What Do You Do?

Hi Crayzee,
This could be an interesting thread.
I record myself mostly, with an ocassional small project.
I'm a long time guitarist, and have dabbled in synth/workstations for about 10 years, owning 5 guitars, and 3 workstations, various softsynths, and such.
My primary means of recording, since it's all me playing audio in real time, is Guitar Tracks Pro. I do have SHS4XL, Acid Pro 4.0, and a Fostex 16 track HD recorder. I use Soundforge for final tweaking.
I play in a cover Trio, doing James Taylor, Gordon Lightfoot, Jim Croce, Dan Fogelberg, type songs, (www.johnpricegroup.com), but most of my recordings are of my original compositions.
I'm not interested in being a star at my age (50s), so my goal is to sell my music to anyone interested, and someday do something notable.
I've done many internet collaborations, with musicians from Bulgaria, to N. Carolina, and Nova Scotia, to California, enjoying each and every note!
That's pretty much it!
Still learning this computer based recording, after 30 years of using hardware. Old Dog syndrome!!!
Ok! Who's next!?
Regards,

Wow!

This is excellent so far with only 2 replies!

This looks like fun!

Thanks guys!

CrayZee.

I am a bass player first and foremost also. I also play a little guitar and drums and sing a bit too! (Ain't that odd!)
I am in a 3 peice all female band which I also run sound for. We do covers and originals as well.

I got into the recording thing mostly because I wanted to be able to record new demos for our band.

If I get good enough at it, I would like to record some original songs and maybe sell some CD's at some of our gigs.

I've recorded 1 song so far (an original tune) using Cakewalk Version 2 XL, a Delta 1010lt soundcard and a Mackie 1604 VLZ mixer.

I'm not quite finished mixing it yet. I'll probably post it in the songs forum eventually.

I haven't had any experience in recording, so this is quite new to me. I'm having fun learning though.

Cool thread, CrayZee_one!

I play guitar and keyboards and sing a little. I am not great at any of them, but I have all sorts of ideas. I have a Godin electric guitar, a Flambeau acoustic, and Fender bass, and a MicroKorg synth, plus all sorts of different soft-synths. I recorded a whole album of my own compostions, music in the progressive/psychedelic space rock vein, with a friend helping out on both some of the playing and producing. While I recorded some of the tracks at home on Cakewalk, we did most of the recording and mixing at his place with Protools. But that was then, this is now. Now I'm working on more stuff at home with HS. I do experimental soundscapes, Krautrock influenced music, psychedelic rock and folk, etc. Although I did one Pink Floyd cover for a compilation, I'm primarily interested in recording my own stuff. I'm working on my own these days, but always looking for like-minded musicians to collaborate with. I've recorded another whole album's worth of material (co-compositions) with a local guitarist, though mostly we've just got his parts down and I still have to do my parts yet, but my interests have turned for the moment to recording a solo album, trying for a very vintage early 70's sound, using a lot of vintage soft-synth emulations of instruments like Hammond B3, Mellotron, ARP2600, etc...plus, of course, guitar.

I record just simply because I love creating music, and I have wanted to do it all my life, until home recording with software like HS became available, there was always something (usually money) preventing me from doing it. So this is my dream coming true. But if people like my music all the better. Once I get enough money together, I hope to start releasing some of this stuff. Recently, I recorded a demo CD for a local progressive metal band, and that has given me the taste for producing other artists as well. At some point, I'm hoping to build a full studio and start doing this a part time living. Hey, we all have to have dreams. I also hope to start playing live too, if I can get some other musicians to work with. My wife plays keyboards and is learning bass, and the recording bug has hit her too. We want to do some live performances together as well.

Hey all,

Looks like fun,figured I'd chime in.

I play guitar(approx 25 years now,boy does time fly!)Been dabbling with synths (Reason) and my Brain Moore midi guitar,since I can't play keys very effectively.Mostly just record my songs.I do all the instuments so far,except vox,that are done by my song writing buddy.It's nice to see so many bass players around.Maybe we could collaborate on some projects soon.I play the bass on my tracks,but just because I can play bass,doesn't make me a *good* bass player.(I think all you lower frequency types know what i'm saying)It would be nice to get a fresh perspective on some of my tunes in the future....

Occasionally I'll record someone elses songs,provided they don't mind using midi drums or loops as I do.I don't have the equipment or room to get a usable drum sound off a kit.

I had dropped out of music,put my guitars away, for about 2 years awhile back,due to frustration with the business.Too many years of "trying to make it big".I found that I could not stop the music going on in my head,so here I am back at it.The difference now is I really don't care about anything anymore,except making music I'm satisfied with.If anyone else likes it,that's a bonus.It has really set me free,and brought the fun back to playing.

Recently I have restarted doing shows with some guys I used to play with,just doing classic rock covers for fun.It's been cool so far,because we realize we're just a bunch of old guys butchering some of the greatest songs in history.We only play once every couple of months,but that's enough for me.I have always liked being in the studio way more.

Anyway,nice to meet you all!

Frank

homestudiomites

Some thing about that sounds just wrong. :D

Hey nice, friendly thread! I work from home as a voice over performer here in frosty old Canada. I'm smack dab in the middle of Toronto And Detroit; two hours in either direction just off the 401. I'm not known as a singer but could probably fool most of us. The great Chet once did a concert with an undestudy who followed Chet all his life. His dream was to perform with Chet and it came true, by invitation. After the show the crowd went nuts. Chet turned to the understudy and said "well, we fooled em again". The guy was just too humble eh!

Anyway, I'm 47 and spent more time in bars listening to bands as a kid than I did in school. I played drums, flute and cross harp from a very young age. I continued with the harp but can't resist an invitation to have a beat on a trap set. Most of the music in my time was either disco or blues/rock. I was influenced by Johnny Winter, Muddy, James Cotton, Stones etc. I always wanted to play guitar and just figured I was too old to learn. One of my old freinds bought a cheap acoustic at a garage sale and in no time was playing "Linesman for the County". I was impressed at how quickly he learned at his age. Then I started to go to music stores to look at guitars. I was very confused trying to figure out the criteria in buying an acoustic guitar. My idea was to learn about six chords and maybe ten really easy songs so I didn't want to spend a lot of cabbage. Well it just got rediculous for me trying to figure out what to look for. Before long I was in the library looking for the answers. This was turning in to a mystery that I had to solve. I started to forget about the ten songs and became fancinated by how they were built. I went to a friend who is a very accomplished woodsmith and asked about the wood and stuff. He became hooked as well and we began to build our own. The first ten were built pre-warstyle acoustics. We carved a couple D'Agelico, new yorker style achtops as well. This went on for about four years and we ended up building about 45 guitars and all by hand and all vintage. Neither one of us could play the things either but we sure built geourgeous guitars. We invited people over to play and they sounded great and were very well received.

We also caught on quickly to building resonators; cones and plates and all.
Once I figured out that Johnny Winter played a resonator in open tuning I was hooked. I now play slide resonator in open tuning a just love to play. If it wasn't for the open tuning I probaly never would have started to play. My plan is to use my voice/recording gear to play harp and slide tracks and ad some vocals as well. Should be fun when I get to it.

I'm always open for spoken voice over if anyone has that need. I have a deep foghorn type voice and am not bad with some blues singing.

Cheers everyone

I"ll jump in....
I'm just having fun with music. I play guitar, dabble with sequencing keys, strings, drums...but can't play any of those things. I started music with accordion lessons when I was 10...got over that in 3 years and then picked up guitar. I wanted to play drums but my folks weren't up to the noise! I started gigging with a cover band in '73 and played with them until '78. I was really pissed at the circumstance of our ending, and quit the biz. I didn't touch the guitar for 9 years! I know, it was pretty stupid! I got it out and it still smelled like cigs! I saw a few bands that kinda got me inspired to play some so I started putting together some instrumental tunes on a Tascam 234 4 track cassette. It got to be pretty limiting pretty fast, bouncing tracks and trying to create stereo mixes. A friend had a Teac 80-8, 1/2" 8 track machine that I borrowed. That was a little better, but more tracks were needed! I started looking for a better way..and learned of Cakewalk. I bought a unopened copy of Cakewalk Professional 7 off of Ebay....The rest is history! I upgraded to version 8, then Guitar Studio 2, and now SHS4.

Musically, I have kinda dryed up with original music and have been doing some covers for fun. There were a few tunes that I really enjoyed playing back in the day and have had fun re-doing them. Lately, I have been working on a cover project collaborating with other fans of the band Kansas. I have done 13 songs from their first 6 albums featuring folks from all over the world contributing parts. Its been a lot of fun to put together. A couple of them are on my BD and Friends website..see the sig.

BD

I have been playing in a band with friends of mine from college since 1980. We get together every Thursday evening for about 5 hours and play mix of 30% original and 70% rock covers (Floyd, Who, Foo Fighters, Cheap Trick, Tom Petty, Drive-By Truckers, ...). I used to throw a stereo mic up in the practice space so we could see what we sound like and maybe even improve -- but as you might imagine it sounded like ass. So I moved from an e-magic 6|2m to an EDIROL UA-1000 to the MOTU 828mkII (all on Home Studio), recording individual tracks during live researsal and mixing down later.

Now I record:
Overheads for drums: 2 x Samson C02
Snare drum:
Kick drum: Beta 52
Bass guitar: direct
Guitar amp #1, #2, and #3: SM57
Kbd (Alesis QS6.1): stereo direct
Kbd (KS-32): stereo direct
Vocals: 3 channels from Mackie mixer

That's 15 channels. Although they are rarely all going at the same time, that does work.

I've gotten to the point were the Normal template is pretty much set up for a good mix. I can record a couple of sets, use the default mix and effects, and hand out CDs of the evening's practice to the rest of the band and the walk out the door. Sweet!

I first started playing guitar in the UK in 1972. One of the guys I worked with had an Akai reel to reel machine that could do sound on sound. I wrote a simple tune, and he came round to my house and we recorded it. He had a Shure SM-57 and a two-channel mixer. The recording comprised two rhythm-guitars, vox and slide guitar. During one of the vocal overdubbing sessions he wiped my slide guitar and I started yelling “Where’s my guitar?” all very nicely recorded for posterity. But we went back and I re-did the slide. The final recording was so hissy it was almost unlistenable. Hint – always use the fastest speed possible when recording to tape!

My next recording session was on a Revox. Oh baby, now we’re in the big time. This was another guy I worked with. He swore blind he could do sound-on-sound with this unit. He had a microphone that was used by the BBC (or so he told me). Man, this guy was THE biggest BS artist I’d known up to that time. No sound on sound, no mixer, but a really high quality recording of me attempting to sing Paul Simon’s Me And Julio Down By The School Yard.

Next up I used two cassette decks to record with. Ugh! Hiss City again…

Years and years later, now living in Australia, I got a copy of CakeWalk Audio 7, I think it was. It was on 3-1/2" floppy disk. I had a SoundBlaster AWE64 Gold and a pair of crappy Chinese speakers at the time. I learned sequencing and really got into composing.

Some time later, I bought a Terratec EWX 24/96 sound card and CakeWalk Home Studio 2002. By this time I also had two electric guitars, (Epiphone BB King Lucille & an Ibanez Artist) a Mesa/Boogie DC-2 Studio Caliber amp and a two-channel mixer. I later upgraded to HS 2004XL. My most recent acquisitions were a Fender Strat and a Sennheiser e840 microphone. I traded the Epiphone for the Fender.

My playing has improved, my singing certainly hasn’t. I’ve played on a couple of international collaborations, and I’ve had people from overseas playing on my tunes too. To me, it’s a hobby and I love it. Trouble is, I seem to get so little time these days to pursue my hobby.

All my tunes have been posted at a web site dedicated to recording at home. My friends and acquaintances love my tunes, but I harbour no illusions of grandeur!

Thanks sojourn!

Kinda Hottie sounding.

I've been hearing that all the time since I've started to post my songs.I never really thought about it,but I do hear it now.My co-writer is the vocalist.His voice sounds way better than mine!

I guess we really will have to rename our project "8ftsq & the blow fish" after all.

Frank

I don't think I'll ever really have the hardware or the expertise to produce commercial-quality recordings, but that's not my goal. I mostly got into home recording to help improve my composing and arranging abilities. I perform all the parts myself, but the only instrument I have any expertise on is the guitar. Multi-tracking lets me get at least a rough idea of what something might sound like with a group of real musicians playing my music.

I guess if I have any professional aspirations, it would be to interest people in my recordings as demos worth developing. I would love to take some of my musical ideas into a pro studio and make use of some other accomplished musicians (like a REAL keyboard player and a REAL drummer). Access to an experienced engineer is something I dream about.

I am 45 years old and this is kind of my third musical incarnation. I started as a classical guitarist, pretty serious, went to music school, the whole thing. I played professionally for about 10 years, mostly small-time stuff like restaurants and churches and weddings. Eventually I started to find that unfulfilling. So I bought myself a Fender and learned how to rock'n'roll! I played in bands in the Denver area for about five years before moving to California.

After the move, I kind of gave up music for a few years. Then, I discovered a real desire to do something creative, and started writing solo acoustic guitar pieces. Later, I bought a cheap Casio keyboard and my first version of Cakewalk and started adding drums, keys and other voices to my "compositions". I really hit my stride and started seriously writing about a year and a half ago. And so, here I am....

Check my Soundclick link to hear some of my stuff, and thanks for letting me share.

Hi everybody!

What an excellent post!
After reading most of the post through out the day it sounds like we are all pretty much in the same league. Im 41 have been playing guitar since I was 13 when my mom bought me this old beat up thing from hell for Chriatmas. My love for music has only deepened ever since.

I learned all of the lessons in what I consider guitar 101.
The Beatles: Abby Road, Rubber Soul.
Van Halens: 1st Album, Women and Children First.
Boston: Boston.
Judas Priest: British Steel, Screaming For Vengeance.
Rush: 2112, Exit Stage Left, Moving Pictures.
Ozzy Osbroune: Dairy of a Madman, Blizzard of Oz and alot of Sabbath.

After playing in bands through High School. And then gigging around Vegas for a couple years. Moved to Pheonix to attend ASU to study music dropped out after a year. Because I didn't want to be a school teacher.

While in Pheonix I joined a Christian band named Prophecy and the learned the ropes in recording. With an 8 track Tascam set-up. What a great learning curve. Got close to a record deal but you make plans and God smiles.

Now I'v been back in Vegas for about 10 yrs and have hooked up with a couple guys and we are doing some hard rock stuff. We call our band Meatbutton. I have a couple projects in the works. The songs Im working on with Meatbutton and some Christmas songs that our family is recording to give away at Christmas. I also will be starting a new project with some brothers at the chruch. Putting old hymns in a blue context. I really hope I can pull that one off.

I consider myself a musician and song writer first. Play guitar and bass (would rather have a real bass player) sing lead and backing vox. Do alot of production and engineering. I would like to start a recording business and production company. That is where Im heading.

I like to collaborate and think it really helps the creative process. But Im kind of new to the computor recording thing but Im learning. If anyone would be interrested feel free to contact me.

Hope to have some songs on the net soon but having drummer girlfriend problems.

Live in Las Vegas,
David

Wow!

Y'all are making me feel like a little kid. At 23 it seems no one else my age has much interest in recording; they all want the glory of being a rockstar. While I have to admit it is my dream to one day stand on stage with thouands of fans singing the songs I wrote, I am more than willing to do the time to learn more than just slamming out a few bar chords and screaming a lot. That may sound like music to some but to me it lacks the subtlety that makes true music beautiful. I began my musical journey at the tender age of 6 on the piano (which I unfortunately gave up too early).

I fell in love with the guitar when I was about 12 or so and it has led me into a whole new realm of creativity I never would have discovered otherwise. I started recording on the computer with nothing more than the line in and a wave editor, laying down one track at a time, then balancing the volume with the next track and pasting them together, etc. until I had a whole smorgasbord of sound. What a load of work. But fun for me. Then I discovered the wonderful world of DAWs! What ease! What remarkable fun! This has made the process so much easier, I almost feel cheated.

For those looking for some good, loud, fun, plaese check me out!

www.soundclick.com/iamb