[Analog or digital?]

Personaly, I think the term 'Anologue warmth' was a phrase much bandied about by tape manufacturers, and is a way of describing hiss! Luckily! You can now get a digital plugin to add hiss, or 'Digital warmth' as it is sometimes aluded to...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

What you can do on tape which until recently has been tough to do digitally, is the compression that tape provides. But plugins like Magneto handles that fine now. I think there's really no reason to record to tape anymore. 8 tracks - that's no more than I use for my backing vocals :-) ...

[intermediate PC recording]

OK. You need to make sure that you have the correct cable for the mic, which is an

XLR TO XLR MIC CABLE.

The mic must be plugged into the XLR socket on the mixer to use the phantom power. Using a jack plug won't work.

If you are ordering from int-audio, you can get one from the bottom of THIS PAGE.

You connect the mixer to the pc with a cable that looks like THIS. The small stereo plug goes into the LINE IN socket of your soundcard. The 2 mono jacks plug into the left and right outputs of the mixer.

Apart from a standard guitar lead, thats all you'll need to get you up and running!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hmmm ... I think SM 57 is dynamic, and will not need phantom feed. But an XLR is better anyway. The suggested mixer is a smaller version of my mixer, and I can reccomend it.

[Favourite effect?]

That would be:

Favourite: Echo.

Not do without: Compressor.

[Setting up a mix...]

Since this is a discussion about mixing, I'll go through what I do when mixing.

When all recordings are done, all voice tracks are tuned and good, first of all, I clean up the tracks.

I turn all the faders down, then I make sure I have kick, snare, ride/hihat and the rest of the drums on four seperate tracks.

Then I hit the mono button. I start all mixes in mono.

I start with the kick - I turn it up to around 0db, and eq it so it sounds good. I follow up with the bass guitar, and listen through it all to make sure the bass guitar and kick follow nicely. I might do some editing or even re-recording at this point. Then fade up the snare - eq it and maybe add some reverb. So I turn up the hihat and cyms a bit low (I sometimes tweak them more in the end, but usually they take care of themselves since they're in their own frequency range - sort of) and the rest of the drums.

Then I follow up with the voice. I make sure the voice is nicely above the drums and bass, and that it has it's seperate freq. range. I usually compress the voice 2:1 on recording and then 2:1 in the mix.

Then I turn up the other instruments, one by one, and make sure they don't collide with each other eq wise, - most importantly; not colliding with the voice.

Finally, I hit the mono button, and play with the stereo perspective - this is when everything really works or falls apart. If it's a bad mix, it's often better to make a note of what doesn't work, and start again from that point. An bad decision often snowballs other bad decisions later on.

Then I master it down and run it through Waves L3 (if you haven't got it, get it) and take the mix around to listen on different equipment. I now know my speakers so well, I usually don't need to tweak much - but always some.

[Soundcard survey]

Sorry didn;t get across what i meant.... i used used the sound blaster cards for a about 1 year. It does record pretty well and we have got some fantastic results out of it. But the AD - DA convertors aren't anywhere near that of a bottom of the range pro card. You can only tell the difference in cards once you move up a level. then you cant go back...

Plus the soundblaster range doesn't record at true 24 bit.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Well, mine doesn't record at 24 bit at all :-) ... Yes - I guess I'll be switching when I buy new gear too. I'd like to have it all on a laptop, next time.

[Demo packages]

I'd say CD, Letter, Bio, Picture, Lyrics - in that order of importance.

Pack it up nicely in a cardboard/plastic folder.

Remember to put your contact information everywhere - especially on the cd and cd cover.

[Soundcard survey]

Sound blasters are gaming cards... they are ok. but for the same price or even less you can get better recording cards.... Bottom end m-audio will beat the sound blaster hands down. I grew out of my sound blaster card very quickly

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I beg to disagree. I have used my Soundblaster Live card together with the KX drivers for a couple of years now and apart from lacking multiple in/out I manage fine.

[Going out to get'em]

Finn

Come on dude, what happened?

Cheers

John

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

After calling most of the record companies I ended up taking only 2 days from work to do the last calling rounds, pack the stuff and just send it out instead of meeting them -- they weren't interested in that. I sent out 25 demos to different record companies in and around Oslo.

8 rejections so far . But there's still a lot I haven't heard from. I'll do a telephone round after Xmas. I kinda got the impression that things were busy now before Xmas.

If I get no reaction, I've got plans ready:

1. Produce one of the songs for radio and send out promo

2. Gather band and do some gigs.

3. Try to find manager/producer to "get me known"

4. If all else fails - gather money and give it out on my own label.

[simple recording]

Where did your parents get that "finn-bit" anyway? I guess that there are old viking-names and such that have that FINN-bit in them...

Something like that. It's a pretty common name in Norway.

The Norwegians don't seem to like the Swedish very much! I can understand that with us FINNS, the Swedes are our PET-ENEMY (AFTER the RUSSIANS) but what is the story between the Norwegian and Swedes? Something to do with the history, maybe?

Personally I don't have any problems with (most) Swedes. I guess there may be some petty resentment since it's only 100 years (this year, actually) since we were made independent from Sweden. There may also be some history from 2nd world war although a lot of Norwegian have Swedes to thank for being alive today. But anyway - this is a huge digression (notice how I managed to write "huge" without the use of versals).

AND when you HAVE the BAND together.... you CAN RECORD THE BAND with a computer.... so... a PC is just a tool, like an AXE, a bass, a guitar, or a chain-saw.

Only thing that matters IS HOW YOU USE IT!

That is, of course, true. I only wanted to point out that you don't _have_ to use a computer to make good music and that often (and especially for beginners) it's more of an obstacle since one has to learn all kinds of other stuff than music.

[Need something to draw to?]

I haven't tried photoshop elements, but I've use Photoshop Album, which is _the_ best photo-album software in my opinion.

As for Linux sequencers, I tried Muse once, but it is a long way from production ready. The truth is; very little Open-Source software is. It's usually made of a group of more or less skilled programmers with little or no project management. The few who does succeed are those who combine it with a commercial license, so-called dual licensing. Examples; Apache, Mysql, Trolltech (where I am webmaster) ...

I do hope for some dual-licensed Linux audio software, but the wait maybe long.

[Need something to draw to?]

Again, no - Linux doesn't have the applications with the featues I need. I'm sure it will come, though.

[Going out to get'em]

Next week I'm doing a round on Oslo's record companies - 35 in all. I've prepared it all I think: biography, letter, pictures, demo cd (dah!) and lyrics all wrapped up in a little folder.

I'm doing this out of my vacation from work, so making sure I get the most out of it; I wanted to ask you all for any advice you might have - what to say/not say wear/not wear - anything at all you might have.

[simple recording]

Tom, there's nothing wrong with putting a band together play your stuff live and taping it. A lot of times it's much better. You learn much more about music too, that way. Doing home recording on a computer, you usually need to learn a whole lot more about computers than music.

If you can't gather a band; write your songs down on paper with lyrics and chords over it. Play it to friends and others. Tape it with a regular tape player.

A (too) well kept secret that all good producers know; it's the songs and lyrics that matter, not the production.

[What do those producer use?]

If they can't sing, they shouldn't be there in the first place!

I don't know if I agree - I think you should use whatever makes you sound better. If it is to rehearse 4 times a week you do that, if auto tuning makes you sound better do that. It's results that count, after all.

Auto tuning is really only like frets on a guitar - a development in the technology of music. In 20 years nobody's gonna think two times about it.

[What do those producer use?]

All the pros use autotune of some sort. The good thing with it, is that you can concentrate on feeling and rythm and not ditch otherwise great takes only because it's a little out of tune.

But as all tools, it's overused; specially for the "Live after love" song, I thought it was totally unneccesary. Cher has a too good voice to be produced to death like that. On the other hand, the record sold millions, so who am I to criticise.

[Who's the resident PC expert here?]

Opera isn't bad either, and that I managed to type without hitting capslock all the time ;-) ..

[Need something to draw to?]

Gimp is quite good, have used it a lot on Linux.

For professional use it doesn't beat Photoshop, though - a pity it's so damn expensive.

[Sound card?]

should I install them if my machine is mostly for fun and games...I try to find that information from that site, but I miss it. :

So how does it stack up against the EMU, M-Audio and Terratec cards at the same price ( with the new drivers )?

I think the Soundblaster cards probably will be inferior to the more expensive cards. They miss multiple inputs/outputs for one thing (although you can use the digital in/outs at the same time as the analogs).

You only need the KX drivers if you want to use the machine for recording with cubase or some similar program, but the drivers also work fine with games and other programs.

The learning curve to use the drivers is quite steep, but by reading the documentation on their site and tweaking a bit most people should be able to set it up.

The KX drivers also have several effects and instrument plugins and you have a very advanced routing interface directly to the soundcard.

If you're a musician on a tight budget (aren't we all :-) ) I strongly advice you to check this out and spend the money you save on f.ex a better microfone (or food).

[Sound card?]

And does it take out all the noise from the shitty DACs too?

BS

Obviously you don't know what you're talking about. The Live and Audigy cards have excellent 24/96 khz DACs. The problems are in the "shitty" drivers. This is where KX comes in.

These cards are really a rejigged version of the EMu APS semi professional sound card. Creative bought EMU a few years ago and has been using much of the technology it developed for its professional recording gear in its consumer cards (source: Computeractive).

[Sound card?]

Check out the KX Project. This lets you use an ordinary soundblaster card for professional, low-latency recording. This is what I have used for my project, and it works great - down to 5ms latency.