Hello Folks
My name's Michael. I play electric bass. My friend Gary and I have played music together for years. He plays pedal steel. We want to do a project where we record some tunes (country) that are traditionally vocal tunes, but instead Gary will play the melody on pedal steel.
10 years or so ago we did record a CD with a vocalist, and it really turned out well. At the time we used a minidisc-based Yamaha recorder. We no longer have that, but we do have good mics and other associated equipment.
I decided that after all these years, a DAW is probably the way to go. I purchased Apple's Logic Pro X. It seems to be an extremely powerful program, but man is it complicated. All we really want to do is record a mix of synthetic drums, simply played, and my electric bass, Gary's acoustic rhythm guitar, synth keyboard, and his pedal steel.
But as I look through the DAWs I have purchased (
Ableton Live 9, Logic Pro X, and of course being on a Mac I also have Garage Band) it seems these DAWs are designed really for electronic dance music. I have signed up on Lynda.com and Groove3.com and have taken many of the lessons, but it still seems to me like using these DAWs to do what we want is gross overkill, like swatting flies with grand pianos.
I'd sure appreciate some tips on how to get going. The lessons I have taken lead off into all kinds of electronic music and loops and automatic drummers and stuff, and I am kind of paralyzed by all this stuff.
I should mention a couple other things. Both Gary and I are in our 60s. We are both very very technical (I earn my living doing Linux and Virtualization Support for a major company, and Gary currently works as a machinist but has done lots of computer support in the past. So we are not computer challenged at all.