Home Recording on the Cheap and for N00bs

[Buy Me a Burrito]

Hey all, 

 

Back in my younger days I was a Guy in a Band. We were never good, but it was a nice way to spend time with friends and to be creative. Now with work and adult life getting in the way, I don't have a lot of time to get together with friends. Not to mention that the one group that I get together with is sort of dominated by someone who is a genuinely gifted musician and player, so it's not like a lot of my ideas get through to the surface. Because of this, I'm making it a priority to spend 2016 trying to be a bit more creative musically. 

 

I have no aspirations of playing gigs or actually forming a band. What I'd like to do is record some of the music and ideas that I have floating around in my head. Right now the things that I like (and routinely rip off) are Lou Barlow:

 

 

William Onyeabor 

 

 

The Folk Implosion

 

 

I'm not interested in pristine fidelity. I'm more interested in just creating some fun mp3s to share with nobody in particular on like a BandCamp page or something. 

 

But to do this, I'd like to just record this stuff by myself at home. Here's the gear I own/have access to:

 

• Fender Jazz bass
• MXR M80 Bass DI/Preamp
• Fender Pa'ina electric acoustic ukulele
• Fender Telecaster guitar
• Cheap acoustic guitar

I can borrow guitar effects when needed, and a friend showed me a sight where I can buy drum loops for a dollar a piece. I have a four year-old PC that runs Windows 10 and an iPad. 

 

I guess I need recommendations for mics and what to use to record for a guy who has a mortgage and a wife who will yell at him for a lot more gear. Recommendations and links would be amazing.  

 

[JCM]

I've been doing everything digitally for a few years now. A few guitars and a laptop has been the extent of my gear. The only reason I bought an ipad mini was for the great music software ios has. I bought about everything Positive Grid has put out over black Friday. I'm just getting my feet wet with this ios stuff, but so far so good. The ios apps are ridiculously cheap compared to the PC software.

[Lamp, broken circa 1988]

hahahahahah

welcome to my whole shit bro

 

I've recorded four albums and one EP, mastered three albums, and recorded a podcast entirely in my home. The podcast was rough and no longer exists on the internet, but, the point is, I know how to get it done.

 

Before I say anything else, here are the sites where I buy all my equipment.

Here's a picture of that.

 

The next phase of mixing is about controlling potential Clipping. When you play the song back in audacity, if the playback volume triggers red bars, that means it's clipping. Basically, it means one frequency is WAY too loud, to the point that it risks damaging speakers and making the frequencies around it sound like garbage. Audacity lets you go in and edit waveforms to reduce peaks individually (a tool signified by a pencil), which is good for large scale momentary spikes- think popping or room noise- but it's time consuming so it's bad for prolonged sections of a recording (although I have done it). For longer sections you'll want to use enveloping to bring down the volume of a couple of consecutive segments. If you look at the first picture, on the upper and  lower most tracks they're shrunk slightly. This is a visual representation of an envelope (and another reason Audacity is really cool). You can use these two tools to try and regulate the volume spikes of the track.

 

Then, once everything sounds good, you're going to want to take another pass at the EQ stage. Listen to the tracks with that visualizer going and, again, take notes on frequencies. If something sounds off, look at which frequencies are higher or lower than others and reference that with your instruments. From here, you can go back in and re-mix your instrument tracks and try again. If the frequency is something that multiple instruments are relying on (if you're playing high on the bass and low on guitar, you'll run into this issue) you'll probably want to go in and individually re-EQ instruments to create a little more seperation in where their dominant frequency is. Otherwise, things can be fixed with a general EQ pass on the compiled mix at this point.

 

Lastly, there's the act of raising the volume. So if the scan for clipping went well, this should be pretty painless. First, you export your mixed track into one final file. Then, you just raise the gain until it's as loud as you want it to be without clipping all the time. If you play back the track at the desired volume and there's multiple points that clip, you're going to have to go back to the isolated mix and reduce the frequency and volume spikes there. This will be pretty easy to see visually, and if it's not you can zoom in on the tracks to get a better idea of the peaks and valleys of the waveform. For an ABSOLUTE LAST RESORT, you can just apply a Compressor effect (audacity's is free) to set a hard limit on as loud a song can be and fill out the rest of the wave form. You're going to end up sounding really grainy if you abuse a compressor, but, it's an aesthetic. The first Death Grips record is basically songs that are clipping like crazy and compressed to fuck. Example.

 

There! That's almost everything I know how to explain quickly. Hopefully like 40% is helpful.

[Bustronaut]

I can confirm that B & H and Musician's Friend are the go-to places for pro-quality stuff at affordable prices. We used B&H at the station for YEARS before we got shut down.

[Lamp, broken circa 1988]

And later, you can use B&H catalogs to keep fires going in the winter!

[Buy Me a Burrito]

Thanks.

A friend of mine just showed me GarageBand for my iPad. It has some preprogrammed drum loops in it, and I can buy an iRig to plug my bass and guitar into. I think it's going to work until after the beginning of the year when I can do a skill assessment and see how deep into learning recording I want to get.

Right now I just want a setup where I can kind of plug in, tinker a bit and record with ease.

What I'd really love is some sort of vocal trick that helps me stay on key and even record a few harmonies here and there. I don't mind fudging my lack of singing ability in the name of a tolerable song or two.

Thanks for the input. If I decide to expand to more equipment your list is going to come in handy.

[Lamp, broken circa 1988]

The easy non-autotune way to pull that off is to record the melody on something else (or program it with a synth and sequencer, which there are millions of free apps that will let you do that), and practice with it a few times before you record. Audacity does let you shift pitches so if you're a little flat somewhere and you know, you can adjust.