Computer recording guru's LOTS of help needed (DO IT FOR THE KIDS)

[jtougas]

Re: Computer recording guru's LOTS of help needed (DO IT FOR THE KIDS)

I'm *very* willing to bet that there's no "guitar course" or "music recording course" in my local high schools.

[NecroPolo]

Re: Computer recording guru's LOTS of help needed (DO IT FOR THE KIDS)

1. A brand new computer. (I'll assume the bigger and faster the better, school funds are hard to come by)

Not necessarily true. One of my all-time fav produciton machines is still a single core under-2GHz ABIT based one because of its stability. It can handle album mixings (40-50 tracks and above) with a couple of outboard units (that you won't need for teaching). Even a slower machine can work without any problem as long you keep your system optimised (true for fast machines too). A lot of good points of how to start it: http://global.focusrite.com/answerba...rch/optimising If you have no net connection + no network + gfx is barebone (the least possible apps sucking juice out of the processor) = the more stabile recording machine. Of course some lightning fast machine with SSD OS drive and an another internal drive for music data (or archiving) never hurts.

As for CD burning try to think of it as some soon-to-be-outdated data carrier. Your students can benefit much more if they learn about self and band management, organising and booking, online promotion, image, video directing, merchandise.


2. some sort of recording software, IE protools. (are there others?)

As you say MAC is out of the game (and so are Logic that is great and Digital Performer that is also good), there are zounds of others and as someone who has some past in 'tools hell I must admit that depending on the application you can find many better solutions that can solve it better, more stable and straightforward:

- Reaper is much much more stabe and faster for recording and editing, it has zounds of useful mixing effects but it doesn't have included instruments. Because of its flexibility, workflow and customisable options that's my DAW of choice whenever possible as it seems to be the most efficient and stable of all I've tried. I load my DAWs very heavily and it seems to be the only one that can handle whole album mixing assignments with all the automation and zounds of realtime effects without hiccups in one session (8-15 songs).

- Cubase and Sonar come with a lot of bundled FX mixing and virtual instruments, they are more like tweaking musician's / composer's DAW so they amazing for composing but maybe too complicated and time consuming for a first-timer. They become a weapon in skilled hands.

- Ableton can do a lot of things on the fly that others can not, its workflow is best suited for electronic music / live performance. It can do what others and it's really stable but it is the strongest in loop / groove processing.

- even the barebone Audacity has its use as you can teach the basics of recording - and hey it's free

- ...anyway if you want to teach your kids real liff and of how to work in bigger studios it is still wise to teach them ProTools to some level as most big studios use that, perhaps because of the amazing PT-HD interfaces. The software is some 'I can do it, but...' '...okay but you must consider that I won't...' '...it was alright yesterday but from now you can't do this and that..." kind of thing that keeps driving me nuts since PT9 whenever I have to work with that. PT generated more and more terrible bugs than all of the ones I worked with altogether. But that's what big studios have and the more your students can live in production hell the better.


3. Some sort of interface into the computer??? (here is where I am ignorant)

+1 for Focusrite Scarlett. It is the best value for the money now'days. It has really nice preamps for the price too.


4. Some sort of a multiprocessor.... elevenrack, hd POD, axe-fx guitar/bass processor (needed or not????)

They are not necessary unless you want to teach how to tweak those stuff. If you just want to teach the basics of recording, functionally for a school demo mix a $100 Roland Cube line out directly into the sound interface works just as fine for giving some useful insight about the process as a $3000 Kemper Profiler. The main difference is time: the Cube is instant, the Kemper has an ample of pro options that aren't necessary for creating simple examples. Later on something like that may come handy but for a start - it's just too much. A couple of real FX pedals, real noise and analogue mistakes demonstrate the whole thing better I think.


5. Either some electronic drum software, or some real drums and mics for them. (our school doesn't have any drums, nor do we have any drummers)

For a guitarist, learning a simple drum sequencer like Easy Drummer is much more useful than setting up an analogue or electric drumkit that no one can use properly. A $40 Korg Nanopad would be much more than enough to teach them grooves and the importance of rhythm patterns. A little MIDI keyboard can also come handy but again don't fall into fall out of the budget. I make 90% of my orchestration / composing assignments with a 2-octave M-Audio Ozone keyboard. I guess it was around $100 new.


6. I already own 4 or 5 SM57's and SM58's plus other mics, so I think I'm covered there for vocals and acoustic guitars and even big ass half stack live sounds if that's where we need to go.

With a couple of SM57 mics, two small diaphragm condensers and a large condenser you can teach the students mic positioning, basics of ambient mic techniques and choosing the right mic for the right application (and using their ears dammit ) and always keep on experimenting and learning how to decide well. It doesn't matter if they later use a monster studio or their home computer with one mic, the way of thinking is exactly the same. Rode, Audio-Technica, AKG and Shure are very powerful even in the budget price range.