New to Recording

[groogleman]

I am new to home recording. All I want to record is 2 guitars, bass, drums, and vocals. Should I purchase an 8 or 12 track? analog/tape or digital? Who is cool to purchase from, and who will rip me off? I think I'm starting to hyperventilate...help!!! Thanks.

 

[regebro]

Tough question

It depends on a lot of things, firstly budget.
It also depends on if you need to record a lot of things at the same time, and stuff like that.

I think that the hardest thing to record is drums. Drums can use up any amount of tracks, quite easily, therefore, the more tracks you get, the better. But it will of course cost you.

The BOSS (BR-8?) digital portastudio seems nice, but can only record two tracks at a time. That can be OK with careful mic positioning of the drums, and besides, with 8 tracks you probably don't want to use more than two tracks for drums anyway. If you put up double the money, the new Fostex 16-track porta seems nice, I think it can record 8-tracks at the same time, which would be enough for most.

If this is out of your budget, second hand analog things are availiable, and you could probably get an 8-track 1/4" tape + mixer and som digital effects at the same or lower price as the Boss, and you then can record 4 tracks at one time.

 

[groogleman]

Regebro, thank's for the info. I will most likely use a drum machine on my recordings. I am lazy, I guess, and what I would like to do is record directly from instruments to amp to recorder. Would this be possible using the recorders you've mentioned?

 

[regebro]

Yup, sure.

That would be possible with any recorder, as far as I'm aware. Well, if you are going through an amp you need a mic too.

 

[Wide Awake]

You can do a nice recording with 8 tracks but 16 is worth the extra money because you can dedicate more mics to the drums. If you're using just a drum machine you CAN get by with 2 tracks...I use about 7 tracks for drum machine and hand percussion because to properly eq and pan the drum sounds they need their own track. Sometimes it's hard when the kick drum is fighting for the same space as the bass line and so you definitely want the kick drum on it's own track.

There are a lot of recorders on the market and any of them will do what you probably want. However, I would go into a store and spend some time checking them out and reading about the various models. Some have more complex operating systems than others and they all have features that are hidden away and are confusing...that's the downside. The upside is that all of the digital recorders today sound good and are a blast to record into.

 

[regebro]

And hence we slip into the next question!

What is the purpose of the recording? Do you want to make demos to send to a record company? Are you going to make a finished product? Or have you just realized that recording music is a insanely fun?

Demo: 2 tracks for a drum machine will be fine. The A&R man could not care less if the bass drum is a bit muddy and the conga could be panned a bit more to the left. On the 6 remaining tracks you can put two guitars, one bass, vocals and backing vocals and some keyboards with some nice strings or so on there. And putting more than that on a demo is overdoing it anyway!

Finished product: 8 tracks is pushing it. I'd go for at least 16. If you use a lot of keyboards, 8 can do fine if you can sync them and you have a huge mixer...

Insanely fun: Buy the best you can until your girlfriend/boyfriend/wife/husband/wallet has a fit!

In the two last cases try to make sure you have a clean upgrade path. I.e. if you buy a portastudio, try to get one with dedicated outs for each channel. That way you can hook it up to a mixer later, and still use it for recording. When you buy a mixer for your 8-track, buy one with 24 channels, so you can upgrade the 8-track to 16 without having to buy a new mixer, and so on. Always make sure that what you buy is better than everything else you have. Otherwise you'll end up with having to buy everything new at one time to get a better sound.
This doesn't go for the demo case, because then you just buy a porta that fits your needs, and stick with it until it falls apart. Demoes used to be trickier, since making a good demo on a 4-track casetteporta is tricky. But an 8 or 16 track digital porta with builtin effects will get you VERY far into demoland.