New gear today! Venturing into home recording

[direvus]

I treated myself to some new goodies today.

Behringer U-PHORIA UMC202HD

Rode TR1 microphone, boom stand and pop filter

Now I can get some proper recording done

[roger_holland]

Hi Brendan,
Happy NGMD (and some more letters )
Greetings and a lot of fun with it…
Rogier…

[sclay]

Congratulations on your new gear mate.They’ll serve you well. Just ask away if you run into any problems.

Cheers, Shane

[SgtColon]

Happy NGearD Brendan. I hope they bring you many hours of fun.

[direvus]

The only problem I’m having so far is having to listen back to what I sound like at super high fidelity

Turns out, capturing on a crappy little laptop/phone microphone is quite forgiving.

On the bright side, this will all help me improve because I can get a much better understanding of subtle mistakes I’m making and where my voice can & can’t go … so that’s good. Still, pretty brutal though.

[direvus]

Well I made my first recording with the new gear.

Does it suck? For sure it does, but I’m still excited.

Quite a few unfortunate notes in the vocals, but I’m actually pretty happy with how the very last note landed. Not sure if it was actually on pitch, or just happened to resonate in a nice way with the guitar, but either way I liked that.

Also my first attempt to share an audio-only recording to this forum, hopefully this works.

[LievenDV]

ah; a trusty interface and a decent mic; these things are crucial in the set of the recording musician!
now to find your ideal workflow, settings, recording conditions so you can come to a “recording primer”.

Recording sounded clean already so you’re doing it right ^^

[philsmith]

sounded good, congrats on your new stuff. happy fiddling with all the settings.

[sclay]

Hey Brendan,

Looks like you’ve sorted the setup of your gear. All sounded good on this end.
You’ll be into DAWS, and OBS before long.
And you’re right, the higher tech will expose you more, but as you said, it’s only going to benefit you, and aid in your development. Lots of fun, (and tinkering), ahead.

Cheers, Shane.

[direvus]

I understand DAW just means the recording/mixing software. In my case, I guess that’s Garage Band. I don’t know what “OBS” is.

Getting the gear set up was not a problem. What tripped me up was the switch from playing along with the JG app, versus matching the beat from Garage Band, versus matching my own rhythm from a separate track. I ended up recording guitar by playing along with the JG app, then separately recorded vocals over my own guitar track. That seemed to work OK but it’s surprisingly difficult to remember the words, and know when to sing them, when you don’t have all those musical cues from the rest of the band.

Also the number of tweaks and settings and effects available in Garage Band is bewildering. I have no idea what most of this stuff does or when I’d want to use it. Should probably start watching some tutorials.

I did have a try at adding an automatic drum track in the software, but that didn’t seem like a winner.

What do you guys normally do for backing tracks or drum/bass for your recordings?

[Socio]

Hi Brendan,

Congratulations on your new gear. Yes, DAW is the Digital Audio Workstation like Garage Band. OBS is an open source video broadcasting software. The below posts maybe of interest to you.

Producing a video with phone cam and an audio interface

The opensource app OBS offers a fairly straightforward means to produce a video that combines the benefits of better quality audio recorded through an audio interface while continuing to use a phone camera, which may be better quality than a webcam or integrated laptop camera, as well as maybe offering more flexibility to position the phone. You can read about routing audio from an audio interface into OBS here: Using OBS with an Audio Interface on Windows for streaming to send to Zoom. For pro…

Share the JGApp from an Android device to PC to record in OBS

Hi @DavidP Sorry for the long delay. Got stuck with some work. So here’s the process I followed. The software used are free and open-source and they work on both Windows and Mac. Needed Devices A Windows or Mac PC/Laptop. An android device with the Developer Option and USB debugging enabled. Needed Software OBS - for recording. scrcpy - for mirroring Android screen. sndcpy - for forwarding Android audio (to capture the audio played through the JG songs app). Setup First enable Develop…

[Aaronwith2dots]

Wow, nice gear! Congrats!
The recording sounded clean to me! Sounds quite a bit more complicated than just pressing play on a phone!
Think I’ll just stick to phone recording for the moment as even that doesn’t sound forgiving enough to me

[sairfingers]

Hi Brendan. I look forward to following your recording adventures with the new kit. It a road I’ve avoided but I’m interested in how others approach it. (until the tech talk turns into Clingon!) Good luck.

[sclay]

Hey Brendan,

Sounds like you’re getting amongst it , and its alot of fun. It can however, become a real rabbit hole with alot to digest and and a million options. Just take your time getting across the basics, and don’t let it take time away from practicing/playing. Cos it will if you let it.
For backing tracks, I subscribe to Karaoke UK, in which you can download quality customised tracks for thousands of songs. Costs about AUS$4.50 per song, so I don’t go stupid there. You can also download from youtube, and convert to mp3 for free.

All the best,
Cheers, Shane

[Socio]

@sairfingers

@sairfingers

It a road I’ve avoided but I’m interested in how others approach it. (until the tech talk turns into Clingon!)

If you keep avoiding a road you won’t know where it will take you to. You just have to learn to speak the lingo the easy way

[sairfingers]

@Socio
See, I can’t even spell Klingon correctly! Live long and prosper. Oops sorry that’s Vulcan.

[direvus]

@sairfingers

Oops sorry that’s Vulcan.

Hey, at least you knew both of those are Trek references, there is hope for you yet.

[direvus]

@sclay

don’t let it take time away from practicing/playing. Cos it will if you let it.

I know exactly what you mean mate. Right now I should be getting on with my regular practice, but all I can think about is “maybe I could tweak that automatic drum track to get it sounding better” or “I could try using the musical typing to lay down a bass line” or “I should re-record the guitar part, I totally flubbed the timing on a couple of those chords”.

[adi_mrok]

Yes happy New Gear Day, I am actually really happy you made this purchase as your vox appears to be interesting but I barely can hear it usually, not it should give us a lot better listening experience:)

[direvus]

@adi_mrok

I am actually really happy you made this purchase as your vox appears to be interesting but I barely can hear it usually

Thanks Adrian, I wouldn’t have used the word “interesting” to describe it but I do appreciate the positivity.

I’ve just posted a recording of Californication with the new gear, over on this thread if you’re keen to have a listen.

Californication practice

I put a lot more time in to the mixing and production than with that original “Push” attempt.

Cheers