Gosh. I feel hijacked. Heh.
Glen, you raise several valid points. I'll try to have my thoughts organized:
1) Thank you for acknowledging my pseudonym. On one forum, people started referring to me as "Moosen". I find this disheartening. After I graduate from Whatsamatta U., I'll make it my first priority to educate others of Jay Ward's wondrous productions.
2) Yes, I was a little light on the details. To be honest, this was intentional. I've had my posts go unnoticed on several forums because my initial questions were too long (although not quite
thislong). You could say my theory is to bait them in and only then provide details.
Never mind the numbering. It gets too complicated.
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History (Skip of it is too much)
You could call this the somewhat-applicable portion of my life story. If you find it Clinton-esque, maybe I could find a publisher.
I started taking piano lessons around six, but my attitude kept me from learning. But by age eleven or so, I discovered I wasn't so afraid of the alternative realm of playing chords for less traditional music. My ear for music has been a benefit, to the point that my piano teachers got frustrated when I'd play by the sound and feel of music rather than the notes. I would literally memorize my songs so I could look at my hands rather than look at the music. I've played on and off with various church and school worship teams since I was twelve, first trying a guitar in middle school. I've never had a lesson, but I'm competent playing rhythm acoustic in the keys of E, G, A, D, and sometimes C.

I just absorbed the two theory classes I took at Bethel University, where I also spent a year chipping at a boulder with some much needed voice lessons (I have a lot to learn). I took one semester in lessons for marimba and vibes, and another in handbells. I sang in their choirs, including when one choir performed for our governor Tim Pawlenty's reinauguration ceremony. I can keep a beat on a drum set, and I've played bass on stage twice.
My sound engineering experience began in the fifth grade when I took turns running sound for a small church's morning kids service. I was the only kid to figured out how the paster made his voice echo with the built-in effects processor. I watched in awe as seventh graders helped with the adult sound, and it wasn't long before I was mixing for my small Christian school's chapel when I wasn't playing keyboard. I drooled over Musician's Friend catalogs on long car rides and during lunch at school. When I was thirteen or so, I was going to be mixing for another one of my middle school's annual drama productions. The drama teacher was planning to rent a soundboard because the PA equipment in the school's basement was so poor, but I told her that I had been planning on buying one, and that maybe she could give me the budget from renting a mixer to help me buy one. She agreed and gave me $100 of the $250 I paid for my first mixer to show up on my doorstep, A shiny Behringer "14 channel" console with six preamps and an effects processor to boot. Months later I bought more, vacuuming my mother's floors with a vengeance so I could send away for Nady loudspeakers, a 900 watt amp, a 31-band graphic EQ, etc. I haggled the interest rates on peanut-sized loans from my dad, and when people asked what it was all for, it didn't matter that I couldn't answer them, because I was a child with a dream. I was involved in pioneering a youth group that rented a small room every other week on the upper story of an aged YMCA building. We primarily used my gear, carted with the drums every week, upstairs to the room, and then downstairs to our small trailer of outdoor, winter storage. We called the group '6:54' because we met six minutes away from where the adults of the church communed on Wednesday nights. Although our small service liked visitors, it was unusual to have less than half of those present on the worship team. They joked about G being the "key of worship"; they frequently ate at the Wendy's across the street after the gear was repacked. We had no budget for cases or rackmounts, and my beloved sound system was showing some wear and tear. I began attending a different youth group, a gathering of 600 or more where I was able to complement the worship with the church's intelligent lighting system costing $65 grand or more, and I fell into the routine of mixing for the same church's middle school group which met on Sunday mornings, adopting as much expertise and delegating authority as anyone who was willing to work for free. I catered to those short-lived generations of middle schoolers for about two and a half years before forgetting why I was there and what I was really doing it for. My own gear sat on the cement floor in my parents furnace room, among old stacked suitcases and unused furniture. My mother complained weekly about the space I was abusing with my junk, and I regretted ever buying it. I spent so much money, also the prodigious number of hours I put into research for these things. I was switching jobs and switching schools, more into photography than music, hardly playing anything anywhere and generally feeling disconnected and rejected. Bands don't appreciate sound techs, nobody that would want my help could pay for it, and it seems any related purchases I make become shameful mementos of of unguided, childish ambitions, which cuts deep for someone would do anything to find ambitions now, but it all seems too foolish to bother with.
Eight months ago, I get a call asking to play keys for a weekend retreat. I say yes, we practice, and the other musicians start to feel we are a band. They apply for church sponsorship and look into budget recording studios. It's almost cute the way they think we'll 'make it big'.
...but it's better than nothing, right?
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Back on Subject
My Behringer board died long ago, and my Nady gear is functional, but dreadful. I'm using a six channel powered board with crackling volume knobs and frequent loud pops that could be damaging. Recording into my computer with or without the board presently causes too much hiss.
Yes, the chief concern is amateur recording, but we're on a budget, and
the band expects to practice and potentially perform with whatever mixing device we buy. A computer
might work for practicing or live shows (ick), but it would need to be one used
only for the band's purposes, not double as a household computer like our current one does. I feel the other band members would prefer something a little more tangible. Additionally, the band members would prefer to avoid future channel limitations. I see twelve channels as the absolute minimum,
sixteen plus preferred.
We have a small room dedicated for band gear in my basement, but if we practice in there with drums, it will be just chaos. We'll frequently practice there without drums, though, and if we decide not to go the budget studio route ($55 an hour),
we'll record in that room too. There's a snowball's chance in Phoenix we'd be able to make a decent live mix, so I'm suggesting to them we record one part at a time.
The gear I have: E-MU 0404 PCI, which is a duplex soundcard with only
two analog inputs. On the computer, I have a recent (and legal!) version of
Acid Music Studio, and I recently bought
Cakewalk 2002 off eBay for only a few dollars. It is old, but it has full recording functionality even up to converting MIDI to staff music and acting as a virtual mixer. As for other gear, my
cables are cheap, some new and some ancient. Out of the six
Nady mics I bought years ago, five still work. (Buy one for $25, get two free! Order now from Musician's Friend!

)
Budget: We received an offering of $523 during a small concert/worship service, and my father was kind enough to agree to match any donations to us up to the first thousand. The rest of the band immediately sees this as $1,046 cash in hand and more to come (don't count your chickens...), and they agreed that we should spend
$1,000 on a soundboard, possibly less, but $1,200 at the absolute max. They are envisioning an analog mixer with 16 to 20 channels; I think I could persuade them otherwise if this really isn't best for the band, but it might be tricky. Next on their list is probably drum mics on the cheap.
One last element to complicate things further. Without proof reading this post, I can't be sure how much my tone expresses this, but I don't have a lot of faith in 'The Band'. Partially cynicism, partially experience. I see a lot of people start things without carefully evaluating whether or not they can finish: I fear the divorce rate in this country, yet I come to respect those slow plodders who make it around the last bend of the marathon not because they expect to win, but because they wanted to finish. Diligence just seems hard to find these days. The lead singer of our band probably has the least to bring to the table, but she happens to be the girlfriend of the drummer, the one who generally picks our gigs and our song sets. Guitar-Girl-as-an-identity is going to school two hours away, and our rhythm acoustic seems a little more passive in the decision making process, but he gets just as excited about these things as the others. That leaves me, the keys player, transposer of songs and electronics expert. None of us really know how to write songs, and none of us have been acting as a clear leader. Unlike the others, I
don't think we're going to make it big. I'm reminded of Tom Hank's "That Thing You Do" more often than I'd like. So honestly, what happens to our joint-owned gear
when the band eventually splits. I don't want any of us to think negatively of the others years later because he got that gear and the other didn't, etc. It's possible I'd be more involved either with music or engineering later in life, but I'm really not sure. I could offer to buy the mixer or interface or whatever half out of my own pocket and only half from the band fund, on the condition that "if" the band splits, I would get to keep the mixer. But is that something I really want? I don't have unlimited spending myself, and who could predict whether or not I'd regret it down the road like I regret my Behringer mixer and Nady amp?
What would you do?