Never afraid to pick your brains :-)

My parents just bought a zoom mini-recorder. It's around $300 but plenty of cheaper alternatives around. It has in instrument input for guitar plus a mic-input. Alternatively you can use the two onboard mics. They've use those to record the choir my mother is in, and it sounds amazingly good. Depending on your coat you can slip it into your pockets.

Sleutelbos and Vic sound like they have a good arrangement where the two things can live alongside each other. But it hasn't worked for me. I guess it's a personal thing that's partly due to the difficulty of putting my computer and the regular practice spot in the same place. But it's also partly down to my preference for operating knobs and levers rather than software menus and mice.

That's your engineering background coming out Chris! But honestly, Audacity could not be any simpler to use. How hard is it to point a mouse at a purple button and left-click? I know Sleutelbos uses a lot of FX, but I'm exactly the opposite...keep it simple. Anything I record, I want to be able to repeat note-for-note. That's why - in another discussion from a while back - I mentioned keeping a detailed log of settings (amp, instrument, etc.)

The only things I ever mess about with on Audacity?

Well, I record one track, open a new blank track, and cut-and-paste the recorded track into the blank one. Then I'll use the time-shift button to move one of the tracks a fraction - gives a kind of echo/delay effect. Especially good with acoustic guitar and vocals.

The most I've ever recorded is five tracks on one song - organ and drums (one track for both) and separate tracks for acoustic electric and lead guitars, and vocals. The lead guitar I left in the middle - all the other tracks I copied, and panned them left and right to various degrees to get some separation between instruments. Altogether, nine tracks used.

If I'm doing a quick acoustic-and-voice track, I'll do acoustic first then vocals after: two tracks for each. I could record one stereo track for each, but I do like to play around with panning and time shift - so one mono track for each, cut and pasted, so four tracks altogether.

It really is simple to use.....in the same way that digital cameras have made photography ludicrously simple. And the big bonus, for me, it's FREE....

:D :D :D

Vic

I still fancy having something 100% portable that I could slip into my pocket and use for singing practice, and quick ideas, rhythm patterns etc.

Well, I have more gear also :-)

I do have a pda also - I've never tried to use it for recroding before, but obviously that is possible, not sure about the quality tho'
... somehow this was the first song that entered my brain - you can save it for another day ;-)

http://home.online.no/~carolbo/musikk/chris.mp3

I also agree that the most important thing is ease of use, since you're just recording your practices (and don't need some super fancy recording rig). I've found two methods that are very simple to do:

1) The most simple is to get a mic (like the Shure SM57) to mic your amp and connect that to your computer's line-in jack. Then just download Audacity, which is as simple a program as it gets, and just hit record and start playing. I find this the easiest method, especially since I have a laptop, so I can just plop it down, plug in the mic, fire up Audacity, and I'm ready to go.

2) The other method I use for recording is with the Boss Micro BR. It's a bit pricey (around $230), but it's basically like a mini-recording studio. It's real easy to record with this thing, and you can even use it to play backing tracks (with fully adjustable speed) that you can play along to. The only two issues I have with this device is that: 1) To copy the recorded files to your computer, you have to connect the device up to your computer... it's easy to do, but it's still an extra step. and 2) You can't record yourself playing when the device is playing a backing track.

My parents just bought a zoom mini-recorder. It's around $300 but plenty of cheaper alternatives around. It has in instrument input for guitar plus a mic-input. Alternatively you can use the two onboard mics. They've use those to record the choir my mother is in, and it sounds amazingly good. Depending on your coat you can slip it into your pockets.

Thanks Sleutlebos - good tip. :)

From the description it might be the Zoom H4, which looks like a very compact and handy little gadget indeed. The blurb I saw spoke of 4 track recording, USB cable for transfer to computer, good sound, and coming bundled with Cubase. Very nice. 8)

I also found a few online discussions about similar tools. The buzz words seem to be "field recorder" and the general opinion seemed to be that they are rapidly becoming more common, better and cheaper. So I'll have to check out what local availability and pricing is currently.

Cheers,

Chris
I do have a pda also - I've never tried to use it for recroding before, but obviously that is possible, not sure about the quality tho'
... somehow this was the first song that entered my brain - you can save it for another day

http://home.online.no/~carolbo/musikk/chris.mp3

Thanks Lars! :D I'll just play it another 59 times to get you up to date, then I'll pull it out again come November. 8)

That's your engineering background coming out Chris! But honestly, Audacity could not be any simpler to use. How hard is it to point a mouse at a purple button and left-click? I know Sleutelbos uses a lot of FX, but I'm exactly the opposite...keep it simple. Anything I record, I want to be able to repeat note-for-note. That's why - in another discussion from a while back - I mentioned keeping a detailed log of settings (amp, instrument, etc.)

You're right on every count Vic. :)

I really don't know exactly why I have not been more keen to use the computer. I'm not exactly frightened of them, having been working with them for over 20 years. For a while I even made my living doing program development, training and troubleshooting. :?

Part of it was perhaps that I was never really comfortable with the way I had it set up. I wasn't able to find a good enough mic locally that I could plug straight into the sound card (all the ones I saw were just rubbish for voice dictation). I could have hooked up my singing mic, but I didn't have the right connectors, and it also needs to be positioned pretty precisely, so it wasn't really suitable for quick and easy guitar recording. Plus I also wanted to keep it free for other use. I did try running everything through the recorder into the sound card and also through an amp (which I gather can be risky if you connect to a sound card :shock: ) but I always seemed to need to disconnect part of the chain and use it elsewhere.

The trick seems to be to have something permanently hooked up, that is always ready for use - as you have. I know that there are always new players asking about this issue on forums, especially needing details of how to link it all up. Could you (or anybody) please share what you use in the way of cables, connectors, etc.?

The most important thing seems to be just getting into the habit of doing it. If my new setup works in the practice area, then I might also start using the computer when I'm up here - especially if I can rig up a simple and permanent line in.

Thanks for all the suggestion from everybody. I hope that others are finding it useful too, and that Welshman doesn't feel that his thread's been hijacked... :oops:

Cheers,

Chris

No problem Chris :-)

I'm enjoying the thread too and it's given me a lot of tips too.

D