How to record our song? Any ideas?

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Rob33

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alright, me and 2 friends have created a song, just the instrumental section, and we have finally perfected it, but now we need to record it to just to listen to it from the audience's perspective...

we have tried using video cameras but the sound overpowers the camera and it comes out all fuzzy on playback...

Does anybody have any ideas as to how we could get a good quality recording of the song? Video would be nice but we really only need the audio...I just don't know of what kind of technology we need to use to get the best audio playback of the song- anybody have ideas?

and we don't have access to any sort of studio right now so that is out of the question. Thanks in advance! :)
 
alright, so can you please elaborate on this?

for example, say it was 2 guitars and drums, how would we do it with mics?

Thanks
 
My suggestion would be either 3 mics, or record, say, drums first (onto audacity, music editing program-free too. ;) ), then guitar, then guitar 2?

Just a thought.
 
ok thank you very much MooMoo for your help...but I'm very inexperienced with this sort of thing-

Ok so I already have 3 mics and audacity...so now what? How do we get the guitars and drums onto the computer? Like what do we do with the mics exactly? And I'm assuming we do this all separately, get 3 separate tracks and then combine them on the program, but how do we get them on the comp? Do we need to bring my friend's computer into the garage? lol...thanks for the help :)
 
ok heres some tips for a really low budget diy recording...you only really need 1 mic, wherever the computer is

1. edit - create new track
2. assign input to be from mic
3. press record (it would be a good idea to record just a bit here to get the input level good - stay in the yellow, don't let it go into the red, you can always boost it up later if you need to..then delete the test bit you recorded)
4. play instrument
5. stop
6. put song marker back at the beginning of song
7. repeat

start with the drums and then repeat for each instrument you have in the song, so one track for each instrument. if you cant get the drums near the computer, yah youre going to need to bring the comptuer to the drums, unfortunately
 
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alright thanks for that gabriel...so what if we don't have one of those sound cards with the audio face plate that you can see from the front ( like under the CD ROM drive)...where do we plug in the mic? And I already have 2 mics, so we can use one for the guitar, and then 2 for the drums, so how would we plug 2 mics in to comp?

Thanks for this help, I really appreciate it! :)
 
Well you likely do have a sound card, if you are able to hear sound out of your computer speakers, (some are built into the motherboard) but look round the back and you should see another couple of holes besides the speaker/headphone out. One is likely a mic-in and one is likely a line-in. stick one of the mics into that mic-in and away ya go.

You can't really do multiple mics into a very basic recording situation like I'm suggesting, unless you get a mixer and then send one line to the computer..and then you wont have multiple tracks, you'll have one track with all the instruments on that one track

Better to just get one mic, record the drums, and then record the guitar after..you can do that as many times as you like - plug in some headphones so you can listen and play along when recording the tracks after the drums..oh and make sure the computer speakers are turned down so that they don't bleed over into the mic as you record your second, third and so on tracks....

Honestly tho thats a really rough way of doing a recording...if you plan to do any more in the future you should seriously consider doing it with a bit more sophistication...but that's a whole other topic! (I use, for instance, the TC Konnekt, a great tool for home recording)
 
Gabriel thank you..

do you know of any good sites or information sources on the best way to home record?
 
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