Does anyone here record music?

[mike without a hat]

Hi, my band and i want to start recording music, but we've got no idea what to do. We want to digitally record onto the computer but without having to open it up and mess with installing new cards and without spending a fortune. If anyone has experience with recording can you point us in a certain direction on what to buy?

[Leeza]

*moves to Help*

[Samuraid]

It's hard to get any sort of decent recording done without spending a bit on equipment. If you are very serious about recording, see if you can get in touch with someone who has access to a small studio or the like.

If you do want to spend money on sound recording equipment, you will need a decent sound card as well as some multitrack recording software. Just post your pricerange, and I'm sure some of us can provide suggestions.

[Optium]

If you want to be set up real nice, a friend of mine used a Firepod to
record with his band. New it'll run you like $800 but I think he got it for
$500. http://www.presonus.com/firepod.html

It records real well, when they first got it I brought over my external
harddrives and grabbed all the stuff as they were playing, then edited a
bunch of it and made some real nice sounding songs at home. If you're
interested in simply recording a live session, you might want to invest in
a couple of nice mics and a smaller, maybe just 2 or 4 track recording
device. However if you want something that you'll be able to edit
afterwards to produce near-studio sound, I'd say try to pool some money
for a firepod or something similar.

There are also a lot of places where you can get pamphlets or starter
tutorials for recording for free, if I can find any of them I'll let you know,
but I'd suggest doing a whole lot of googling and reading up before
making any big decisions. Good luck bro, hope the band works out.

By the way, what type of music is it?

.opt

*edit* Oh, and also...a little story.

That friend who used the firepod, well that thing actually belonged to the
guitarist of the band, he was cool but I wasn't good friends with him, I was
good friends with the pianist. Well the pianist and guitarist had a fight and
the band broke up (I'm still depressed about that). Well my friend started
jamming with another friend of his and 2 people from another band. He
eventually ended up recording some stuff using the microphone on his
laptop, and it's actually really nice quality. Not studio, but it sounds like
something that might be recorded live, if I hadn't been there I don't think
I would have believed that he did it with just 1 microphone on a laptop. So
I'd suggest doing that for now if you want to get your music out there.

[Rostum]

Studying audio engineering myself, all I can say is; if you want to get decent quality from this and a good experience, just go down to a studio to have a few of your songs recorded, mixed down and mastered. There are a lot of starting out studios that will do it for little to no fee.

Otherwise you'll be spending a heap load of money on any home equiptment. (I'm talking 10,000+) That is of course, unless you're just mucking around with two microphones and playing with live stereo recording in your garage or something. I am highly against something like this though, it's such a waste of time.

Say that you do though. Unless you're going to spend big, just get an Mbox with Pro Tools LE, some mic leads and two mics (mbox can only use 2 analog in's and out's at the one time). Mbox is an audio interface, but you can just connect it into a USB port, rather than opening up your whole computer. You'll also want to get two condensor mics rather than dynamic, because all you'll be doing is recording in stereo or overdubbing vocals and guitar.

Just PM me or ask here for any questions and I'm sure I can help you out.

[mike without a hat]

Opt- we recently started and we play a mix of rock like classic/punk/emo cause weve got pretty diverse members
there are 5 members right now, but may soon be six

We've got a music store in town with a small studio that charges $50 an hour but we're not sure if its more cost effective to go there all the time or to just buy the stuff and do home recording
we'd like to stay in the 400-1000 range for prices

[Rostum]

Hmm. 50 dollars an hour is extremely expensive for a small studio. Usualy to record and mix down one song it takes around 8-10 hours for that good quality.

You could just get what Opt. has posted, get a few mics (really learn about microphone placement, it's a huge factor in terms of quality). But that will defenatly cost a lot more than 1000 dollars, and probably not as good as you'd get with a studio.

[Samuraid]

Hmm. 50 dollars an hour is extremely expensive for a small studio. Usualy to record and mix down one song it takes around 8-10 hours for that good quality.

That's assuming your band has basically everything exactly figured out and practiced before arriving at the studio. If you do record on the clock, make sure you plan everything out completely and practice it a lot before even showing up to record.