Welcome one and all

Hey cool,
Welcome one and all to our new Recording forum !

Like the name suggests this is the place for all your suggestions and questions pertaining to recording technology and recording techniques.

This is also the place to get and give constructive criticism regarding songs you may have written via posting links to the songs.

At the moment it is only possible to post links to songs here as opposed to the songs them selves. This may change in the foreseeable future.

Please don’t post links to copyrighted material without the authors consent, as this will get us into trouble.

I hope this will be lots of fun!
S

Great idea!

I myself is looking into doing more professional sounding songs. I guess I'll come here a lot then.

I'll prepare some questions :)

Finally! An actual Forum for recording, very cool.

this is great. i plan on posting my stuff as soon as i get the POD XT, i've been after.



on a related note, who would like to contribute money to my fund.

Ok my first question for you guys will be:
How do record a professional sounding song with
my recording equipment:
Guitar pro demo
Goldwave (shareware)
and the 1.50$ microphone that came with the computer?
;)

with a lot of patience :)

yeah, that and a deaf listener!



(couldn't hurt)









the main problem you are going to encouter is outside noise. the best thing you can do is what my cousin did. he built a 4ft x 4ft x 8ft box, which he took some foam and soundproofed. obviously, that may be a little difficult. my reccomendation is to try and eliminate as much outside noise as possible, and don't put the computer mic too close to the amp. it will overload the mic and it will come out unclear and fuzzy. in all likelyhood, you're not going to get a professional album quality recording, but you'll be able to make a decent sounding one.

I wouldn't use a computer mic (or any mic). Just shoot direct into the mic input and listen to yourself through the speakers. I have my stereo system hooked into my computer speaker output.. Beats those 3" woofers on the computer speakers. You just have to watch the input levels - can get a bit noisy when too high. I mainly record mono wav files, as straight mp3 takes up too much file space, and is really unecessary if you're just recording your guitar. Anyone interested, you can give a listen to my wavs here - http://guitar-wav.com. All the wavs are recorded by the means I describe.
-Bob

Originally posted by mc9mm
Ok my first question for you guys will be:
How do record a professional sounding song with
my recording equipment:
Guitar pro demo
Goldwave (shareware)
and the 1.50$ microphone that came with the computer?
;)

Do ya mean just recording the guitar or recording stuff like drums & bass too?

WHEEE!! just discovered the new board! great - finally we can get it started!

allthebest to my co-mods in this forum - lets rock!

Originally posted by mc9mm
Ok my first question for you guys will be:
How do record a professional sounding song with
my recording equipment:
Guitar pro demo
Goldwave (shareware)
and the 1.50$ microphone that came with the computer?
;)

First I would understand the technical limitations of your resources. If you understand the limitations of your $1.50 mic then you can work with it, if you are after a distorted lo-Fi sound it may be perfect.

First thing I got my head round was the concept of gain and signal to noise ratio coming through your mic and to be honest id experiment with recording direct first. Recording with a mic is much more complicated as you have lots more variables to think about i.e. off axis colorations (like if you put the mic to the side of your speaker it sounds different from placing it dead center), room ambiance (how echoic is the room ?), mic colorations (can the mic get the top end high order harmonics you were after ?)

If you are wanting to do a song, like Schmange says, how are you going to do the other instruments ? Vocals are just as tricky to record as guitar and recording direct is not an option ! You might want to try getting an SM57 and an SM58, they are both industry standard and about $100 bucks each.

Hope this is food for thought
S

schmange,
I like the way you add a midi backing track into your riffs. What do you use ? Not trying to plagiarize or anything, just curious. I , personnaly, prefer just the guitar wav in my lessons. But the backing track does add to your lessons. On a critical, note - I've found it hard to differentiate the guitar from the midi in some of the slower (melodic) riffs. You have the volumes mixed perfectly !
-Bob

Most of the info's on my home page so it's probably easiest to just surf around there for the equipment list etc..
Most of the early stuff is just a Boss Dr. Synth but lately I've gotten into using live drums & VST stuff.

I do understand the limitations of my equipment.
I can tell you how I record my guitartricks:
1. plug in the 1.50$ mic
2. Plug in my guitar to my 5W computer speakers.
3. open Goldwave.
4. hold the mic with my toes so its right in front of the mic.
5. press record and start playing
6. press noise reduction

So thats the recording process.
If I want multiple guitars, I listen to the metronome
on my pedal with headphones, and play the bits at the same speed.
I know, its not very professional, but I think it sounds ok.
I've heard much worse.
Please listen to them and say what you think, maybe
I dont hear how much it actually sucks.

But I seriously think it would be possible to record
a whole song, guitar, bass, drums, vocals, with my equipment.
Ok so it would sound really bad, but not extremely bad.

Originally posted by mc9mm

4. hold the mic with my toes so its right in front of the mic.

Having the mic in front of the mic is probably going to complicate things, even if you are using your toes !

If you are determined to go the way of the $1.50 microphone, (which I would avoid like the plague) you may want to rig up some sort of stand.

Mic placement is a very important factor when recording the guitar and can massavely change the way your guitar sounds. Because of this keeping the position of the mic constant is also important (stops you sounding like you are using a flanger !).

Originally posted by mc9mm
I do understand the limitations of my equipment.
I can tell you how I record my guitartricks:

yikes. :)
Well first of all are ya using any kind of effects unit?
Either way...rather than using a mic, why not just plug in direct? All ya need is a 1/4" to 1/8" adapter and plug in where the mic would normally go. To hear yourself, go to your sound control panel & select 'play thru'.
(I'm a Mac user but it should be similar on windoze)

I plug in direct for all the tricks on my page. (Haven't used an amp in years)
Basically guitar into a Boss ME-5 Multi-Effects pedal, stereo out to a 1/8" stereo adapter then direct into the mic input.
To hear myself, I click PlayThru in the sound control panel and either listen through the computer speakers or take the output from the computer and plug it into my stereo system.

Originally posted by Dr_simon
Having the mic in front of the mic is probably going to complicate things, even if you are using your toes !
[/B]

blablabla.. =)

I use a zoom 707 so I can play through my computer speakers.
(my amp is being repaired)
But yea you're right, I should get myself an adapter,
but Im lazy and poor. But I will get a hold of myself soon I hope.

I think this site has a lot of quality and informed infomation(huh?) regarding recording and all.
Check it out.
http://www.intermusic.com