How to record our band?

Mikesoft · 9 Dec 2006 at 09:43

Well basically im part of a band called 'Alex and the Communists'. We would like to know how to record our music through using a computer. The band consists of two vocals, acustic guitar and drums.

How would we go about making a crued musical recording?

Thanks!
Mike

banja · 9 Dec 2006 at 11:27

Recording all at once? Or do you want to multitrack??

Dr.EM · 9 Dec 2006 at 23:33

The instrumentation dictates it'll really have to be multitrack. You could do vocals and acoustic guitar at the same time, but leakage from a drum kit will be too difficult to control with that at the same time.

You say it only needs to be a crude recording. A really cheap way to get a decent result is using some stereo electret mics. You can buy these from a famous auction site, try the search term "electret mic". You'll see many STEREO MINIDISC / LAPTOP ELECTRET MICROPHONE MIC items. These are very respectable quality mics and will produce great results with the acoustic guitar and vocals with minimum budget (£17 or so).

They are designed to work with minidisc recorders however, as they draw power from them via a special system. They say they also work with laptops (and presumably desktops mic sockets?); those sockets are mono though, so I don't know if you'd get stereo :confused:

I haven't tried them myself, but use identical capsules in my own mics (which are phantom powered), they are excellent for the money, much better than anything else at that price level, especially for your instrumentation. The only issue may be the level of the drum kit (assuming its a kit, not percussion?). The mics can be overloaded so must be placed some distance from the kit to prevent distortion

I don't know if you mabye wanted a higher quality setup, but this can produce a decent result very cheaply. If you do, specify a budget

BlueAura · 10 Dec 2006 at 00:06

Get a good multitrack recording suite (there is a free one but I forget the name). Mic up each instrument at a time and hook them up to the line-in jack. Record guitar first, then drums, then vocals, last of all the backing vocals. It all should overlay if done correctly and give you a good result.

As Dr.EM said drums might be hard, you'll have to play with taping up sections of the skins and padding the bass to get the sound you want. If you want to splash out propellerhead reason has a very versatile drum synth and is fantastic to record and mix with, a friend of mine featured on the site uses it professionally - not to drop names.