midi connections these days, and the standard is 20 years old, some clever chap had the bright idea of sending the data over USB, and then decoding it in software. So to do this, you need a computer with a USB port, which any computer since '98 will have, and the disk to install the software to decode the Midi data... you kept all the disks with your keyboard, right? Note that only fairly recent keyboards do this.

If people want me to go into more detail, I can talk about the synths and samples more - that's kinda my domain, being the amuetuer electronic man I am. But if nobody has a MIDI keyboard, then there is no real point. Sigh.

Scytale · « **Reply #14 on:** 28 Oct 2006, 20:51 »

This is a little of topic but does anyone know of a midi sequencer for linux? I've been using Kmid (the shitty thing that comes with KDE) to send midi files from the computer to the synth, but is there a decent program to capture midi data going the other way (from the keyboard to the computer) or even something to record midi in general. I actually started to write a crappy midi sequencing program in C++ based on a copy of the midi spec I found online. Time got in the way though and I've basically given up on it. There are a number of good midi librarys available though sourceforge though so I might have another crack at it over the holidays using something nicer like Java.

A few more notes on sequencers though:

For sequencing in Windows I used to use Anvil Studio, it was decent enough for my needs and is free and I used a useful little program called tiMIDIty to apply patchsets and things to the sound. It was also one of the only programs I saw that could convert midi files to digital audio files like (wav and mp3), which then lets you add them as a track in Audacity (I used to do this for drums all the time, just search for a drum patch set you like and voila...).

There are a shit load of free .sf2 files all over the net as well. Most of them sound a lot better then the GM sounds.

I disagree with Splunkle here, there is no way in hell I'm going to dish out the thousands of dollars required for something like Cubase or Pro-tools, when there's decent free software out there. It's the companies own fault, they've basically priced themselves out of the amatuer market, which is why piracy is so rampant. Its the main reason Audacity is so good, its opensource, cross platform and has very active development going on.

Mikendher · « **Reply #15 on:** 29 Oct 2006, 02:18 »

Dynamite Kid and Johnny C know what they are talking about. Other people probably do too. Usually all you need is a condenser mic and a way to record what the condenser mic hears (computer, 4 track, etc.).

I use a condenser mic ($100 from Samson) that goes through a USB interface ($150 from M-Audio) to my computer. I use Adobe Audition. This is all I need. The condenser mic is used for anything acoustic, and often electric things as well, but I can still plug electric things directly into the USB interface if I want to (like a bass guitar).

To whoever suggested Audacity: The program is full of bugs, and does not offer anywhere near the power of a program like Adobe Audition. I have looked at the code at Audition very thouroughly (for a comp sci project), and it's pretty terribly written.

Just my thoughts. I am not law

Splunkle · « **Reply #16 on:** 29 Oct 2006, 09:21 »

Audacity has the massive advantage over Audition is that its free. If you want lash out and get a audio editor, there are many to choose from: Sound Forge, Audition, Wavelab, etc....

But really, unless you are getting into all sorts crazy sample stuff, audacity does all you should need, and is only buggy on certain platforms.

Also, thanks for reminding me about USB microphones, I fogot all about them. Which was rather stupid, I admit. I'll go edit hte other post I made to mention them.

Scytale: Yes, lots of these hosts are very expensive (Read: ProTools). However, cheap versions exist of most of them, which are much cheaper. FLstudio, for example, ranges in price from US$100 - US$360. Well, there is a $50 version, but thats little more than a drum machine.

Spinless · « **Reply #17 on:** 30 Oct 2006, 00:53 »

Bittorrent. Yargh.

Rubby · « **Reply #18 on:** 30 Oct 2006, 04:38 »

Quote from: Mikendher on 29 Oct 2006, 02:18

Dynamite Kid and Johnny C know what they are talking about. Other people probably do too. Usually all you need is a condenser mic and a way to record what the condenser mic hears (computer, 4 track, etc.).

I use a condenser mic ($100 from Samson) that goes through a USB interface ($150 from M-Audio) to my computer. I use Adobe Audition. This is all I need. The condenser mic is used for anything acoustic, and often electric things as well, but I can still plug electric things directly into the USB interface if I want to (like a bass guitar).

To whoever suggested Audacity: The program is full of bugs, and does not offer anywhere near the power of a program like Adobe Audition. I have looked at the code at Audition very thouroughly (for a comp sci project), and it's pretty terribly written.

Just my thoughts. I am not law

It's true that Audition (Cool Edit as I like to call it) is absolutely uncanny when it comes to wave editing, but I'm gonna go ahead and say that it's sequencing capability's flat out suck. When it's compared to any program which is strictly a sequencer (I like Cubase) you can instantly see the drawbacks with Audition. A few things that come to mind are the lack of decent control over positioning and quantization. It makes sense though because before Adobe bought Cool Edit and made yet another stupid attempt to everything-ize it, it was mostly just a wave editor. Audition still has all the power and more of Cool Edit, but it's lost it's character and charm because Adobe just wants to join the recent "all-in-one" bandwagon.

pat101 · « **Reply #19 on:** 30 Oct 2006, 05:23 »

Thanks a ton for all the info, I think I'm going to attempt a route similar to what Splunkle suggested originally I've got a few dollars to spend and I've done the recording on the computer mic thing and the results haven't been terrible we're just looking to improve a bit, also ambient noise shouldn't be a major problem as I'll be recording in my basement and I live in a fairly quiet area. I can't start right now (as I'm currently living in China FAR away from my musical equipment)

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Author Topic: Home Recording and/or Producing (Read 5666 times)

Scytale

Splunkle

Scytale

Splunkle

Scytale

Mikendher

Splunkle

Spinless