This is what I have, what can I do with it?

[fabito]

I'm hoping some of you can guide me a bit. I'm very new to this.

I have the following equipment :
- Tascam porta02 studio (4 track tape deck)
- Boss DR 5 (Drum Machine & sequencer)
- Acoustic guitars + Acoustic Guitar amp.
- Dell laptop (windows XP, 1GB Ram, 1.8ghz)
- Shure SM57 mic.

I'd like to know what I can do with all this. What would be the best set up? Or what can I add to have the best possible setup.

thanx all.
fabio

 

[thane1200]

Just get going with what you have. I've heard good stuff come from such meager beginnings. Don't worry about the gear until you know what will make your songs better.

 

[wishtheend]

- Tascam porta02 studio (4 track tape deck)
- Boss DR 5 (Drum Machine & sequencer)
- Acoustic guitars + Acoustic Guitar amp.
- Dell laptop (windows XP, 1GB Ram, 1.8ghz)
- Shure SM57 mic

If the drum machine has a line in, you can run the mic in there and force it down to one track. I'm not sure how many inputs that tascam has, but you'd want to lay your songs out in order drums-guitar-vocals. Do it one track at a time so you have down tight. Then run the output of that (i'm assuming rca, so get a mini-plug y adapter) into the "line-in" on the back of your computer. You'll need some sort of recording software, so, cool edit, sound forge etc. Adjust levels to maximum without clipping. Hit record. Then you can save or process things further. Save to wav for CD burning.

You COULD also drop each track one at a time from the tascam to the computer that way you could do a little eq'ing, compression etc.

In Summry. All instruments, drum machine and mic recording into portastudio. Then audio dumped to PC for cd burning.

 

[Riverdog]

Right on...

Wishtheend has a good layout for your first tracks...

Take your time to learn your equipment, too...
I actually began much the way you did...
I had an old Yamaha MT100II synced to "Cakewalk v2" for my MIDI Keyboards...

Good luck...