The Dangers of Home Recording

We all know about the wondrous conveniences modern technology has bestowed upon us, particularly here in the world of home recording. But there’s a dark side – an evil, subtle underbelly, if you will – that I’d like to warn you about so you can keep your eyes peeled for signs of disturbances in your own experience and hopefully keep them in check. Granted, my particular personality may be more prone to these than yours, but at the off-chance that we’re of kindred spirit (and we are, aren’t we?), I feel it my duty to tell you….

Intro to Software Instruments in Garageband

A quick introduction to using software instruments in Garageband. Take a look and then experiment, there’s lots of crazy things you can do!

Please note: The software instrument we’re playing with in this video is called “Muted Electric Bass,” so when I say “muted electric bass,” I’m referring to that instrument by name, NOT to an electric bass that has been muted. Sorry for any confusion….

Looking at Loops In Garageband

Here’s a quick introduction to loops in Garageband.

Almost without fail, the first thing I’ll do when I start to record a song is find an appropriate drum loop to use instead of the default click track. I don’t know about you, but my timing abilities are questionable enough without having to try to keep up with that metronomic ticking sound. Playing along to a drum loop feels more natural to me – less robotic – plus it adds an extra sense that I’m actually playing the song rather than just trying to keep time. Here’s how I do it….

Intro to Effects in Garageband

Well, happy day. I’ve finally got another Garageband tutorial up for you, and have found some success in getting the musical sound into the screencast! This bodes well for the future indeed….

This episode takes a quick look at applying and tweaking effects. Our example uses an acoustic guitar, but the same principles apply to any instrument you may have recorded, including vocals and software synths. Hopefully this will be some good information to get you started, but please feel free to comment if you have any questions, or if there are particular things you’d like to see in an upcoming episode….

A Couple of Things to Chew On

Truman time has been very elusive lately, what with all the other things going on at the moment. I’ll be back here posting regularly shortly though, so be sure to check back soon.

In the meantime, I wanted to drop in a few things to think about that came up this weekend. First, I saw the movie It Might Get Loud – the documentary featuring Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White – and very much enjoyed it. A nice thought from the Edge was that he often thinks about where a song lives in a physical location (i.e. what physical place does the the mood of the song need to evoke). Obviously, U2′s sound is extremely dependent upon that, but it’s a good thing to consider with your own music.

Second, in Wings for Wheels: The Making of Born to Run, Patti Scialfa mentions the way songs talk to each other on an album. A nice way of putting it, and something to consider as you decide which songs you’d like to put on your record, and how they relate to each other. Nice stuff.

Intro to Tracks in Garageband

This is a quick introduction to audio tracks in Garageband that will hopefully help you feel a little more comfortable with the interface. I was hoping to be able to get some sound from GB into the screencast using Soundflower, but I haven’t been successful with that yet. Stay tuned for more soon….

Get Going with Garageband

Above is my first attempt at a screencast, using the awesome and free tools available at Screenr.com. In this one, we take a very quick look at the interface of Garageband. Screenr only allows up to 5 minutes of video to be recorded at a time, so apologies for not going further in depth at this time (and also for the spastic movement of my cursor in this clip!), but this should serve as a nice introduction if you’ve never used GB before. As we get a little further along into this, I may try to string a few videos together in iMovie just to keep things rolling along.  

Truman’s Gear: What I’m Using to Record This EP

Before we talk more about recording, I wanted to give you a breakdown of the gear I’m using to record the Truman’s Hat EP, partly because I like talking about gear, but mostly so you’ll see that it’s basically a really simple set-up I have here. If you’re new to this, don’t worry that some of my stuff may seem relatively ‘pro’ for what we’re doing here…I’ve been swimming in these waters for 10 years now and have gone through several upgrades in order to accomplish some actual job work with audio, mostly scoring some indie-type films….

Better Input Options

When discussing basic in & out options last time, I neglected to mention a simple solution for those of you with electric guitars. Much like the USB-equipped microphones we looked at, a few companies are making USB connections for electric guitars. This LightSnake USB Instrument cable looks pretty good.

KEYBOARDS

Musical Typing

But what if your main instrument is piano or some other keyboard instrument? There’s good news for you too, and thankfully, since even those of us who don’t actually play piano will need access to some type of keyboard if we want to take full advantage of Garageband’s plethora of softsynths. As you may have suspected, GB has an in-the-box solution which is great for basic, incidental use. It’s called musical typing. To invoke this in GB, go to your Menu Bar across the top of your Mac’s screen to Window and scroll down to Musical Typing (or press the Command+Shift+K keys on your Mac for the keyboard shortcut).

Basic In’s & Out’s

Wouldn’t it be great to wake up and walk out of your bedroom into your own personal recording studio full of exotic instruments and racks of esoteric gear with blinking lights? But then how frustrating would it be to have all that kit and discover you had no idea how to use half of it? I suffer from gear lust as much as the next guy, but I’m a firm believer in keeping things as simple as possible…whenever possible.

Last time we talked about the very basics you’d need to start recording at home with your computer, and today we’re going to discuss a few things that will not only make your recordings sound better, but also give you more creative freedom in the process. That means – yes – we will start acquiring gear.

We’ve seen that you actually can record yourself with just the computer and the software, but you’ll find that 1) the sound quality of your recordings leaves something to be desired, and 2) your ability to hear what you’re recording is less than ideal. So we’re going to look at better ways to get the sound into and out of your computer. The Apple computers we looked at last time all have built-in microphones and speakers, but better alternatives lie with an actual microphone of some type and external speakers. Since this blog is designed for basic home recording rather than anything too complex, we’ll investigate the simplest options first and move on from there as time rolls along.