Help with recording set up for practice.

[Raw Amateur]

Hey, going to try and keep this concise and to the point.

I have a pretty specific recording need I wanted to ask some advice on.

I want to record my bass playing as a way to see how I am performing. My current set up is on an Acer laptop, where I send sound to M-audio speakers through a soundblaster x-fi external sound card using Audacity. I do a lot of practice work with tracks that isolate the bass on the left or right speaker. I play the track on Audacity and shift it to one or the other speaker and play along. Simple.

I am trying to figure out what equipment I would need to do the following:

-listen to the track with the bass track off (i.e. turning it to either the left or right channel) through head phones, and play along but have it record back onto the laptop without the backing track, just my bass. I would like to play my bass from the DI out of my amp head.

I am sort of in a big knowledge gap here. I don't know much about recording software, I have done a ton of reading on mixers and audio interfaces, but I can't visualize how the set up would work.

Thinking through the mixer idea, I see how to get the signals into a small board from the bass and the laptop, but the outgoing signal (the soundblaster does have stereo line in that's designed for a turntable to go to the laptop)......I just don't know how the board works, if you can edit the signal that way but still use headphones where you hear both the bass and the backing track, but only the bass is going back to the recorder on the laptop. It seems like that has to be doable.

I am not really sure how the audio interfaces like Focusrite would be used to solve this problem. I'm guessing you can run the backing track into the device from the laptop but then not have it as part of the output back into the laptop? Or can you not do that?

Or am I missing something about software in terms of knowledge? Do you just run all the channels into the laptop and delete out the backing track?

Any help would be appreciated. I apologize for the broadness of this. I have been looking for as much information as I could find and I think what I need is some advice from people familiar with this stuff. Trying to see what would be the best solution.

Final note: my budget is $300-400 or less, and a set up that might work later as I play with other folks would be a bit more preferred...if that makes any sense.

Thanks in advance for any input.

-Sid

 

[Raymeous]

Ok I think I understand what you're trying to do here.

You have a source for backing tracks that let you isolate the prerecorded bass tracks, and you want to be able to record your own bass performance while listening to the backing tracks (minus the prerecorded bass track) at the same time. That sounding right?

You should be able to do this but it all depends on the backing track file. Is it a simple stereo MP3 kind of thing, or do you open it up in Audacity and see each individual instruments track. For example, do you see a seperate track for the drums, bass, guitars, etc.. or do you just get left and right?


Generally speaking, if you can bring it up in Audacity and see each track individually you would be able to "mute" the prerecorded bass track, add a new audio track for your bass, arm that new track, and hit record. It should play back the whole song except the muted bass track, while simultaneously recording your playing. Simple easy.


I recently posted a series of articles on the Carvin Forum about home recording. These may or may not be helpfull to you, but I thought I'd add them just in case they might help answer some questions for you.

What do I need?
Invalid Link Removed

Audio Interfaces
Invalid Link Removed

DAW
Invalid Link Removed

Microphones
Invalid Link Removed
Invalid Link Removed
Invalid Link Removed

Headphones
Invalid Link Removed



I hope this helps in some way, and be sure to let us know how things go.

 

[Raw Amateur]

Raymeous,

Thanks for the links, I will read through them over the next few days and see if I can gather more ideas for a solution.

I open the file in audacity and it is a single track. I then adjust the speaker balance to the left or right in Audacity to get rid of the bass. So I am technically just dealing with one track on the input.

With a mixer I was thinking I could bring both left and right feeds into the mixer and turn down the side with the bass. It's just I don't know if you can listen on the headphones to the backing track but just have the output of the mixer with my bass track back into the laptop for recording.

Anyway, I will check those links. Thanks again.