Audacity multi-tracking question

grimtraveller said:
Pay the $60 and it's yours forever.
Even to a teenager, $60 is not close to a crippling amount.
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I'm (a) a cheapskate on a (b) tight budget who (c) doesn't need more than it takes to record, say, a folk trio or a garage band. And remember, Audacity is $60 plus whatever books I have to buy. I'd rather spend that $100+ on my instruments.

So if I can get Audacity or GarageBand to work, I'll be happy.
 
Ujn Hunter said:
. . . if the meters in Reaper bounce then you should have Record Armed the tracks properly, now you just need to actually hit "Record" to get your Waveforms.
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Yes. It's getting the other channels to record additional tracks that had me stymied on both Reaper and Audacity.
 
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There is always a cost to music. The other thing is that learning styles are very important. You mention books? This is now a quite unsupported learning style in technical and artistic areas. In educational terms, people do differ in preferred (and therefore more successful) learning styles. The snag is that books are pretty useless for things like DAWs because they are out of date before they are printed. There can never be a really up to date in depth book on a single piece of software any more. It's impossible. Nobody would write one, and no publisher would touch it - there's no money.

So - your choices, for getting good with software make 'fiddling' with experimentation and analysis absolutely essential. There are thousands of youtube videos, with hundreds produced by people who know what they are doing. Tens are well produced and actually instruct. How many are that watchable? Very few. What happens is that you know what you want to do. You suspect the DAW can do it, but you cannot find it. Youtube, via Google will give you a twenty minute video that will have twenty seconds where you can see the drop down, and the menu item. That's it - done!

If this was of experiential learning is not for you - you have two hands tied behind your back before you start. You mentioned you put it in record and sang an aria. Why? You just tap the mic and see if a meter moves, or a light comes on. If not, you adjust and keep trying till you get it - then you remember. Generally, processes are repetitive. DAW 101 is to find out how to record from all your available inputs, then how to route those recordings somewhere useful. In Cubase, which I use, I consistently forget to press one little button on each track to arm the record - I cannot count the number of times I get to the end, hit stop and look a the screen to see nothing at all recorded. Or I accidentally enable record on the wrong track - it's normal.

Forgive me, but I don't think you have spent enough time yet working out for yourself how it works. We've given screen shits and suggestions, but these will look different to your screen and I fear this confuses things. We don't quite understand why your results are failing. It's our fault we don't understand you, and you don't understand us? We need help. Maybe you could video the process you are using, and one of the experts here will suddenly spot what you are doing wrong, or what parameter in the software is the culprit.

When I was a teacher in college, some people moved ahead so quickly vs others who were snails by comparison. Often the slow ones were very skilled musicians - but without the investigating and experimenting ability. They'd never needed it to play the cello and get to Grade 8 - a totally different skill set!
 
rob aylestone said:
There is always a cost to music. . . .
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Not helpful.
rob aylestone said:
You mention books? This is now a quite unsupported learning style
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Not true.
rob aylestone said:
. . .

So - your choices, for getting good with software make 'fiddling' with experimentation and analysis absolutely essential.
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Obvious.
rob aylestone said:
Youtube, via Google will give you a twenty minute video that will have twenty seconds where you can see the drop down, and the menu item.
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Yes. I love YouTube.
rob aylestone said:
If this was of experiential learning is not for you - you have two hands tied behind your back before you start.
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Not helpful. (But - If I had a third hand I could stop coming here and tie that one behind my back, too.)
rob aylestone said:
You mentioned you put it in record and sang an aria. Why? You just tap the mic
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I'm not an opera singer. Tapping the mic is exactly what I did. Singing an aria just sounds better. It doesn't matter whether I sang or tapped. Either way, I put sound waves into the mic. As you know.
rob aylestone said:
Forgive me
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I'm trying.
rob aylestone said:
I don't think you have spent enough time yet working out for yourself how it works.
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Coming here is part of the time I'm spending working it out. I've made some progress thanks to folks here.
 
Delmont said:
Yes. It's getting the other channels to record additional tracks that has me stymied on both Reaper and Audacity.
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I don't know how it could be more simple in Reaper. You record your first track or tracks, hit the "rewind" button (it's supposed to look like a tape recorder, right?). Unarm the record indicator on those tracks. Right click in the area below your tracks and select Insert New Track. Click the bar on the second row of that track area, select which input you want to use. Arm record on that track, hit the record button and the first tracks will play, and the new track will record. You can do that 100 times and you end up with a hundred channel recording. Don't like what you did? Right click on the wave form, hit delete, and then start again from the beginning.

That is absolutely the simplest system you could imagine.

As for buying books, I haven't bought a book for any of my recordings stuff. If I need to know how to do something that isn't obvious in Reaper, I put "how do I xxxxx in Reaper" into Google, and either a video or a forum thread will pop up.
 
Kenny Gioia (the MAChelangelo of Reaper) has a video for everything - from the simplest actions to the most complicated. The page you download or purchase Reaper from contains all the videos. When on the videos page, it helps to go to the bottom right corner and click [expand all categories], then use the page FIND function to search for specifics.

 
TalismanRich said:
I don't know how it could be more simple in Reaper.
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Yup. Done. The hurdle was finding the little (on my 13" screen, everything's little!) Routing Matrix tab. One reason I'd like to use Audacity is that it's easier to see. The print is bigger and the contrast is better.

But if it won't route (as suggested in posts 2 and 4), that's that. Know anything about routing in Audacity?
 
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spantini said:
Kenny Gioia (the MAChelangelo of Reaper) has a video for everything - from the simplest actions to the most complicated. The page you download or purchase Reaper from contains all the videos. When on the videos page, it helps to go to the bottom right corner and click [expand all categories], then use the page FIND function to search for specifics.

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Thanks. That helps!
 
One of the huge advantages of Reaper, or any actual DAW, over Audacity (which is an editor), is that using effects is VASTLY more convenient. In an editor, if you apply an eq then a compressor, and then want to change the eq, you have to undo both effects and then redo them one at a time. In a DAW, you can insert the eq and the compressor, then readjust the eq settings without having to take the compressor back off. It's a lot more like working in analog. Using a DAW will save you many, many hours of frustration compared to an editor.
 
bouldersoundguy said:
One of the huge advantages of Reaper, or any actual DAW, over Audacity (which is an editor), is that using effects is VASTLY more convenient. In an editor, if you apply an eq then a compressor, and then want to change the eq, you have to undo both effects and then redo them one at a time. In a DAW, you can insert the eq and the compressor, then readjust the eq settings without having to take the compressor back off. It's a lot more like working in analog. Using a DAW will save you many, many hours of frustration compared to an editor.
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Thanks! Good to know. Although I don't often use compression (I rarely want to smooth things out), it does sound like an advantage, because I do use EQ and reverb a lot and wouldn't mind having a noise gate and de-esser to clean things up.
 
Compression can help make... 7 tracks in a mix sound like they were all played/recorded at the same time during the same session, instead of each track sounding apart as if they were phoned in by their players from across town on a different day.
 
spantini said:
Compression can help make... 7 tracks in a mix sound like they were all played/recorded at the same time during the same session, instead of each track sounding apart as if they were phoned in by their players from across town on a different day.
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Yup. No one's going to phone in tracks, but I get it. (It's useful. I've used it. Just not often. And a little goes a long way.)
 
Delmont said:
Yup. No one's going to phone in tracks, but I get it. (It's useful. I've used it. Just not often. And a little goes a long way.)
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That's been the dominant way I've been operating for the last two years. I've been multitracking with material sent to me by others, and it has been working well. However, what helps is that we all use Reaper.
 
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