Joe Dirt's Studio

[Joe51]

Up until last night, recording was somewhat of a pain in the . I had to use my video camera - upload to pc - rip audio from the video (subpar audio anyway) or drive an 1.5 hours to a friends house that has nice equipment. As you can imagine, many great ideas (at least i thought so) have been lost.

I figured this thing out though. I took my daughters karaoke machine, and spliced the audio out cables to a jack like what plugs your computer speakers in. I plugged that into the audio input on my PC and downloaded audacity.

Now at the touch of the button, I can record w/e I want! Switch the mic out for my guitar cord, and I can bang out any little thing that I think sounds good using my comp for an amp and recording at the same time. Switch from the guitar to bass, and I can add a baseline. Plug the mic back in and add vocals.

Best part.... Didn't cost me a dime. Just about 40 minutes with chords I already had, a pocket knife, and a little electric tape. Obviously I'm not getting high quality sound, but for just laying out some ideas or building a stockpile of licks and rhythms to use, I'm very excited about my creation. I wish I had taken pictures to upload. It's really amusing to see.

I can't wait to get home and tinker around to see just how good I can make it sound. I figure getting some real connectors instead of splicing wire and playing with all the volumes and downloading some effect that run through the computer, and I'll be recording music I'm quite proud of for not spending a dime on equipment.

Everyone on this forum seems so polished and well equipped, I thought you guys might get a kick out of this.

[john]

Ooo... pictures are indeed needed!

I can't wait until you discover the joys of desktop audio workstation software.... Another entire recording world will open up then.

For me I love seeing people discovering all this sorta thing, and realising that these things really are within their grasp...

I'll add to that by saying that invention to overcome obsticles used to be the main stay of recording studios everywhere. I have seen some madcap and ingenious solutions over the years. But it was an art that didn't so much crossover into the computer domain, so you are leading a one man revival (so far). I for one think it's a good thing and applaud your creativity

[Joe51]

Thanks for the encouragement, John. I'll check out the software you mention in time. Right now I'm just excited to record a few things, as you could imagine. Necessity is the mother of invention, right? With the current state of the economy here in the U.S. I couldn't imagine dropping a few hundred just to support my hobby.

My wife actually hates it that I do things this way. To be fair, not all of my ideas are as successful as this one was. LOL. The tin foil fuse in the tv ended with a pop and the oscillating fan I re-wired ended with lots of smoke. So she was begging me not to plug into the PC. LOL.

Now that I know how to get audio between the PC and a/v chords, I am scheming on ways to rig this up with my primary sound system at home. I expect the same way I get audio in, but in reverse. If you don't see me for a few days, my wife probably killed me.

[Prometheus]

My wife actually hates it that I do things this way.

For what it's worth, I love doing things this way whenever I can. There's a certain pride in being a sound "engineer" in the old school sense of the word where you actually were building things to create the sounds you wanted.

I would hate for people to be able to listen to my work and say, "yeah, that's the waves compressor along with the Classic Chorus plugin."

I wanna make sounds that no one has made before and also save a bit of money while I'm at it.