Help for a home recording beginner

[Mannyinnewyork]

Cakewalk sonar from Bandlab is free (as far as I know - it was a while ago). I’ve been running Sonar for over a decade. It works, my friends use it and we exchange files all the time. There may be better options, but this is all I’ve used. My friends with money have taken my tracks into a “real studio” where they loaded them into pro-tools for final mixing (for my material I do it all at home) . If you’re just laying down a bass track, you can pretty much just play to whatever mix they send you (don’t play to an mp3) , export a high quality wave file (every daw can import these) and you’re done.

 

[pfschim]

But fragging would be so much more fun

yeah, there are a few tracks I'd know I'd love to frag ....

and +1 to all the suggestions. It can be intimidating for a newbie to get started, but with a modest bit of effort, you (the OP) should be able to get up and running doing perfectly decent bass tracks for your other bandmates songs in no time at all.

Lots of fun too once you get a good sound happening. So much to mess around with. Astonishing how little money it takes to get good recordings at home, outside of a pro studio.

good luck OP, and let us know about your progress.

 

[morgansterne]

I have a Scarlett 2i4 and record with Reaper. This sounds really good -- I used to have a digi002 interface into protools, but the Scarlett sounds better.

Reaper is very powerful, and more intuitive than protocols for a beginner.

I think plugging straight in to your Scarlett is fine. I have a passive bass and I turn the gain up a little less than half way. It lights up green when your signal is good, red if your signal is too strong -- couldn't be simpler to get good levels.

Amp modeling in any DAW is really quite good these days. I went over to a friend's place to do some recording in Garage Band on his mac -- the amp sounds in the program were so good, I was shocked!


EDIT. it is best to have the same DAW program as your friends as you trade files. But if you don't, just save as WAV or AIFF at the same sample rate and bit depth as their project, and they'll be able to use them.

 

[Slough Feg Bass]

I use Audacity with a 2 channel scarlet interface.
pretty easy to manipulate tracks and export them to WAV files.

Best advice I have is to make sure your sound is good BEFORE going into the computer.
That way you don't have to mess with it once it is digitized.
get your EQ & Comp all set before going in the box.

Unless of course, you are working with people who know how to use all the plugins and googly stuff and they just want a raw bass track with no processing.

 

[Kro]

Best advice I have is to make sure your sound is good BEFORE going into the computer.
That way you don't have to mess with it once it is digitized.
get your EQ & Comp all set before going in the box.

Unless of course, you are working with people who know how to use all the plugins and googly stuff and they just want a raw bass track with no processing.

I know how to do the "googly" stuff. I still prefer to get the sound in the individual musician's head directly if possible (and maybe with a parallel clean signal just in case).

Just my personal philosophy, though it seems to work for my projects personally. I adjust only as necessary, as opposed to making assumptions beforehand of where everything should sit.

 

[bearfoot]

I bought Mixcraft 8 last year. Will be using it for years to come. Simple, intuitive, start working immediately. Robust.

It's video editor is finnicky and limited , but does work seamlessly with the DAW interface. It's just another track really.

But anyway, all you need is almost any old USB interface, something with a Hi-Z input for your bass, and a decent set of headphones.

Drag in your existing audio files, arm a separate track for your bass, dial in the tone, and press record. Export from Mixcraft to mp3 for easier sharing.

I have a Toneport UX2 I've used for 10 years or more. I like it because it has backlit, analog VU meters. I'm not even sure if it has a proper Win10 driver, but it works perfectly still.

 

[J.D.B.]

I do this quite a bit. Get free Dropbox account so you can easily share large files. I've been using Mixcraft since version 4. Truly nice, intuitive interface that accepts all sorts of add-ons if you want later. As long as you record .WAV files, everyone should be able to use them in their editors.