Newbie Questions...

[boner]

G'day people,

I have a few questions about recording with my PC and the like... hope I don't trouble the more experienced of you with mundane and stupid sounding Q's!

Recently I attempted recording with my PC using Cool Edit 2000 + Studio Plug-In... This may sound dumb but I hooked a mic straight into the Line In/Mic slot on my soundcard and recorded some tracks...

I recorded drums using the single microphone, and two tracks of bass plus one of vocal... I found the sound not to my liking and found I needed to boost it within the program. The drum sound was a real problem. I now want to invest in a mixer. My question/s is/are as follows:

What kind of mixer should I use as to isolate each drum when I lay down the track? (I hope to use at least four mics for this) Is it possible? Maybe something basic with at least treble/bass/mid controls etc. - I don't have a clue about these things.

Should I be using more than one mic for the bass?

If I choose to use a mixer with four mics on the drums, how can I add effects for a single mic (eg. phaser on the hats in a certain part of song) without using Cool Edit which will inadvertently add phasing to ALL mics.

Does that mean I need a mixer with inbuilt effects? Or can I cheat and hook up, say, a single effect or multi effect guitar pedal?

Am I making sense?! Thanks for your time, cheers.

 

[Kermit]

What soundcard do you have?
What style of music?

I get a decent, all around drum sound with 2 overheads, 1 bass drum and 1 snare mic. Works good for our demos.

For the bass, most people (myself included) mic a speaker, then take the bass direct (either from the amp or a direct box) into a mixer.

You can add phasing after the track is layed down (in mixdown) instead of worrying about effects while tracking. If your only using the one mic, you'll have to add phasing to the drums, but if you are using 4 mics, apply phasing to the (overhead) mic that holds most of the hats. You wouldn't be cheating if you threw in an effect pedal. Whatever works.

What mixer you get depends on your soundcard and budget.

Just keep reading and asking questions.

 

[boner]

My soundbalster is a Creative 16 Plug n Play - in other words, a pretty basic one...

My style of music is primarily funk - stripped back kinda stuff... Drums and 2 bass tracks

I was under the impression that I could stick the mics into the mixer; then the mixer into the soundcard direct; then use Cool Edit to do the rest.

My budget would be very slight - I am a student and would have to save up in order to get somethimg pretty decent. SO, in other words, I'm looking for something at the bottom of the range that fulfills my needs but still does the job well.

I will rely on Cool Edit for the tweeking and boosting aspect of the recording process. I just want the initial sound to be half decent and without using the single mic on the drums.

 

[SPINSTERWUN]

Chances are that you are going to need to purchase another soundcard.

That Sound Blaster is only going to go so far...

Or, since you are on a budget (being a student and everything ), you could go to the site that I am about to post. You could download a multi-tracking program. Therefore, instead of buying a board and soundcard, you could use the "cheap" shareware program until you save up enough money (to do things the "right" way).

http://www.hitsquad.com/smm/

spin

 

[jacobdetoth]

I'm going to get in on the advice....

I'm in a similar situation; I need a soundcard. And I need a <i>cheap</i> one. Maybe I'll say "lower middle class", I'm not trying to be some ultra-polished production guy, I just want something that will get me from point A to B. And save the big dollars for later....