Ok now we have a song using nothing but samples, I like to record the guitar first since the samples for it sound worse than the bass. So now you have to plug your guitar into your computer’s sound card somehow, this can be done a ton of different ways. Since this is just a rough draft recording you can just do what I do and get a 1/4″ Mono to 1/8″ stereo adapter like in the picture below. Then just plug your guitar cable into the adapter then plug the adapter into the line in of your sound card (it’s usually the blue jack, if you don’t have one you’ll have to use the pink mic in jack).

Of course if you wanna get fancy you can plug a mic into the mic input of your sound card and mic your amp, but then you’ve got a bunch of other things you have to do like get an XLR to 1/8″ adapter, set up the mic in front of the amp correctly so that it sounds best, and probably a bunch of other stuff. Since this is just a rough draft recording I’m going with the direct in approach I talked about above, if you wanna do the mic thing go for it, it’ll probably take longer and be more work, but it’ll probably sound better. I just found an article about guitar amp recording with examples, it seems to be pretty good check it out here: Guitar Amp Recording

Ok so now click the guitar MIDI track in reaper and press the delete button on your keyboard then click the R button on the guitar track to arm the recording. Next click the red record button right above the master volume and Reaper will start recording.

After you record the guitar part click stop and then hit the rewind button (or hit Home on your keyboard), then click play to listen to it. You can use the volume control to bring it up or down with the drums then just do the same thing as above to record the bass and vocals.

Next you’ll want to mix all the instruments to try to make them sound better together. I’m not that good at doing this but I found another article that seems to explain it well, plus has some pretty good visuals.
Check it out here: Getting your mix to…mix

Anyway don’t forget you can use the pan sliders to try to space out the guitars, or backing vocals if you have them, so that’s pretty much it for doing just a rough draft recording, feel free to experiment with different drum samples or effects to find a sound you like best.

I don’t think I’m very good at recording yet, but I know some of the stuff I’ve recorded is (recording quality wise) better than other stuff I’ve heard on myspace. An example of what I’m talking about is like this song I recorded on a boom box with Billy playing drums (kinda). Although don’t misunderstand my comment as saying songs recorded this way suck, they don’t, one of my favorite Iowa City artists, Samuel Lock Ward records in this way and I think it’s brilliant. He even has an album called Boombox by Bedside in which he recorded all the tracks on a boom box with all the wonderful tape hiss included . (I should also note that he’s also in another great band called the Miracles of God which don’t specifically record using Lo-Fi methods, though I read somewhere that their first album was recorded on a cassete 4 track, but it still sounds pretty damn good to me). Another awesome Iowa City band that records this way is CroKane, they are a two piece that plays old style blues. Because they record this way their recordings sound almost like they were recorded in the 50′s like Johnny Lee Hooker or Leadbelly, you know like when they used to have just one microphone and have it record straight into a device that cuts the record as it’s recording. So like I said, don’t think I’m knocking down this way of recording or anything, It definitely serves it’s purpose when that’s what you’re going for.

Anyway my point is many people who are recording their own songs and are trying to get sounds like on commercial records by recording this way just don’t seem to know what they are doing. Another thing is that some people who are using quality recording devices like an all in one console or a computer still don’t have very good recordings because they don’t know or understand how to mix a song properly to get good results.

This brings me back to my trip to the library and an idea I had. When I went to they library I specifically wanted a book that came with a CD with examples of how to mix a song properly, because like I said above I still don’t think I’m very good at it. Only problem was my library only had one book that came with a CD it was called The Complete Idiots Guide to Home Recording. I absolutely hate books with these kind of titles (like the dummies series) because they insinuate the person reading it is a moron. Since my library lacked any other book with a CD I checked it out. After I started reading it I was very surprised though, it is a very good book with lots of great information and examples, it just has a very stupid title. Anyway the only problem with this book (besides the stupid title) is that it uses Pro Tools Free which only runs on Windows 98/ME and you can’t download it anymore anyway (unless you look reaallly hard). So the info is good but since the software is outdated it’s somewhat useless to learn from. So I went off to search the internet for something similar, but I couldn’t find anything close to detailed articles with example sound files (I found a ton of articles on the subject but no example files, then I found some example files but no details on how the person mixing the song got those results).

So this brings me to my idea, I decided I’ll try myself to record a song detailing every aspect of it with pictures, sound, and maybe video. Like I said a few times before I’m not the most experienced when it comes to recording and mixing but maybe by doing this I’ll be able to learn what techniques work best and which don’t. Perhaps maybe I’ll even get feedback from people more experienced than me saying how they would have done this or that differently to make it sound better. Anyway I don’t wanna fall into the same trap as the Author of the book I just mentioned with outdated software. I’d like to try to find some kind of free software (preferably GNU GPL so that I know it will always be available for free even if I have to offer it on my site). I know of a GPL’ed program called Traverso that would work, but it has some latency problems so it’s out of the question for now. I also know of one called Kristal that is free but has a limitation of 16 tracks (which isn’t bad) and doesn’t support midi. Plus it’s not GPL so who knows if it will ever get outdated (the website says the current download is from 2004, so it’s already 5 years old). I know of a really nice one called Reaper but it’s not free and you’re suppose to buy it after 30 days for $60 (unless you want the commercial license which cost $225). The good thing about this one is that it doesn’t expire after 30 days, it just continues to give you a message that you should buy it and still works as a full version. Only problem is since it’s not free GPL software it’s unpredictable, you never know if the author of the program will decide that he wants to revoke this generous offer to keep it a full version even after it has expired.
I know of another program called Ardour which is free GPL software and looks really nice, only thing is it’s only available for GNU/Linux and Mac (I’ve read theirs a Windows version that was developed but won’t be released because of complicated issues).
Lastly theirs Audacity, but while it’s an excellent audio editor, is multi-platform, and free under the GNU GPL, I also think it’s a terrible multitrack DAW. The way it saves project files totally sucks, plus the fact that you can’t use the effects in real time, you have to preview them first, also makes it a poor choice.
So before I do anything I’ll need to do some research, if anyone knows of a good multi-platform GPL multitrack program leave me a comment, or send me an email at moc.xobni@emptyzedlavijneb and let me know.
Well I think that about does it, if I’m able to pull this off hopefully it will come out as a quality article that will be of good value to anyone wanting to make better sounding recordings. Perhaps if it comes out okay I’ll also make a pdf of the articles available for offline viewing.