Beginner's Frustration
I was reading mfwmiles and Millerbills little exchange, and it got me to thinking, this can be very frustrating at time. Sometimes it seems that no one is listening, and no one cares, but sometimes it is because we are frustrated and are not listening. Folks are giving help, but blindly, and then sometimes we have answered that question forty eleven times in the last two weeks, it does amaze one when a newbie comes along and says " I installed the program and it won't make any sounds what is wrong?" Your first inclination is to respond with, "to start with your an idiot " I mean how do I know what is wrong, for all I know you are not capable of eating with a fork without serious eye damage!! I must have far more information to make a fairly educated guess, and even then I am relying on the fact that your computer is working properly, and is not a jerry rigged nightmare of inadequate spare part from a rejected typing pool. That is why I took the time to write the tutorials I did, as well as some of the others here who have personally taken the time to do likewise.
I would like to address a point I have made in the past, that needs to be brought to the forefront on occasion. This form of art, home digital audio recording, is not a ... well cakewalk, it is complex and difficult. we are purusing thru best buy one day and see a box that says "complete audio and midi digital recording studio, make your home computer a full recording system". Never mind that the maker of this wonder software has never seen your computer and is guessing that it is somewhat more advanced than an abacus and a pad of paper, and never mind that there are literally 1,375,922 possible configuration of the basic home computer, no really i counted them, okay just trust me on this.
Let us compare a beginner home studio with a professional studio, Pro: three top of the line P-4 rack mount boxes, networked together to stream from each opthers hard drive and function as one, with 4 gig of ram, interchangealbe 200 gig hard drives , three dedicated 8 in/out sound cards, a copy of sonar producers series, and about $2,000 in other software for mastering, a dozen $1,000 condensor mikes, a dozen or more dynamic mike ranging in price from $200 to $500, 32 channel mixing console, 2,000 watt biamped stereo amplifiers, 3 sets of near field monitors, one with a subwoofer to reference the sound of the mix with and without extra bass, an isolation room with padding for drums and a couple for vocals, a complete headphone monitoring system for each musician, a rack full of effects, compressors, conditioners, reverbs, etc, I could go on for a while with the rest of the cool specialized stuff, and the tens of thousands of dollars that went into it, not to mention the experienced trained recording tech. Home studio: a PIII 700 Mhz 'puter, with 128K of ram, a built in sound card, a $10 plastic 'puter mike sticking up off it's plastic base like the stem of some de-petaled flower, and a copy of MC to catch all this magic, Wham Bam thank Ya mame, we got a hit record on the way!
Okay I am being silly, some of you have real nice system, and that will do a great job of handling the load of recording, but still you are a long way from having a true DAW system (Dedicated Audio Workstation) I mean If you bought that little box at best buys and thought I going to be a supah stah, i mean get real, it takes a little work, first if you are serious about learning to record, then take the time to do the research and find out what it will take to get setup properly, it does not have to be top dollar. First a decent sound card, sound blaster at least, if not M-Audio or equal, a decent mike, at least spend $40 for it, it is better if it has a balanced plug, (XLR) a good preamp, audio buddy or even better, a small mixer then armed with those features and a copy of none other than MC you can actually record a decent sounding tune. Digital home recording has come of age, read all you can on the subject join several forums, ask questions be a sponge, albeit not one with square pants. above all save your nickle and dimes and upgrade your equipment from time to time. If you were going to be a great artist you most likely would not settle for a box of crayons!!
Have a great day and eat your vegetables!
post edited by Robomusic - 2006/01/05 11:42:58