NWB - Community Blog

19 Jan 2010

technical computer help required

Filed Under : Gear

Posted By : ben murray | Comments : 11

coz im a spanner!

so ive been thinking recently of sticking together some sort of home studio thing.

when we demo our own stuff i tend to come up with the ideas (acoustic and vox) and then bash it out with the band. this has worked pretty well up to now BUT sometimes i have specific ideas as to how i want things to be and explaining it (with no musical knowledge or understanding) fucking hard work sometimes.

so my plan is to get miself a laptop, some recording software and a guitar processor so i can knock up decent is demo's with full instrumentation.

with that in mind what recommendations have people got.

please try and limit the technical talk coz as most of you will know i am seriously thick on these computers so any talk of mega bytes etc will only make me hungry. my main concerns are ease of use (especially the drum sequencing side of it) and of course price.

cheers in advance for any help!

ben

www.thefixmusic.co.uk

Comments

# Posted by SKP - 19/01/2010, 19:08 (GMT)

our bassist has got home studio/laptop thing going on - he uses "pro-tools" software for all his recording. Hes a top drummer too so drum/bass sounds are his forte. He doesnt use this site tho so could give u a direct number if you need it?

# Posted by GatehouseLive Rehearsals - 19/01/2010, 20:06 (GMT)

You will need to buy a usb sound card for your laptop of choice - this gives you line in/ mic in/guitar in ect ect. visit edirol on the net..loads of usb stuff there.

laptop..well.....at least 3 gig memory needed -nice fast ish intel chip. copy of pro tools or ableton live will let you play midi stuff in (drums sequences n all that) & let you record live guitar/bass/whatever, then mix the two.

hope this helps..
oh yeah totally don't get windows Vista..cos its pants.
XP or Win7 ok.

Cheers dude...I.M. me if ya need to :)
lee
G.H.L.

# Posted by King-Fist - 19/01/2010, 20:07 (GMT)

pro tools is the one most people use! but it takes a while to get used to and plenty of patience. i left it to our guitarist steve after nearly launching my pc through window! and im pretty good with pcs or so i thought! what ever you decide good luck. craig.

# Posted by ben murray - 19/01/2010, 20:18 (GMT)

cHeers guys very much appreciatted, I'm aware of protools and cubase and I know there's a big blog on here discusses them so I'm gonna route that out. Just for ideas how much do you reckon I'm gonna be shelling out and where's the best place to resourse all this stuff. Bear in mind I'm not after hugely advanced sounds, it's more for demoing for the rest of the band really.

# Posted by Sandwich Slayer - 19/01/2010, 23:57 (GMT)

Also, a cheaper and easier to use option is The Boss Micro BR. It's a pocket recorder with built in microphone for vocals, built in drum machine, and socket to plug guitar or bass in, with built in effects. Abit like an old 4 track recorder but digital and a lot more features. About 150 quid which is cheaper than getting the extras to use a laptop. You can play back through headphones or speakers to the rest of the band, and if you have a computer you can burn the music to cd.

# Posted by Film One - 20/01/2010, 07:26 (GMT)

I'll vouch for the Micro BR. The sound quality is amazing, it runs on AA batteries and you can fit it in your pocket. It's really easy to use as well. It uses SD cards (up to 2GB) for storage and you can fit loads on a big card.

# Posted by BloozeThePlot - 20/01/2010, 09:22 (GMT)

If you want to go down the PC / Laptop route you could try Reaper, you get a full working demo system for about 30 days and it then just pops up a message asking for you to make a payment which is loads less than pro-tools / cubase etc. I have moved off cubase onto Reaper as the facilities seem to be so much better for only a fraction of the cost. Still, whatever you use, i've always found the drumming sequencing bit a bit difficult, you might want to invest in a small midi controller so that you can just bash away on the keyboad. Cheers

# Posted by ben murray - 20/01/2010, 11:40 (GMT)

cheers guys, regarding the boss micro br. can you actually program the drum pattern into it or is it a case of selecting a preset pattern, you know like rock 1, heavy 2, samba 1........
coz io can punch that information into ryan! haha
what i want is to be able to program specific drum tracks and not just playing along to a pattern.
cheers guys

# Posted by Film One - 20/01/2010, 12:04 (GMT)

You can always record your own drums from another source (e.g. drummer or drum machine) as the drum patters are predefined. If you're clever you can get it to do a certain amount of one pattern, then switch to another. There's fills and everything. I've never used it that smartly as it's purely an "ideas box" for me. You can also bounce tracks down to make them go further too.

If you go down the computer route, a cheap option is Cubasis (cut down cubase), which is often given away with MIDI controller keyboards (scope it out). It offers more than enough functionality for most of your recording needs.

# Posted by Sandwich Slayer - 21/01/2010, 00:00 (GMT)

yeah, forgot about the preset drums, I was planning on using my computer and some software I already have for drums but that adds extra expense if you are starting from scratch.

# Posted by Eclectica - 17/02/2010, 01:11 (GMT)

Get an apple Mac, usb soundcard and Logic Pro 8 or 9 and with that you have the most powerful recording/ producing platform going unless you want protools HD which is very expensive!

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