• Registered: 2008-10-27
  • Posts: 176

Topic: Recording musical ideas

Hi there!
I've been in a band for about a year. So far we've spent our time on practising and building up a blues/rock repertoire consisting in about 30+ songs so as to be able to gig and play live. We can now put up a good setlist and play for 2 to 3 hours without problems. That was our first goal and we've reached it. We have played live about 5/6 times in that timespan. I know it's not  a lot but gigs are hard to find around here...

The next step is about to get launched and it will be composing. Now we want to create our own songs and gradually incorporate them in our setlist while getting rid of some covers.

The thing is that we only meet for three hours once a week. Obviously that's not enough to be able to compose together. So we were thinking of recording each our ideas on our computers and sending them to each other via the Internet so that everyone can work and expand on them through the week until we put all that together at rehearsal. With this method we should have more ideas and they will be known by everone prior to the rehearsal which is a good thing when you don't have time to lose...

But we don't know how to do that. What simple tools do you guys use? Say I want to record a chord progression so that my singer listens to it over and over again to try to create a melody for it. How will I do that? Please don't tell me about Pro Tools or that kind of stuff because I'll be dead before I understand a tenth of what this software can do... I need and we need something simple and fast! More generally how do you guys compose? Is it a solitary experience and then every band member tries to find something on the spot at rehearsal or do you all lock yourselves up during rehearsal and don't come out until something is found? Do you compose alone then show what you've found or do you compose all together? Is there a good/bad way of composing in terms of method?

Thanks a lot!

  • mbcl
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  • Registered: 2008-05-01
  • Posts: 1,491

Re: Recording musical ideas

If you have a mac Garage Band is brilliant for this as you can mulitrack. You can expend on that with software and hardware and end up up with a very competent recording studio. For what you want garage band would be ideal.

Martin
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  • Registered: 2008-10-02
  • Posts: 373

Re: Recording musical ideas

My band has done this two ways, 90% of the time I work on a song and record a "Demo" in Protools, I record the guitars, bass and uses a drum program and sometimes add the drums. Then I do a quick mix and bounce it to MP3 and send it to the guys. We use this as an "Outline" Someone writes lyrics and sometimes we rearange the structure of the song, tempo etc. but all that gets worked out in practice, we use the demo as an outline.

We also record practices that way any idea that comes out of a jam is cought on tape, the singer uses a Boss record at practice and if there is a good jam or a bit we need practice on he bounces that to MP3 and sends it out to the rest of us. If there is a good idea or riff there we build an outline like above and go from there. There are a million ways to do it the most important thing is to record everything. I have a Teribite drive just for my protools rig.

As for devices, Boss, Korg and Yamaha make good stand alone divices, Pro Tools is expensive and has a learning curve and if I did it over I would of went with Sonor or Qubase, and there is even Reaper which is a free recording tool, the singer in the band uses that to mix with and has had good results. If you want to learn about this stuff go to homerecordingforum.com lots of good info there.

Hope that helps,

E

  • Registered: 2008-10-27
  • Posts: 176

Re: Recording musical ideas

mbcl wrote:

If you have a mac Garage Band is brilliant for this as you can mulitrack. You can expend on that with software and hardware and end up up with a very competent recording studio. For what you want garage band would be ideal.


I have a PC, not a Mac... I may use a POD UX1 and send it to a recording program but Pro Tools is too complex for me...
Thank you guys!

  • From: Lancashire
  • Registered: 2008-02-26
  • Posts: 700

Re: Recording musical ideas

PC loaded with cubase or cakewalk will get you decent quality stuff...

A mic preamp USB powered or firewire (Presonus is fairly cheap) plug that into the PC and use a normal mic to record until you can get somet fancy. I've been using a sm58 to mic my amps whilst recording for ages an its always fairly decent..

Cakewalk is the easier of the 2. Once its set up click record and away you go it has alot of editing options too.

  • From: Edgewater, FL
  • Registered: 2007-12-08
  • Posts: 5,046

Re: Recording musical ideas

Usually I say here's my new song and they all say God that sucks and we quit.

JustKidding.  Some of my associates swear by Cakewalk.  I use a Zoom recorder for live stuff, then USB it into a PC, but it's not good for mixing.
Look up DAK. 

MuchLove
BigJeff

Rock On & Keep the FAITH
             It is
Blues From the Bottoms

bigjeffjones's Website

  • Registered: 2008-10-27
  • Posts: 176

Re: Recording musical ideas

bigjeffjones wrote:

Usually I say here's my new song and they all say God that sucks and we quit.

Loool! Yeah that may happen here as well... Lol! We all want to come up with good songs and the only criteria we've agreed on so far is: "Would you put this song on a CD for people to buy?" and if the answer is NO then the song goes in the trash... If it's "maybe" then we work on it. If it's "hell yeah!" well... that hasn't happened yet...

A Zoom H2 or H4 may be the solution. It's easy to use and you don't need any mixing/effects stuff at that point. You just press "Rec" and then upload the file on your pc and send it via email. Simple and easy. It's just recording ideas that will change when played all together. The idea is to record short stuff like a riff or a melody line or a chord progression. We don't want to lose time trying to mix four or six tracks together.

If you guys have more options or ideas, let's share them. We all know that creating music is the hardest thing. It's like a hundred times harder than to cover a song, even if it's a challenging cover song.

I remember reading somewhere that Joe uses Garageband to record his ideas. He has already made me buy a Les Paul, changed amps four times, buy multiple pedals, cables, change my guitars' action (and he's about to make me buy nylon saddles for my Les Paul!), don't tell me that he's gonna make me sell my pc and buy a Mac...

  • Registered: 2008-10-02
  • Posts: 373

Re: Recording musical ideas

Word of advice on buy recording Equimpment if you can afford it always buy more, what I mean by that if you think you will only need to record 2 tracks at a time, buy something that records 4 or 8 you get the point because THERE WILL BE a time when you need more tracks might not be right now but you will.

Fostex and Zoom make great recorders as well, I have thought many times about picking up an H2 to record live shows for the band and the Internet Radio Station I do marketing & sound for.

  • From: Edgewater, FL
  • Registered: 2007-12-08
  • Posts: 5,046

Re: Recording musical ideas

Yeah, I use a Zoom 4...play with the settings..read the manual.  it's invaluable to settle arguments, as well.

I did not speed up in my solo!

Let's play it back.  Can you count to 4?

Oh wow, damn you.

MuchLove
BJJ FDOL

Rock On & Keep the FAITH
             It is
Blues From the Bottoms

bigjeffjones's Website

  • From: Lancashire
  • Registered: 2008-02-26
  • Posts: 700

Re: Recording musical ideas

+1 on the zoom I use that for acvoustic with cake walk too.. I really couldnt swear by cakewalk enough I've used it since high school music technology umm 14 years? :s

  • Registered: 2008-10-27
  • Posts: 176

Re: Recording musical ideas

Which Cakewalk software do you use? There are so many... Guitar Tracks Pro? Others?

Thanks!

  • From: Lancashire
  • Registered: 2008-02-26
  • Posts: 700

Re: Recording musical ideas

I use sonar 5 (its quite old now).