For anyone whos in a band i have a question

[ukkolfan]

Sorry if this may be completely off topic.


Ive been playing guitar for ages and all my mates are very musical, however they dont play instruments,so i teaching them to play the instruments, in the hope that eventually we will be a band good enough to do kings of leon covers amoung other bands, and then hopefully make it big.

But anyway by the time we are doing covers etc, we will want to record them so we can listen to them. But what i would like to know is what kind of equiptment do you need to record your songs, so that it picks up all the instruments, and records at a high quality, is it simply a case of a good microphone being placed down, or would it be special equiptment like a large kind of computer thing.

Either way would anyone like you give me a link to the equipment that records music, where i could possibly buy it. Perhaps ebay.

[Deleted]

I recorded with my band here:

www.darklinestudios.co.uk

It was brilliant. Pretty expensive but when you get there and see the set up and equipment they have its awesome. I didn't have a bass amp at the time but they've got TONS of stuff, Orange amps, Marshall stacks, drums, vocal room, the works.

The price is pretty steep and it might be a bit far from Nottingham (it's in Warrington) but it's really, really good and the two guys who run it were really co-operative and stuff, suggesting things to make our songs better.

It's worth a look into, you don't even have to have your own equipment really.

[ukkolfan]

thanks for the responce "king of the rodeo", i will most definately bear that in mind for the future or some studio along the same lines. However does anyone know what recording equiptment i will need in the short term, just to say use in the house, to record our covers?

[Deleted]

What sort of price range are we talking about here?

Amps and stuff are farily cheap here:

www.thomann.de/gb/index.html?sid=c6cce14695341c48d9f073271bf2182f

I got my Epiphone Thunderbird from here for like £279 and the other members all got their equipment (guitars, drums, mics and amps) from here, too. It's based in Germany but delivery time isn't too long and it's the cheapest site I could find.

[mattyjoe]

You'll need multiple mics. If you want to record live you need to mic each instrument. One up to the guitar amp, one at the bass amp, one at the mic speaker, two or three at the drums, and one or two just in the room to get the ambience. Each of those mics needs to go into a mixer, one track for each mic. They sell mixers where the output (the line coming out of the mixer which contains the final mixed track) can hook right up to the computer. Or you can go the old fashioned way and just plug that into a tape recorder and record.

I'm less familiar with recording separate tracks. It definitely saves you money on buying mics, since you'll only be doing one instrument at a time. You would record one or two instruments first (maybe drums and bass), storing the track on the computer. Then you'd have the guitarist and vocalist (each on separate tracks) record while listening to that track. After storing each of those tracks you use software which will enable you to mix those together. You can also edit, add effects, etc.

You could always go the cheap way and just have like one mic hooked up to a tape recorder to record the whole band at once but that'll sound messy and crappy. If you really want to try making some quality at-home recordings, use the above methods^

[ukkolfan]

Thanks "mattyjoe" for the responce. Could you give me some links to these mics, where i could possibly buy them. Perhaps ebay or a music shop website. Surely just using one microphone doesnt sound to bad though, becasue i remember me and my brother playing rythem and lead guitar together, with a very poor microphone, but realising the sound recorded wasnt too bad quality.

[Neon]

You could record on a four-track, it's tough to use at first and you'll need to shop around to find a good one - but it'd be worth it in the end.

Or, the best choice could be to find a student in studio engineering. They normally all have their own home studio's and will record bands on the cheap (or even for free in some cases), because it benefits them aswell. Some of them can be really good. This is what my band did and it worked out really well for us.

But by the sound of things you should probably just record it on a decent phone or something. You won't want to spend any money on recording when ye haven't even played a gig. Just get a video camera and record it, or get feedback from people. It might not be great quality, but you have to learn to walk before you can run.

Hopefully you'll find something there useful.

[antroolez]

yea we've recorded some songs in our little studio at college

but are you talking about drums as well i take it?

cos i imagine if you only plan on buying one dynamic mic, it will be nearly impossible to record a full drum kit.

you would need some good condensers too for a kit (which are generally more expensive) and require phantom power

i dont no maybe a decent tape recorder (sony tcm 939) i used to record drums, guitar and vocals on was actually really decent...only problem nowdays of course is that you cant upload them onto myspace and all that lark

[ukkolfan]

so how to you put all the different instrument recordings together, a computer programme? if so do you recommend any?

[Rory]

sorry, this may not be quite what you're asking, but I just got a new MacBook Pro and it's great for recording instruments and voice and you can do all the editing on there as well, so it's like a little portable recording studio.
I think all Macs come with GarageBand, but the MacBook pro has the best sound card (and graphics card if anyone is wondering) than any other computer, so it's the one to get for music (and graphic design)

Sorry if that just sounded like a big ad for MacBook Pros, but I record a bit on mine and it sounds great.

[joshzoth]

I agree with neon, if you ask around your area, chances are you will be able to find a small cheap studio that will have all the equipment needed to get some tracks down. I live in rural somerset and even here i found 2 with some really good rates.

If you would prefer to do it at home, you can pick equipment up online so cheap sometimes from sites like ebay.co.uk and swapz.co.uk. I managed to get a 16 track mixer there for £70 and i use it for gigs but you could easily hook something like that up to a pc or tape recorder to record your tracks.

Just remember when buying online to be sure like what your buying is from a good seller and read reviews and forums about the product to make sure it is good and what you want.