Big news for me, probably not at all for you

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kikling

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You all know I'm 14 and am very dedicated to this forum. But what you dont know is that I have beeen studying homerecording since April, reading posts from this site, making my own, buying, checking out books all about home recording. But the funny thing is, I havent started to record until last week! Yep i had no recording equipment. I just learned everything their is to know. But know i got my computer with Cool Edit pro, standard cheap soundcard, a tiny Behringer 802a mixer i picked up for $119, 1 sm57, xlr cord and 2 cheap $15 r.shack microphones. I had been saving up money for a whole year just for this. Well i finally started recording! It took forever to get the right levels on my guitar, friends bass and drums and doing everything. One of the problems I encountered was that my sound card only has 1 input (i dont see stero inputs) so on the behringer i had to use only one channel of the stereo out. The left one. but luckily it still recorded center wise. but it meant i couldnt use the pan option on the mixer. Well what i really want to say is that ive beem studying a great deal of info about h. recording, (%90 of the info from this site) and that when i finally got my equipment, I was ready to record and i learned all the tricks to recording with the least amount of equipment, a comp. mixer and 1 entry level mic and home made mic stands (mainly drum cymbal stands). But you should see my spoiled friend (also my age). He's got a Mackie mixer, (forgot model) about 24 inputs w/direct outs, a Roland digital 8 track, 5 sm57s and sm58s, all the mic stands expensive guitars, basses, computer programs that he never uses, all the cables etc. and he never studied recording. So i compared one of my songs i recorded with his and guess who blowed the competition away, the one with the $3,000 or more equipment lost to the one microphone, cheap sound card from his dads computer. Just felt like sharing this story to ya all. I like to thank all you in this forum for helping me.

[This message has been edited by kikling (edited 07-29-2000).]
 
great story - hey check that the one input on your sound card isn't a stereo mini jack!! I'm sure it will be.
 
hey john, can you explain that to me, what exactly is a mini jack, and if its only 1 in, how do i get 2 channels?
 
Glad to hear that you're learning so much from us. :)
Just don't forget to send a few front-row tickets to us when you get famous, okay?

BTW... I think what he meant by "stereo mini-jack" is that you will get stereo if you use a cord that has a male end with three seperate sections (stereo) not just two (mono).

[This message has been edited by Buck62 (edited 07-29-2000).]
 
Congrats Kikling!!

Wanna know how I did my fist multitrack recordings when I was 14? I'd tape myself playing a rhythm on a boom box, next I'd take that tape and crank it in my home stereo and play a lead along with it, all the while recording onto another tape on the boom box. I still have the tape of me playing the solos in Eye of the Beholder and the clean leads in One by metallica (I'm not as old as most of the dinosaurs around here :D). Thought that might give you some perspective...

And to clarify what Buck said, go to radio shack and find a y cable that says phono to 1/8" stereo. It should have 2 black rings on the li'l end. Keep laying tracks my man!
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>if its only 1 in, how do i get 2 channels?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Exactly like a disc-man headphone carries a stereo signal with one plug. The single plug carries 2 seperate signals. It can be used to record on stereo signal, or 2 mono signals at the same time.
 
Cheap gear recordists of the world unite! Good one, kikling.
 
I'm still running with only my Mackie pres to digital. No other preamps (yet... heh, heh), no compressors, no limiters, nada. It's amazing I can record at all ;).
 
way to go kikling! be nice to the other guy sos you can borrow his equipment sometime!

My first recording, (I started too late, I was 15 :( :D) was done with a pair of headphones as mics, I had them both taped to the grill of my Boss MG-10 amp. (ohhh stereo- no wait... well i guess only one of them would work... or did I split the lines and wire two mono plugs... no wait i couldn't have done it that way, i wouldn't have known how!) I recorded it onto my stereo which had a mic in (or two?). My bass player still has the first tape that I did... hey maybe I'll post an MP3!!

-jhe
 
I have two things to say:

1. Beautiful.

2. Glad we were all apart of it.
 
Kikling,

Congrats! I wish I had started when I was your age. I'm almost three times your age and just getting into recording now (and I just started learning another instrument - bass - too).

Make the most of the this time and learn all you can about playing and recording beacuse it's pretty hard to do when you have a job, family and house. If you learn well now you'll have a much easier time and a lot more fun 20-30 years from now, when you're "as old as some of us dinosaurs around here".
 
I had two cassette players, would record something, then play it back loud while playing or singing into the other one....boy did I learn about echo.....then I got smart and recorded on one, then using the mono setting on the stereo, put the signal into one of the other deck's channels while recording on the other one....but the sound starts suffering pretty bad after doing that four or five times, but hey I was Multi-trackin'...gibs

[This message has been edited by gibs (edited 07-30-2000).]
 
You guys started off with cassette recorders?!
Consider yourself lucky.
I didn't even know what cassette was when I started recording!

I started off recording on a cheapo Teledyne stereo system which had an eight track tape player/recorder built-in and came with two EXTREMELY cheap plastic mics... one for the left side, and one for the right.

I don't know which was worse back then....
the recording quality, or my guitar playing.
 
Heh, I did something similar, Gibs. With my tape deck, a friends tape deck, and some "customized" RCA cables for a Y-splitter (duct tape has been my friend for a while). The original tracks started getting really fuzzy, of course :D. I think those are long lost, but I wonder if I might stumble onto one of the old tapes some day.
 
Hey did anyone of your guys boom box recordings ever sound semi-pro? I would like to hear if you ever got any gigs with it. Cool

Just for you guys to know,I never payed for cool edit pro. Got it from a friend. :D

Oh yea, hopefully i'll have an mp3 of my songs. Just need to get the internet on my recording computer.

And to you Mistique, I like you ;) *joking*

[This message has been edited by kikling (edited 07-31-2000).]
 
Ain’t it great - all you old buggers reminiscing about being 14 again – shit it makes me feel old again – please stop doing that!!!
 
I hate you kikling :). Just kiddin'
I didn't start recording until I was 34 and
used the same method that lazyboy and gibs
used. When I was 14,the only computers I knew of were in science fiction movies!
The closet thing I came to a computer at that age was a Radio shack calculator I got for 30 bucks! N-E way, keep up the good work!
I still hate you! :)
 
Hey Kikling,

Way to go, that's very cool!

Back when I was fourteen, the damn wax cylinders would melt before we could record the backing vocals. (Just kidding!)

My second band (maybe I was fifteen by now) recorded ourselves on a reel-to-reel (maybe cassettes hadn't been invented yet, anyone know when that happened?) with two crappy cheap mics out in front of a rehearsal, and yes we got the gig.

... and then got fired midway through the second set when they found out we weren't old enough to be in the bar. Good thing, really, we only knew about ten tunes.

Did we sound semi-pro?

Hell yeah - semi-pro train wreck experts!

Keep working on things, and, most important, keep writing lots of tunes.

foo
 
Hey kikling, Keep up the good work, 14 is a good age to start recording, that's got my official start by about 16 years.. :)
 
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