Recording
A question that comes up a lot in the forums at GMC is "how can I record myself playing?" or "how can I make a backing track?". This article will describe a number of different ways of achieving this using various combinations of software and hardware, that are affordable and practical for amateur musicians.
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Some Different Recording Techniques
There are a number of ways to skin this cat depending on what you want to achieve. Recording a whole band is a different prospect from recording yourself at home.
Portastudios
A Portastudio is an all in one recording solution. Initially developed as a cassette based device, they would let you record up to 8 tracks on a standard cassette. They used to be fairly lo-fi in todays terms, suffering from high noise. These days they are hard disk based and really pretty high quality.
They typically allow you to record a number of tracks simultaneously (making them suitable for recording a live band) and have some great editing options, although they are limited by the fact that you are working with a small display. Many of them have built in digital effects and rhythm units, and are usually capable of mastering finished results to a CD.
The Portastudio is a great all in one device to build a simple recording studio around, with the added advantage that they are portable.
The downside is that they lack flexibility and editing options when compared to other solutions, and are really for recording audio such as guitar, whereas other solutions (see DAWs later) are a complete production system including hosted synthesizers.
Wave File Editors
Wave File Editors are simple programs that run on a PC or Mac. They use an onboard soundcard to record audio that is fed into the computer. Generally speaking they only allow recording of one audio stream at a time. Some of the more sophisticated programs allow multiple tracks of audio to be recorded a track at a time and replayed, although their real focus is manipulation and editing of the audio data rather than recording and mixing a finished song.
They are generally free or cheap, and are a simple way to get started, although a semi serious user will quickly exhaust the possibilities.
