New Members: Introduce Yourself Here!

"... they won't want tapes ..."

:laughings:

I am a poor peasant actually, this stuff's taken a while to amass - I've had the unidyne since I was twelve !!! However, i'm a bit of a magpie (more than a dozen guitar amps/heads) so would deffo be interested in some kind of interface with knobs, sliders and such along with some kind of mac software (freeware/shareware/pre-owned os9 up to 10.6.8) what'll gently lead me to tonal purrfection.

I am (or was, depending ..) tapping this into a 2ghz intel core duo i-book 2gb/667, and it's to my eternal shame that I only use it for tunes/****/facebook/ebay/etc (though I do have a groovy roland drumatix programme; it crashes if I try to link patterns .. D'oh !!)
I also have garageband, but have not really bonded with it .. I understand that i'm making things difficult, and who knows, maybe the hiss will devour me, but i'd really like to try..

I hadn't considered how i'm going to convert from tape to CD .. any help's appreciated .. I'm also really looking forward to learning to arrange and record, and am hoping it'll have a pleasing effect upon my playing .. I used to DJ when I was a troubled teen, so I can tell the difference between jack, phono and bulgin .. but that's really about it .... please point me to any idiots guides !!
 
Bulgin???!!!

THAT! Has aged you! You must have some pretty old British gear since I don't think Bulgin mains plugs escaped This Sceptred Isle?

I know nothing about macs so I cannot tell you which hard or software will run but others here surely will.

Garage Band is said to be pretty good for the noob, so it might be worth giving that another do? Reaper is very well thought of and essentially free ($60 if and when you can)

I would really urge you to get the Steinberg interface. I would bet the pre amps alone are better than anything you have now and you would be able to "digitize" tape playback with it and I assume macs can burn CD? Mind you! CD is probably a bit old hat now and you would send in your music "on a cloud"!


Dave.
 
Thanks again dave,

Yeah, i'm updating my garageband to 2011 and going to give it another go .. i'll have a look for the steinberg, any other (pref. cheap and available pre-loved) recommendations for the link between instrument and mac ?

Yes again to the old gear .. HH musician combo ? Shin ei companion amp ?? lols !!!
 
Zenbox said:
Thanks again dave,

Yeah, i'm updating my garageband to 2011 and going to give it another go .. i'll have a look for the steinberg, any other (pref. cheap and available pre-loved) recommendations for the link between instrument and mac ?

Yes again to the old gear .. HH musician combo ? Shin ei companion amp ?? lols !!!
Click to expand...

If you have to go second hand an M-Audio fast track pro would deff' work because M's (back then!) did drivers for everything. Tascam US 122 but preff' US 144 mk ll. Probably mac'able but as I say...me PC only. You might even find an Emu 0404 USB? Stonkingly good in its day but Vista killed it off. Again, not sure about one on a mac.

If ALL you wanted to do was digitize tape? 25 quid, Behringer UCA 222!

Dave.
 
Who am I? What am I doing here?
Abridged version-
Late 40s. Multi instrumentalist/singer/composer. Started working in a jingle production studio in 1984. Spent a couple of years with a 2" 24 track studio at my fingertips. Did tons of productions for children's TV and commercials. My main workflow began with Linndrum and SP-12 programming and then building tracks up from there. I can play anything I need or want to hear myself. Super antiquated but it worked for me.

Various unfortunate circumstances pushed me into live work and away from the studio. Now I have the time and the means to get back into writing and recording. I am frankly stumped as to where to start. I have accumulated plenty of instruments but need to build a recording platform from scratch. Here is what I do know-
I would like to base the setup around an iMac (yet to be purchased)
I would like to build songs from the drums up, and would like to be able to either program and chain drum patterns together or have access to a library of patterns that can be tweaked. I envision building a drum track in a dedicated drum programming environment and then importing it into a DAW to use as the basis of a song's structure. Odd time signatures need to be available to me.
My audio interface can top out at 4 inputs-2 might even be okay. This will be a one man show and i can only do one thing at a time. Would like to be able to record my vintage analog keyboard gear in stereo, decent sounding mic pre's for guitar and vocal miking, bass likely direct.
My first priority is getting a workflow together that I can make sense of to get tracks down. Mixing and mastering can come later. Right now I just want to get past the initial intimidation of being a guy that cut his teeth on tape and has never had his hands on a computer based system. I could probably do what I want with a Tascam setup but I don't want to limit myself.
Thanks for any guidance you can offer-good to be here!
 
Hello Funky Chicken and welcome. I know nothing of iMacs except that I think they are non-upgradeable ? Others will know better than I but 8G of ram might be a bit light for your massive sample requirement? Do budget for a USB 3.0 external drive for backup/storage.

Fortunately the choice of interface is a no brainer (yup! You guessed it folks!) Native Instruments Komplete Audio 6. Gives you your mic inputs but also 2 spare line ins so no re-plugging for synths/drum machines etc. MIDI (of course!) and S/PDIF.

Dave.
 
Might as well do an intro post, rather than repeat old crap elsewhere.

My name is Ron. I am 50 and I will be 51 in March. I was born in California and we moved to Texas in October 1974. I had just started teaching myself guitar so that I could have some accompaniment to me singing songs.

Up to then, I had a panasonic 5" reel to reel. Later, a portable cassette recorder. In my 20's I got a Tascam 4-track from a pawn shop. I have a Memphis Les Paul copy I am about to get rid of. the action is too high. I have a cheapie acoustic with a broken brace that is also destined for someone and somewhere else.

I have a Spectrum acoustic with built-in pick-up and volume and 3-band eq. I have a Hondo Flying V (my favorite). A Roland GS-6 digital effects unit (rack mount, it was made for touring.) A Fender 85 amp that puts out 200 watts rms and will rattle the floorboards in the house.

When it came to recording on computer, I started with one of those cheapie desk mics from Office Depot with a diaphragm smaller than my wedding band, which is 5 mm 14 ct white gold.

I was broke again and a friend sent me a care package. He lives in Greece and ordered the stuff from the Music Store in Germany and it was delivered on the back of a porpoise. Side story and funny. It was too big for the mail car in our small town so my wife had to go to the post office. She has a Pontiac G5, so it barely fit.

It contained a Fame CM-1 Condenser Studio mic, stand, shock mount, pop filter, cable, and a Guitarface II usb interface, MS-300 headphones. This was miles above what I had.

And I record in Audacity. I tried Cubase once and could not make heads or tails of it whereas Audacity suits a caveman like me.

Later, when finances were better, I bought a Sennheiser e835 dynamic mic. An M-Audio M-Track interface. It is so much better than the Guitarface because it has live monitor and led level indicator. This allows me to set a level before even starting a recording. I can do the A5 in "Child in Time" and turn down to yellow tickles and that is good. Plus a pan between computer and live input, though I still take the left can off out a sense of room sound.

Just recently, I got a Kat percussion pad. I am not a drummer but now I can make enough beats to write fuller arrangements for what I am doing, even for a song demo I may wish to sell.

And, I bought from my boss by donating to his daughter's college fund, a Yamaha classical guitar (hence needing to get rid of my two oldest guitars) and a Casio lk-165 I can use to "fake" bass or use pre-set rhythms.

I have sang for free in front of anyone who happened to be present. At a camp-out in front of hundreds. I have sang for my cat and dog. I have sang in a club while friends of mine that had a band were setting up their equipment for the gig. Karaoke clubs a few times. A memorable (to me) New Year's Eve party where I teamed with a local blues saxaphonist and we came up on the spot with the only version I know of "Freebird" by Lynrd Skynrd with a tenor sax for the solo parts. I played the guitar and sang. And no, no one recorded it. Of course, most of the crowd was getting inebriated. I had hair halfway down my back and a tophat and kinda had that Ronnie Van Zandt look going.

I consulted with a few classical coaches who would describe me as a light tenor, mainly because of where the bright center of my voice is, close to A4. I have croaked an E2 (open fat string on the guitar) to a C6 (18th fret on the smallest string on a guitar,) though I don't go to those extremes every day. But I can do a C5 (tenor C or male high C) like I own it.

But I didn't have the volume and power in my upper range until 1988, when I really started working on my voice. Tried out for a few bands in the Dallas area in the early 90's but no one wanted me. I don't sound like Robert Plant (though I can easily sing his songs) or David Coverdale (my voice is too clean and light.) I would be closer to Rik Emmett but no one is interested in aping Triumph.

My career has been as an electrician. I have a master license. I am operations manager for an electrical contractor and it takes about 50 to 60 hours a week to do that not including the 2 hours daily commute. (If you see an old scary guy singing "fight the good fight every moment ..." while doing 80 on the Rayburn Tollway, that's me.)

But I have always loved music and I want to improve my skill in recording and editing it. Eventually, writing songs for sale that may become my retirement, of some sort. That, and gathering shopping carts at Walmart.

And the hardest thing I have had to learn is how to set levels to avoid clipping in the actual recording. And that any final mix should be no higher than - 3 dB. Because mastering may take it to -1 dB. You've got to have head room.
 
HELLO EVERY ONE :listeningmusic:

I am Heber and I am here to help you in all I can!

I live in Mexico City I studied for around 2 years music and musical production in school then I had to do it by own way. I have make some audio production and post production for commercials and recording some bands live for shows.

Actually I am doing my own stuff I got a band in which we are about to start recording our home demo and aside I am making my own electronic music tracks. I hope I can show both to you by the next 2 months. I work usually with Pro Tools and Ableton

By now I am here to offer you my knowledge and besides learn from you

If I know the answer be sure I'll give it to you.

Thank you
 
Greetings

My name is Mike, and I'm hack guitarist/recording engineer. I've been playing for over 20 years now and have been recording on and off throughout most of that time starting with an old Tascam 424 mkII in the age before digital. I'm in a strange place right now where I'm trying to get more serious about things again, and moving from my recordings being used really as a scratch pad and for jam tracks to something I can actually finish and perhaps share.

In addition to my own music, I've had the pleasure of doing the primary engineering for a local, well established band for one of their albums. Had a lot of fun with that, and learned a lot.

My current rig is mostly low budget:
- Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 pre-am/interface
- M-Audio Bx5 monitors
- Sonar X3 Studio

And then an assortment of mics like SM57s, Oktava MK-012s, and some AKG 9000s.

I still have some outboard compressors and DIs from prior to going fully digital as well, but I haven't been using those much the past 10 years since I've not been really doing any post production or mastering work. Fortunately I also have a stash of other high quality cables and essentials from back then allowing me to maximize the signal path I do have.
 
Hi I am Crow Feather I am a maker of Native American Flutes and also play them.I have read many many threads from this group from the past to present.Really a nice group of people i joined so i could also be part of this.I am pretty good with the flute playing,but when it comes to recording with all the hardware and software,this is where i,ll need some help. Thank you
 
Hi I am Crow Feather I am a Native American Flute maker and player.In the past to the present i have red many threads from this group An i must say this is a fine group of people and so i joined so i could be part of this forum.I am a good player with the flute ,but when it comes to recording with the software and hardware this is the area i,ll need help. Thank you
 
Hi Crow Feather and welcome.
A quick Google of your instrument shows me that it is very like the European Recorder, at least for recording purposes. You have two basic choices as to recording technique IMHO.

1)If you have a lovely sounding space in which to play, a nice hall of some sort, then stereo would be the way to go and look into the many and various medthods, "Co-incident, XY" microphones being perhaps the simplest.

2) If all you have is a small, rather poorly sounding room, close micc'ing would be the order of the day with some Room Treatment needed to clean up the sound. All recording software AFAIK will have some form of artificial reverberation in it. Can improve things but use sparingly and with taste!

Your basic needs are an Audio Interface and one or a pair of capacitor microphones (aka condenser). The Rode brand is a good starting point for investigation.

Others, vastly more experienced in recording will no doubt pitch in.

Dave.
 
Hello everybody!
i'm Paolo and i'm posting from a small town in the northern Italy. i'm an electric engineer, but specialized in automatic controls, not signals. and, just to be clear, i know nothing about music and/or studio recording! :eek:
An old friend of mine decided to realize a small recording studio by himself, and i have to say that he did a nice job. very warm environment, lot of wood panels, with an insulated room for the musicians and his recording room.
he asked my help in order to "upgrade" from old-style recording (mixer and adat sdr) to pc-based recording in order to appeal young artists who records their tracks on software.
as i saidearly, due to the fact that i know a lot about computers but NOTHING about hw&sw used in recording, i think i'll bother everybody a lot of times!
So, thank you for accepting me, and please be patient both for my very low knowleadge in the matter and for my poor english!
 
Hi Paolo and welcome to the mad house!

If you are up on computers you are half way there! I am not that computer cute but will give you what I know.

First is, mac or PC? I know nothing about macs but many say they are better for music/video work but there are plenty here doing fine on Windows! Let us therefore assume PC?

Your friend will need something pretty powerful depending upon the scale and type of work he needs to do. An i7 and 16G of ram would see him ok for almost anything except scoring Pirates XX. SSD for the system "C" drive to run the OS and the music software (often called a "DAW" digital work station). One or more 7200 drives internally for storage of songs and backup (but he will need a third backup system. Cloud or external drive such as a NAS elsewhere in the building). If you enjoy/have the time to build it you can save money on a PC but I would seriously consider purchasing from a specialized audio PC firm such as Scan.

Recording hardware? Phew! SOOOO much variation in facilities and price. Your pall needs to have a very good idea of track numbers needed and of course budget.

Software, DAW? Equally a big choice. Reaper is excellent and cheap but if a lot of MIDI work is envisaged Cubase is reckoned to be the bizz!

There might also be better hardware choices depending upon what equipment he already has and might want to interface with a PC recording setup.

Don't rush this!

Dave.
 
Hi Dave and thank you for your welcome!
at the present time, my friend has a lot of "music" stuff: a typical studio mixer, microphones and speakers everywhere... quite impressive for a noob like me. Very old school but always fascinating.
we've already done a lot of work... connecting his Mackie 24/96 SDR to an RME HDSP board on his PC (running Cubase 5) by ADAT opticals, checked and divided tracks according to his needs... so far, so good.
but there are a lot of things that i still desire to know... everytime i encounter something unknown (transport? timescale? MIDI?) so i joined the forum in order to improve my knowledge about this world!
thank you again and... if you have the time, i've already posted my first problem. ;)
see ya around!
 
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