New to Home Recording

[Whitespace]

Hi all,

Im about to start my first home studio, but i have a few questions first. Please bear with me, as I'm completely new to this....

Instrument wise I want to be able to record my guitar, korg r3 and mpc 1000, and maybe vocals, bass and glockenspiel too.
I also need some way of amplifying the r3 and the mpc for just messing about on (at the minute im just using headphones straight out of each of them). so my first question is will I be able to play them straight through a firewire or usb interface and through whatever monitors i get?
If this is possible, my next question is this: what interface would you recommend? I'm going to buy a new laptop within the next month (leaning towards a souped up vaio cw), so firewire or usb is an option. Despite the fact that 90% of the time i will be recording one instrument at a time, I would like to have everything permanently hooked up to the monitors so i can practice on anything at any time without having to plug stuff in and out.

So basically i need an interface with 2 or maybe 4 mic inputs (for sm57s on guitar and bass amps, and maybe aonther 2 on glockenspiel and vocals), and 2 stereo (4) line level inputs (for the r3 and mpc). I'd also like to keep the actual form factor as small as possible. The only interface I've found so far that will suit this is the Edirol FA101. Clearly I'm missing something..

Am I on the right track with this? or should i look at getting a small PA to amplify the r3 and mpc and use the interface just for recording?

Along with this, I'm thinking about just hitting some KRK rokits as monitors. Is there anything else around the 500dollar mark (new or used) that I should be looking at?

Thanks for any responses. I realize these are real noob questions.....

 

[moresound]

Hi all,

Im about to start my first home studio, but i have a few questions first. Please bear with me, as I'm completely new to this....

Instrument wise I want to be able to record my guitar, korg r3 and mpc 1000, and maybe vocals, bass and glockenspiel too.
I also need some way of amplifying the r3 and the mpc for just messing about on (at the minute im just using headphones straight out of each of them). so my first question is will I be able to play them straight through a firewire or usb interface and through whatever monitors i get?

Yes straight in

 

[moresound]

Hi all,

Im about to start my first home studio, but i have a few questions first. Please bear with me, as I'm completely new to this....

Instrument wise I want to be able to record my guitar, korg r3 and mpc 1000, and maybe vocals, bass and glockenspiel too.
I also need some way of amplifying the r3 and the mpc for just messing about on (at the minute im just using headphones straight out of each of them). so my first question is will I be able to play them straight through a firewire or usb interface and through whatever monitors i get?
If this is possible, my next question is this: what interface would you recommend? I'm going to buy a new laptop within the next month (leaning towards a souped up vaio cw), so firewire or usb is an option. Despite the fact that 90% of the time i will be recording one instrument at a time, I would like to have everything permanently hooked up to the monitors so i can practice on anything at any time without having to plug stuff in and out.

So basically i need an interface with 2 or maybe 4 mic inputs (for sm57s on guitar and bass amps, and maybe aonther 2 on glockenspiel and vocals), and 2 stereo (4) line level inputs (for the r3 and mpc). I'd also like to keep the actual form factor as small as possible. The only interface I've found so far that will suit this is the Edirol FA101. Clearly I'm missing something..

Am I on the right track with this? or should i look at getting a small PA to amplify the r3 and mpc and use the interface just for recording?

Along with this, I'm thinking about just hitting some KRK rokits as monitors. Is there anything else around the 500dollar mark (new or used) that I should be looking at?

Thanks for any responses. I realize these are real noob questions.....

No PA needed. If it's just you recording 2 tracks at a time should be fine and just multi track them and layer.

I kinda like the KRKs but what ever you purchase you'll have to get use to how they sound compared to your final Cd burn.

 

[Whitespace]

Thats great, thanks for the quick reply moresound. Could you recommend some other interfaces I should be looking at?

 

[TimOBrien]

My obligatory standard reply-for-newbies that I keep in Wordpad so this is just a paste (I don't want to re-type this all the time):

First off, immediately get a good beginner recording book (spend $20 before spending hundred$/thousand$) that shows you what you need to get started and how to hook everything up in your studio:
Home Recording for Musicians by Jeff Strong - $15
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470385421
(Wish I'd had that when I started; would have saved me lots of money and time and grief)
You can also pick up this book in most any Borders or Barnes&Noble in the Music Books section!

Another good one is: Recording Guitar and Bass by Huw Price
http://www.amazon.com/Recording-Gui...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215734124&sr=1-1
(I got my copy at a place called Half-Price Books for $6!!)

Home Recording for Beginners by Geoffrey Francis
http://www.amazon.com/Home-Recording-Beginners-Geoffrey-Francis/dp/1598638815

When you get a bit into it, I highly recomend The Art of Mixing by David Gibson to teach you to put performers in a 3-D field:
http://www.amazon.com/Art-Mixing-Recording-Engineering-Production/dp/1931140456

And you can get a FREE subscription to TapeOp magazine at www.tapeop.com

Barnes&Noble or Borders are great places to start --- they have recording books and you can go get a snack or coffee and read them for FREE! Don't pass by a good recording book --- this is a VERY technical hobby and you REALLY want to start a reference library!!!

Good Newbie guides that also explains all the basics and have good tips:
http://www.tweakheadz.com/guide.htm
http://www.computermusic.co.uk/page/computermusic?entry=free_beginner_pdfs
http://www.harmony-central.com/articles/
http://www.gearslutz.com/board/tips-techniques/168409-tips-techniques.html

21 Ways To Assemble a Recording Rig: http://www.tweakheadz.com/rigs.htm

Also Good Info: http://www.theprojectstudiohandbook.com/directory.htm

Other recording books: http://musicbooksplus.com/home-recording-c-31.html

Still using a built-in soundcard?? Unfortunately, those are made with less than $1 worth of chips for beeps, boops and light gaming (not to mention cheapness for the manufacturer) and NOT quality music production.
#1 Rule of Recording: You MUST replace the built-in soundcard.
Here's a good guide and tested suggestions that WORK: http://www.tweakheadz.com/soundcards_for_the_home_studio.htm
(you'll want to bookmark and read through all of Tweak's Guide while you're there...)

Plenty of software around to record for FREE to start out on:
Sony ACID Xpress 10-track sequencer: http://www.acidplanet.com/downloads/xpress/
Audacity: http://audacity.sourceforge.net (multi-track with VST support)
Wavosaur: http://www.wavosaur.com/ (a stereo audio file editor with VST support)\
Kristal: http://www.kreatives.org/kristal/
Other freebies and shareware: www.hitsquad.com/smm

Another great option is REAPER at http://www.cockos.com/reaper/ (It's $60 but runs for free until you get guilty enough to pay for it...)
I use Reaper and highly reccomend it...

Music Notation and MIDI recording: Melody Assistant ($25) and Harmony Assistant ($80) have the power of $600 notation packages...
http://myriad-online.com
Demo you can try on the website.

And you can go out to any Barnes&Noble or Borders and pick up "Computer Music" magazine - they have a full FREE studio suite in every issue's DVD, including sequencers, plugins and tons of audio samples. (November 2006 they gave away a full copy of SamplitudeV8SE worth $150, November 2007-on the racks Dec in the US- they gave away SamplitudeV9SE and July 2009 issue they put out Samplitude10SE. FREE. It pays to watch 'em for giveaways...)

 

[bstarstudios]

i like the PreSonus FireStudio Mobile 10x6. never owned one but from using one a few times i can tell the preamps arent bad for the price and it has 2 mic inputs and 4-8 line level inputs

 

[Whitespace]

Thanks for all the replys guys. thats an interesting one bstarstudios, I'll definitely look in to that one. Any other suggestions to compare it to?

Am i going about this the right way? should i maybe get a cheap mixer to run everything through and then just get a 2 channel interface to record through, seeing as how it will usually just be me and i can obviously only play one instrument at a time? so if everything was going through a mixer and then the output of the mixer went into a 2 channel interface, and then that outputed to the monitors. am i making sense?

 

[bstarstudios]

must say i went the mixer route for my first studio, still use the mixer route, youll probably need an external soundcard if you get a mixer, unless you have rca inputs on your computer (my macbook did not).

for other units like the presonus try the m-audio fast track pro or ultra, the ultra has up to 8 inputs the pro i think has 4-6