A
afriendofmine
New member
Here’s my story. Many many moons ago back in the early 70’s I was ‘forced’ to take up piano lessons by my Mum & Dad, at this particular time though I was already a fairly decent’ish drummer. In a nutshell I hated the piano (or so I thought) so needless to say it didn’t last that long. A year or so down the line I had pianos in my head 24/7, don’t ask me why, I just did. Anyway I went out and bought a cheap upright. I hadn’t learnt that much at piano lessons, basically just a few chords etc but this was enough to start me on the road to doing a bit of songwriting. 1 song became 2, 2 became 8, 8 became 20, I think you get the picture? All this time though it wasn’t anything more than just entertaining myself, it kept me off the streets! I really enjoyed what I was doing. My piano playing (if you could call it that) was pretty basic but enough to get me by if you know what I mean? Couple of years went by, got courting serious (as you do), got married (as you do) and the piano playing/songwriting went out of the window. Fast forward a few more years and we’re now in 1987, still married but now with 3 kids. The piano bug kicks in again. My Wife (bless her) decided to treat me to an upright piano for Xmas, over the moon I was! Anyway the songwriting bug came back and I decided to record my voice with piano on an old type cassette recorder for posterity, ok not the best quality in the universe but good enough for what I wanted. Moving on now into the 90’s. I sold the piano, basically it was cream crackered! I didn’t buy another for whatever reason, I just can’t remember why? One day I was going through my cassettes and found one with the songs I had recorded a few years earlier. I wanted to experiment with adding my voice over the top of my existing voice for harmonies and was quite pleased with the results but here’s the annoying thing, I cannot for the life of me remember how I did it, how bad’s that? Help someone! Well anyway here we are now late on in 2009 and I’m now contemplating treating myself to a digital piano, it will probably be a reality early next year. I want to get down to some songwriting/recording yet again hence that’s why I’ve joined up with you folk on here so hopefully someone can help me out but first let me explain; I want to do this for me, just to entertain me, nothing more nothing less, call it a hobby or what you will. It’s something I used to enjoy immensely and I’m sure I will again. I have my own music room (my son’s old bedroom) and in there I have some good old stereo separates, you know the things, amp, tuner, speakers, cd players, mini disc players etc. It’s my little domain, you get the picture hopefully? When I buy a digital piano it will fit straight into there and I’ll be in heaven! I do though want to try out some recording. At last you’re all thinking, “here’s where we come in!”. What equipment shall I be needing? I haven’t got a huge budget so please don’t start talking megabucks and as I say it’s only for my personal use, not stage work or anything like that. I want to be able to record the digital piano and my singing (at least that’s what I call it lol) and also be able to double track my voice adding harmonies etc. Would any of the Tascam equipment do for what I’m intending or not? Any advice would be most welcome. P.S; Sorry I waffled on but I just thought it was best you knew exactly what I wanted to do. Thanks very very much. Look forward to hearing from someone soon. Cheers!