Beginner Home Recording?

Question

I want to start recording some music at home for fun. I want to know what is the best way to do it as a beginner. I only want to do vocals and guitar, so I was thinking of either recording the 2 tracks separately and then putting them through Audacity, or I could get 2 mics and use a mixer to record both "live" (if you know what I mean). A friend would perhaps record a drum track with his set then send me an mp3 of it which i will put together with my own track through Audacity.Those with experience, could you give me some suggestions about which one to go with? Also I want to put a video with it. I don't have anything expensive, so I just have a video camera. (Any good video editing software out there by the way?)

Answer 1

Record the Guitar and vocals separately to reduce bleed (then just gate any other noise). I would suggest not working in audacity. I've worked in audacity and it does not compare to pro tools or logic which you can download for free off of any torrent site (but you didn't hear that from me haha). Pro tools and Logic are also capable of syncing up audio to video. The SM57 would be good for vocals but NOT for the acoustic. I would recommend renting a couple of condenser microphones from your local music store RODE NT-55 sounds pretty good on an acoustic (in my opinion). Also working in Pro tools/Logic would eliminate the need for a mixer because you could so your mix right in Pro tools/Logic. Also Adobe premiere is a good program for video editing. If you can try to not use Audacity if you can't get Pro tools or Logic try and get another professional recording program (cubase Steinberg etc.) editing and mixing in these programs is worlds above audacity. Also when you're micing the acoustic mic at the 14th fret measure the body length and put the mic that distance away. Some good acoustic micing techniques to research are Mid Side (MS) micing "XY" micing dual mono or "over the shoulder micing".

Answer 2

Back in the old days before computers we would have to use multiple recorders. Eventually they came out with inexpensive multi track recorders. Now there are some excellent recording programs that allow you to multi track with relative ease. However, you still need some basic tools to get a quality recording. This includes a good low impedance microphone or two and a decent small mixer. This allows you to get the best possible signal into the computer. You can have your drummer friend put a drum track down but you will need to record it. This will involve using a few mics on the kit and playing along with him so that he can play at the right tempo, etc. You could use a simple drum machine to do the basics. This has the advantage of letting you program the beat how you want it or use a preset beat. It also gives the added advantage of having a very good sound quality. As far as doing a video of the song you can simply "play along" to the recorded song and run the audio straight from the computer into the video camera. This will give you the best quality sound with the video. You could also use the playback from the computer to play the background tracks and play along live with the recorded background tracks. This will not sound as good as "faking it" to the recording but will capture your actual performance.

If you go to my Youtube page in the link provided you can see an example of me playing along with the recorded background tracks. Keep in mind that these videos were recorded in a real TV studio using multiple cameras and professional equipment. The principal is still the same. I recorded all of the background tracks onto a 2 track master which I used to play along with live. So all the vocal and guitar parts are live (I am really doing them) but all of the drums, bass, and keyboard parts were recorded in my studio.

Answer 3

if your budget is low, just get a stupid little computer mic that you can adjust the volume with. won't sound great but will probably sound better than a camera microphone. unless its like a canon 550D or something..



anyway if you don't mind so much about budget definately purchase a shure SM57 microphone - they are the best standard microphone for the price that you can get, and you'll also need to get an external sound card (a.k.a audio interface) so you can plug your mic into the computer. I'm sure if you type in 'audio interface' on google images or ebay, you can find something that would be useful for cheap or something..



the basics are that if you want to record good sounding audio, you need to spend some money. its as simple as that

Answer 4

first you will need a at least a 4 track dubbing recording system, lay down 1 track dub

over next track and so on then play all back an add video last, good luck,gary