I wanna make some super cheap home recordings

[thrasherjohn]

Any tips i have no pro equipment just my laptop(HP Pavilion dv9000), my Ibanez Rg30EX1 and Fender mini practice amp. Is their any way i could do some home recordings preferably for free?

I and my cousin used to do something similar using his Digitech spider amp hooked up to his computer and a drum machine he found on the internet but since we're no longer on speaking terms i cant ask him what he used. Any help would be great.

 

[eternalpayn]

Firstly, download Audacity.
Secondly, do you have Rock Band or Guitar Hero World Tour? If so, you have a USB mic. You can plug this in, and put it up to your guitar amp, press record in Audacity, and start playing.
If not, you're going to want to pic up a mic and a preamp. If you plan on sticking with recording, I believe an SM57 is the mic you want. (They're like a hundred bucks, but pretty much last forever from what I understand.) If you're on a super tight budget, and you're just recording demos, I personally don't have a problem with radioshack mics. (Others will disagree. If you're just doing demos though, you don't need great sound quality.)
For the preamp, you can just get a small mixer. Check craigslist and ebay. I picked up a little Behringer one for like $50 after shipping, and the next day I saw one sold for 35 before shipping. (No, I didn't get screwed, that one was very far and would have 20 dollars shipping.)

Once you have all that, you're going to need another 1/4" cable, and a 1/4" to 1/8" adapter. (Both very cheap.) Put the mic up to your guitar amp, plug the mic into the mixer/preamp. You plug that into the output on your mixer/preamp, then into your soundcard, and record through audacity.

If you want to start getting into layering tracks and editing stuff, there are a number of free programs out there. Jeskola Buzz, for example, is a good one. It's interface is very different, and takes a bit of learning, but you can get a lot of good synth and drum machine sounds out of it.

Good luck!

 

[VomitHatSteve]

Firstly, download Audacity.
Secondly, do you have Rock Band or Guitar Hero World Tour? If so, you have a USB mic. You can plug this in, and put it up to your guitar amp, press record in Audacity, and start playing.
If not, you're going to want to pic up a mic and a preamp. If you plan on sticking with recording, I believe an SM57 is the mic you want. (They're like a hundred bucks, but pretty much last forever from what I understand.) If you're on a super tight budget, and you're just recording demos, I personally don't have a problem with radioshack mics. (Others will disagree. If you're just doing demos though, you don't need great sound quality.)
For the preamp, you can just get a small mixer. Check craigslist and ebay. I picked up a little Behringer one for like $50 after shipping, and the next day I saw one sold for 35 before shipping. (No, I didn't get screwed, that one was very far and would have 20 dollars shipping.)

Once you have all that, you're going to need another 1/4" cable, and a 1/4" to 1/8" adapter. (Both very cheap.) Put the mic up to your guitar amp, plug the mic into the mixer/preamp. You plug that into the output on your mixer/preamp, then into your soundcard, and record through audacity.

If you want to start getting into layering tracks and editing stuff, there are a number of free programs out there. Jeskola Buzz, for example, is a good one. It's interface is very different, and takes a bit of learning, but you can get a lot of good synth and drum machine sounds out of it.

Good luck!

+1 to pretty much all of that.

Your basic goal is just to get a microphone running into your PC (if you REALLY don't care about quaility, you could use the onboard mic.) and to save that with free software (Audacity is recommended.)

 

[TylerDrums109]

My advice is to pick up some sort of instrument mic...idealy the sm57 if not the pg57 isnt terrible....then get a small 2 xlr in mixer with preamps that also has usb connectivity...the interface built into this mixer will provide you with much better quality than your sound card will and a usb mixer will cost you not much more than a non usb mixer...those are just my two cents...i cant stand the sound card on my computer...i've tried to run a 1/4 inch to 1/8 inch from my mixer to my sound card and the sound was awful imo...but then again im a sound snob....either way good luck

 

[DrewPeterson7]

I'd actually recommend Reaper over Audacity. It's not TECHNICALLY free - they do ask that if you like it and are using it just for personal use, you pay the $50 personal use liscensing fee ($250 for professional use, but the personal is full functional) - but it has a 30 day evaluation period, and after 30 days you don't actually have to buy it to keep using it - you just have to spend six seconds "thinking about registering Reaper" every time you boot it up, after which the program is fully functional.

Aside from that, you need some sort of a mic. I've heard people rave about Behringer's SM57 knockoff, and while a SM57 is pretty affordable for a mic anyway and usually it's worth spending extra for the better product, at $19.99 it's sort of hard NOT to get your money's worth.

If your laptop has an 1/8" mic or line in, then you can record through that - you just need an XLR-1/4" mic cable, and an 1/4"-1/8" mono adaptor, both of which are cheap.

For drum sounds, grab the Fruity Loops demo. I don't know what it comes with these days, but I used to get pretty good results from the "realistic" kit it included. It's save-disabled unless you buy it, but you can export loops with the demo.

That's pretty much it, for a budget. You'll get noticeably better results if you spring for a decent budget mic pre (I think the ART stuff is sub-$50 these days, or something crazy), but you can record with just a mic, a cable, and an adaptor if you have to.

 

[thrasherjohn]

thanks for the tips guys im totally new to this and just wanted to mess around with recording some stuff and editing it on my computer. I know my cousin had some sort of cord he used that plugged into the stereo jack input on one end and on the other end you could plug it into the mic port on a computer. Does anyone know of any cord like this?

 

[eternalpayn]

Do you mean an XLR cable, the one with 3 pins? Or a 1/4" cable, commonly known as an amp cord?

If you get a small mixer like this one, you can plug the mic into it, then use this cable to connect the output to your computer.

 

[LemonTree]

something real cheap like a line 6 UX1 could be your answer to get you started for getting guitar and vocals into the computer via USB. There was a promo a while back with the gearbox plugin free when you bought the UX1 toneport...is it the toneport? I forget but have a look, podfarm is free if you own one.