Home Recording Basic Info For Windows Users

A teacher friend forwarded to me a request from one of her students who wanted information on how to do home recording with her Windows PC (the teacher is a Mac user). Here’s what I replied FYI:

It sounds like you already have [free software for Windows/Mac/Linux] Audacity, which was what I would recommend for basic Windows recording. There actually isn’t a GarageBand for PC, despite what searching would have you think – the link that came up is not a product by Apple, but something downloadable from  “Rare Software” – I can find no references for that from reliable sites, so personally I would hesitate to install it.

The other important part of making a decent-sounding home recording into a PC (or Mac) is how you get the analog sound (the waves of sound your harp makes through the air) converted to digital 1s and 0s inside your computer. Your PC may have a line in/mic in 1/8″ jack, or a built-in mic, but those are only sufficient for talking on Skype calls, etc. You want some type of external analog/digital (A/D) converter.

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Flashback Friday – Use Evernote To Record Meetings, Lessons, Etc.

Flashback Friday posts highlight popular articles from the WBK archive. Today’s blast from the past is Use Evernote To Record Meetings, Lessons, Etc.

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Super Short Run Physical CD Manufacture

I mentioned this in passing a while ago, but I just now set up and placed an order with Kunaki.com for a very few – five – CD albums of the 10 tracks my band Ginger Ibex wrote and recorded in February for the RPM Challenge.

Unlike our professionally-recorded 2009 album Firefly, these pieces were written quickly, in styles different from the band’s usual sound, and all recorded in my office-studio with GarageBand, MIDI patches, Apple Loops, and one Snowball USB microphone. The resulting music is fun, but not anything on which we wanted to spend a thousand dollars or more to master and press more crates of CDs to keep in my basement!

How did it work and how did it turn out?

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Using Automation In GarageBand

Here’s another Music Production class homework assignment video. Automation means adjusting the amplitude level of an individual recorded track at various points to balance its volume vis a vis other tracks – for instance as in this video to make the vocal track “pop” out on top of the accompanying instrument tracks: