So a bit of an update here over the past four years:
I was able to find a proper power cord for my BR8 (my old 8 track) and found out it wasn't fried so I was able to get all my old stuff off of it. Anyway, I don't really have a proper computer set up with a DAW and haven't spent any time learning that, but it's on my agenda and am almost there. In the meantime, I've written the basis for about 10-ish songs and I've got numerous other ideas and bits and pieces here and there. I'm going to use the basis of two old songs I had. I'd say by the end of the year, but who knows, my plan is to put out a full release (12-16 songs) on Spotify. My largest challenge will be solving for the vocal issue as I'm not a singer, but I'm going to have to figure that out in some fashion or another. The 10 songs I have I feel are really good. I've recorded other stuff (just real rough cuts of essentially me just "jamming" with myself doing all the instruments) but my goal is to not have anything that I feel is just filler, and making sure that each song could stand on its own and not just be space to fill out the rest of the tracks, so I feel pretty comfortable with where I'm at with those, which brings me to the point of needing to buy a new computer to run a DAW on it and learn the ins and outs of all that stuff. A few different things I'm running into that I'd like feedback/opinions on:
- With regard to recording guitars, I was going to invest in a mid-grade multieffects pedal for different tones. However, I'm wondering if it makes more sense to just run the guitar as a line-in and then running different amps and effects through software in the DAW. Does this give enough quality? If so, perhaps I'll bypass doing hardware because I'm just using this for recording (for playing too, but what I mean is that I'm not performing at all).
- The same thing with bass. Before, I always had a difficult time with getting the bass to sound right when recording. I've been running through an old Digitech effects board for guitar and it's been decent enough. Part of the reason I was looking at a multieffects board was that one of them contained a few bass amps in it and I was going to consolidate with that being the way to make the guitars and bass sound a little better, but perhaps the same thing where I just use plug-ins for amps and such?
- I have the Roland electric kit for drums. I'm going to just use it as a midi controller and will use a program plug-in that has different kits. I'm okay with this but there's something that really irks me about the over-reliance on sampled drums in almost all music nowadays. When I listen to the kits individually, so many of them seem so stereotypical. In any case, just within the past month or so I had seen that you can get a kit of (reasonably decent) drum mics (6 of them) for just over $100, which now has me considering actually micing my own kit. It will really depend on how it sounds in the mix and the vibe of the song. I think I'll still use this in the minority of situations, though. The biggest catch with this is that I'd need to get an audio interface with 6 inputs, which makes it a bit more pricey than what I've already got, because I want each mic on an individual track and don't want the kit mixed before going into the computer.
I was able to find a proper power cord for my BR8 (my old 8 track) and found out it wasn't fried so I was able to get all my old stuff off of it. Anyway, I don't really have a proper computer set up with a DAW and haven't spent any time learning that, but it's on my agenda and am almost there. In the meantime, I've written the basis for about 10-ish songs and I've got numerous other ideas and bits and pieces here and there. I'm going to use the basis of two old songs I had. I'd say by the end of the year, but who knows, my plan is to put out a full release (12-16 songs) on Spotify. My largest challenge will be solving for the vocal issue as I'm not a singer, but I'm going to have to figure that out in some fashion or another. The 10 songs I have I feel are really good. I've recorded other stuff (just real rough cuts of essentially me just "jamming" with myself doing all the instruments) but my goal is to not have anything that I feel is just filler, and making sure that each song could stand on its own and not just be space to fill out the rest of the tracks, so I feel pretty comfortable with where I'm at with those, which brings me to the point of needing to buy a new computer to run a DAW on it and learn the ins and outs of all that stuff. A few different things I'm running into that I'd like feedback/opinions on:
- With regard to recording guitars, I was going to invest in a mid-grade multieffects pedal for different tones. However, I'm wondering if it makes more sense to just run the guitar as a line-in and then running different amps and effects through software in the DAW. Does this give enough quality? If so, perhaps I'll bypass doing hardware because I'm just using this for recording (for playing too, but what I mean is that I'm not performing at all).
- The same thing with bass. Before, I always had a difficult time with getting the bass to sound right when recording. I've been running through an old Digitech effects board for guitar and it's been decent enough. Part of the reason I was looking at a multieffects board was that one of them contained a few bass amps in it and I was going to consolidate with that being the way to make the guitars and bass sound a little better, but perhaps the same thing where I just use plug-ins for amps and such?
- I have the Roland electric kit for drums. I'm going to just use it as a midi controller and will use a program plug-in that has different kits. I'm okay with this but there's something that really irks me about the over-reliance on sampled drums in almost all music nowadays. When I listen to the kits individually, so many of them seem so stereotypical. In any case, just within the past month or so I had seen that you can get a kit of (reasonably decent) drum mics (6 of them) for just over $100, which now has me considering actually micing my own kit. It will really depend on how it sounds in the mix and the vibe of the song. I think I'll still use this in the minority of situations, though. The biggest catch with this is that I'd need to get an audio interface with 6 inputs, which makes it a bit more pricey than what I've already got, because I want each mic on an individual track and don't want the kit mixed before going into the computer.