General Music Chat

For you guys who are recording at home/improvised studios like myself (a small second bedroom w/ all my gear stuffed into it) what have you found to be the best recorder to base your "studio" around.

I'm only a year into trying to record myself-my amatuerism is apparent in my demos-but I really find the Boss BR-600 to be very helpful. It was hard to use at first-but it's like second nature now. It's a digital 8 track w/ a pretty good sounding drum machine with a few hundred presets and the ability to make your own drum sounds too...not that I have ventured there...I'm not a good "finger" drummer and the other method requires actually understanding what drums do for real-you program them in a strike at a time, drum by drum, cymbal by cymbal. It's nice that it's there though. I'm fine w/ fishing around for preset patterns and stringing them into something i can use.

Has a Bass simulator which is handy, but limited. Turns your 6 string into bass....you can mix a finished product w/ it too...Plenty of guitar and vocal effects....I prefer my real guitar effects and tube amps to the stuff on the recorder-but it's got plenty-you could go sans amplifier and w/ no external effects no problem.

Anyway-what is everyone else using-and if there are any BR600 users-I'd like to hear what you are doing....I need improvement as an engineer w/ it.

Hello BluesC,
I record mostly alone here in Sussex England.
It has been mostly in the house on the dining room table in fact, but finally my workshop studio is taking shape so as from now I hope to record outside.
I have an aquired Tascam 2488? It's a digital 24 track machine and it writes to CD so you can make something to play on the Hi fi at the end if you think it's good enough.

I have been hand and finger drumming on various things so far, but there is now an aquired Traps kit here so I have started learning the drums; I cannot imagine being up to a recordable level inside a year or two.

I have half a dozen songs on my profile here that show what I have been writing and recording in the past two years, though it's still all rough cuts and fairly hurriedly done.

There are photos on my profile of my new garden studio, which is in one end of my workshop.
Good luck,
Mark D Phillips....................

I'm just using a tascam DP-01 (8track) digital with a hard drive in it. No cd drive, but with the USB out, I just connect to a laptop and export a song's master (it saves in WAV format), convert to mp3 and done.

I never got used to the idea of recording on the PC, but my first attempts were back in the mid 90's when no CPU had enough power to record without bucks and hitches...

Hello Kramerguy,
I also tried and failed to get far with recording on my computer... my PC failed to keep the two tracks at the same speed so everything strayed out of sync!
I find the hardest bit with recording is keeping your morale up, as playing back the track that you thought was going to put your name on the map, and hearing a feeble rythm and someone chipping away at a guitar can be very dispirating!
Mark D Phillips...............

Hey, Blues. Checked out your profile page. I had read your lyrics to The Ballad of Ironhead on another post the other day, but hearing the music too was way too cool. You definitely have ideas outside the box. Liked your profile pic too. I can see where you got your profile name from it. Plenty of cool guitars for the Blues and on the left arm of the couch is your Cat Ass Trophy!

I used a tascam 488 (for most of my recording years) and now adobe audition which I like very much even tho it is pc based.

Hello ZXYZ,
And I was going to post to our colleague as well, but being a bit British I couldn't get myself to address him with "Hello Ratsass!".
So anyway, this recording thing is a bit of a nightmare for me... though great fun when it goes well!
The trouble I find, is that the recording method I use has to be consistent with my creative energy level... that sounds fancy stuff, but all I mean is, that if it requires too much of my technical brain to set up and get ready to press the 'RECORD' button, then by the time I press it I have lost the theme and spirit of what I was about to try to play.

On my profile there is a song I wrote and recorded just over a year ago called 'They Came'; it was just electric guitar and vocal, and very much a reflective ballad... I am just finishing writing a similar styled song now, and where last time I did the guitar with direct injection from my little Roland Cube straight into my Tascam... this time I am thinking of tieing back the partition curtains around my workshop studio (see profile photos) and recording guitar with a condenser mic using the natural workshop acoustics... which are a bit like a very small aircraft hangar!

But today I am kicking around the house a bit waiting for the arrival by FedEx of a second mic stand and a seven string Stratocaster, as I was out when they tried to deliver yesterday.

Catch you later guys,
Mark................

He, he, he. Don't worry, Mark. The name comes from my band name, Rat Sass. Completely safe to say anywhere. My dad loves it when someone at his church asks, "What's the name of your son's band?" Hey, I've got a little Roland Cube 30 that I keep in my living room and I LOVE jammin' around on it. Records quite well too.

Hello Er, Ratsass!
There I said it,
I didn't expect a reply from across the pond at this time of day, but maybe Arkansas is so far west it is still yesterday... I will get out my map later and see.
On my Cube I used the 'acoustic' setting for the first time yesterday and thought it had all kids of possibilities for recording; but that was in the house, and when I took it out to my workshop studio it sounded so thin and reedy that I had to push the bass right up and still it squeeked a bit.

I want to start recording my latest song today, but to be honest the guitar part I have written needs someone better at playing the guitar than me... I nearly always compose things I can't play at first, and that has been a good thing for my playing, but it does give these tense days when you are asking yourself if you will ever be good enough to record it... it needs to be playable on auto-pilot I think, and I am still playing it while often frantically trying to think how the bit coming next goes... or fumbling to get my fingers round it!

I should get out and record my song, but I am distracted by waiting for the FedEx van, and getting coal in ready for the night, and trying to get my clumsy fingers round the tricky passages in the new song.

I still like the song at the moment, but will I have to work through it so many times to reach 'auto-pilot' standard, that I get heartily sick of it?
Cheers Ratsass, or may I abreviate it to A... no better not!
Mark......................

Hey, Mark. Yeah it's still yesterday here, but don't worry, here in Arkansas, we're used to living in the past (and not in the good Jethro Tull kinda way). Like you, I'm not too happy with the Roland's acoustic setting. One of the best acoustic sounds I ever got on a recording, I had a Digitech RP6 and I tweaked the acoustic setting and ran it straight into my mixer/recorder playing a Hondo copy of a B. C. Rich Warlock. I was just wanting something that sounded kind of like an acoustic because the song was already full of electric guitar. To this day, I can listen to it and still can't believe it isn't an actual acoustic guitar on there.
Listened to your songs again and it makes me wish I had spent more time learning rhythm guitar. If I could play cool rhythms like yours, I could noodle out leads around 'em all day. Cheers to you and keep pushing yourself. That's what makes music go up and beyond the ordinary.

waiting for the arrival by FedEx of a second mic stand and a seven string Stratocaster,

Hello Mark,
Congratulations on your purchase!! That sounds like quite the exotic instrument!

Hello all and Blues Catastrophy, I use a Boss BR1180 it sounds very similar to your 600. It is basicly an eight track with an additional 2 tracks for the drums so you have all eight tracks for recording. It also has an onboard cd burner with all of the guitar sounds I could imagine and a powerful mastering tool software. I am not that crazy about the guitar sounds that are in there but they will do as I am not trying to record my album on there, just get the best recordings I can for shyts and grins and for copyrite, the last 5 songs on my site were recorded using this, the first 12 were recorded at Sugerhill Studios (a real studio)

Hey, Blues. Checked out your profile page. I had read your lyrics to The Ballad of Ironhead on another post the other day, but hearing the music too was way too cool. You definitely have ideas outside the box. Liked your profile pic too. I can see where you got your profile name from it. Plenty of cool guitars for the Blues and on the left arm of the couch is your Cat Ass Trophy!

Thanks- glad you dug the tune! And outside the box is my goal too; blues based music is so predictable that I try to throw some curves in atleast lyrically, if not musically.

Blues Catastrophe is actually been the name of most of the projects I've been involved with. There has been the first-the one that worked that all the rest were based on; we were a house band at a biker bar in Fredonia, NY for 2 years, got pretty good there and stretched out to other venues too...that was James Beam and the Stone Hill blues Catastrophe. The rest were fizzlers located in various places...The Battle of Nashville Blues Catastrophe, The Pulaski Blues Catastrophe,The Ozark Mountain Blues Catastrophe, and now, since at the moment it's just me, I'm just "The Blues Catastrophe" LOL It's a Catastrophe because it isn't all blues, and the blues that are there are...strange, more often then not; with the premise always being that it would be a straight blues band. Convoluted, I know! And only a handful of people would know of us...we're like a seceret society, viewed in public only rarely.

Hello BluesC,
I record mostly alone here in Sussex England.
It has been mostly in the house on the dining room table in fact, but finally my workshop studio is taking shape so as from now I hope to record outside.
I have an aquired Tascam 2488? It's a digital 24 track machine and it writes to CD so you can make something to play on the Hi fi at the end if you think it's good enough.

I have been hand and finger drumming on various things so far, but there is now an aquired Traps kit here so I have started learning the drums; I cannot imagine being up to a recordable level inside a year or two.

I have half a dozen songs on my profile here that show what I have been writing and recording in the past two years, though it's still all rough cuts and fairly hurriedly done.

There are photos on my profile of my new garden studio, which is in one end of my workshop.
Good luck,
Mark D Phillips....................

Thanks for the reply Mark-your studio looks beautiful-must be inspiring to make music there! I will definitely check out your music. Being able to burn CD's right from the recorder would be handy. I have to network my lap top for now w/ the recorder. Not untenable, but an all in one would be nice! 24 tracks is way more than I would need however! LOL...Does having so much available space compell you to try and use it? I think it would with me...Right now, I'm trying to concentrate on recording trio arrangements though; 2 reasons: 1. I like a minimalistic sound and prefer to play in a trio and 2. I think it is easier to record! LOL I'm such a novice at engineering, I think KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid!) (me being stupid )

See you around...

I'm just using a tascam DP-01 (8track) digital with a hard drive in it. No cd drive, but with the USB out, I just connect to a laptop and export a song's master (it saves in WAV format), convert to mp3 and done.

I never got used to the idea of recording on the PC, but my first attempts were back in the mid 90's when no CPU had enough power to record without bucks and hitches...

...No good at the PC thing either...I only tried a couple times, with a background in 4 track tape recorders prior...the pc thing just never stuck for me! I tried around the time you mention too. Must not have been very good stuff back then? See you around!