Attn: lmno, rong and probably others

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I think this is probably the right section for this. But do you know of any good resources i could look at to get better at the home recording thing? I can figure a thing or two out through trial and error but that can be a bit time consuming. I have really cheap equipment and audacity. I also have musicmaker but i find that a little tricky to work with. Not looking to make miracles but be able to make something decent sounding with what i have.

[LMNO]

In your situation mic placement and studio environment is key.  You're not going to be able to "fix it in the mix" very well, so it's key to have whatever is making noise to sound good up front.

Do a google search on "recording techniques microphone placement".  I think the Shure site has some good material.

Also, the Digidesign/Avid boards have a lot of forums dedicated to discussions about recording. http://duc.avid.com/

Are you planning on multitracking, or have everyone doing it in one take?

[Nephew Twiddleton]

This would be for myself outside of anarchangel. Serious side projects and just for fun songs type of stuff. For instruments i would mostly be plugging directly into my laptop- eg run guitar through either a multieffects pedal or a korg pandora 4 track straight in to the input jack. Vocals and some other stuff would go through a behringer mixing board and then into the input jack. This would all basically be in my bedroom. Drums would be done with a rough track programmed with a boss dr rhythm 770 or hammerhead and then sent to a competent percussionist to reprogram if it didn,t sound quite right.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

So multitracking all the way even if its just acoustic and vocals.

[LMNO]

Oh, so it's all pretty much line in, except for vocals.  That's different.

I haven't used Audacity in a while, so I don't know how it's improved, but there are a few tips that work, regardless:

1. When using EQ, try your best to use a "subtractive" technique.  Instead of boosting highs, cut lows.  Don't find the best tone and boost it, find the worst tone and kill it.  Sometimes you don't really have a choice, but goin subtractive leaves a lot of room for other tracks to find their place.

2. Set the levels of the quietest track to 0 db (that is, make it the loudest track), and then mix the louder tracks down from that point; then boost the entire master mix to get it back to the correct total volume.  This will help avoid the tendency to "boost track 2 a bit, now boost track three a bit, now boost track 5 a bit and now it's all too loud."

3. Don't leave the tracks at a single volume, especially the vocal track.  Use dynamics to emphasize words and lead lines and drum fills. 

4. Compression should either be a subtle tool, or an obvious gimmick.  It's not meant to fix problems that the volume knob would normally do (see above).

5. Unless you are trying to make it sound as artificial as possible, try not to do too much to the tracks after you record them.  Make sure the track sounds good as it is.  You usually are just trying to enhance the track, not dramatically change it into something else (unless that's what you're going for).

6. When you get to the end of a mix, turn the headphone volume down about as low as it can go and still make sound.  Listen to the entire mix that way.  Often, some glaring issues come to light that way.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Nice thats actually really helpful advice since none of that would have ever occured to me.

[rong]

that is really good advice

i can add that, before you "release" anything to the public - listen to it on different stereos.  especially a car stereo.  many times, i've found, that something that sounds good in headphones or studio monitors sounds like shit elsewhere

[Triple Zero]

I've never tried it myself, but you might want to give Ubuntu Studio a test drive:

http://ubuntustudio.org/
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/01/21/ubuntu-studio-linux.html (probably outdated, I bet they made a lot of progress in five years )
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuStudio
http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=335

It's basically, you know how regular Ubuntu is aimed at the Desktop PC/Windows crowd, to provide an open/free platform with Office like applications they can do their office things on?
Well there's a whole bunch of other Ubuntu "flavours" that come with different pre-installed apps and configuration optimized to make them run efficiently, one of them is Ubuntu Studio, which is for multi media editing.

If you do end up trying it, please let me know how it works for you--I'm curious.

Also, RAM (memory) is relatively cheap and adding more is a sure-fire way to boost multi-media editing performance tremendously. Look into it, and perhaps even consider just maxing out the amount of GBytes RAM your PC's motherboard will take (if you can spare the $$). The bottleneck is hardly ever your CPU clockspeed (GHz) but nearly always the amount of RAM.

For even more extreme performance, consider installing an SSD drive as secondary harddrive. They're somewhat expensive and not very big but SUPER fast. You should consult your favourite local geek about configuring your machine to take optimal advantage of it though (basically moving those system files, swap files and partitions to the SSD that will benefit most from the speed).

A HUGE website that I perused a lot back in the day when I was coding softsynths is: http://www.harmonycentral.com/index.jspa maybe you already know it but I bet there's loads of info and tips about sound editing and mastering on it as well.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Thanks trip. Quick question though- do i have to know anything about computers for it? Cuz i dont really know much of anything.

My local geek is my roommate so that helps

[Triple Zero]

For which part of the advice? Actually for both, generally, no. Just common sense

I hope you can install Ubuntu Studio as dual boot though, because I figure you don't have a spare machine and you probably want to keep Windows around for your other stuff. Basically you would need to clear the necessary diskspace and repartition your HD (ask roommate).

As far as I see it, when you download Ubuntu Studio, you need to burn it to a DVD (apparently it won't fit on a 800MB CDR) and when you do, you can just boot from that DVD and take it for a test drive. Performance probably won't be very good until you install it to your HD instead of running it from DVD though (CD/DVD drives are not very fast compared to HDs). But at least it'll allow you to try it out, see if you can find your way in it, and if not, just take out the DVD and reboot and everything's back to normal.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Ill give it a test run

actually this leads me to something else. Ive never tried any sort of synth stuff. Obviously its all guitar based and bass based. But what would i need for synth? I have a keyboard but im not sure how to do anything with midi or anything. Would i need any extra equipment or could i manage with a program that had a virtual keyboard?

[Triple Zero]

Yes you can manage with a virtual keyboard, but ANY keyboard or whatever thing that supports MIDI can be used as an input-device too.

Basically, MIDI is nothing more than a stream of data that says "this key was pressed at this time with this much force" (or knob, or slider, etc etc) and it's up to the computer (or other synth) to interpret those commands and turn them into sound.

So basically you can use any MIDI supporting device basically as a "thing with buttons that does stuff".

Which is a lot better than a virtual keyboard, which only allows you to "manage"

I don't have much experience with it myself, but I believe there's MIDI-to-USB cables, so you'd just plug that into your computer and it should work. Especially in Windows, most probably also in Ubuntu, and most likely Ubuntu Studio is configured to just make it work seamlessly (no promises, but that is sort of the goal of the project).

A lot of software has a "MIDI learning modus", which when enabled allows you to select any button or menu entry in the application, then you twiddle some key, knob or slider on your MIDI device, and the application will learn its ID and from then on associate that key/knob/slider with that particular button or menu action. At least, Traktor DJ Studio and Ableton Live work like that.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Looks like ill start experimenting with synth at some point

[Don Coyote]

Looks like ill start experimenting with synth at some point

And then it was 1980s all over again.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

HAY IF MAIDEN CANT FINISH WHAT THEY STARTED WITH SEVENTH SON OF A SEVENTH SON BY GOD I WILL.