Macworld Forums

Hi folks
I've been recording stuff on my powerbook using Audacity. The guitar is plugged into the amp, which is plugged into the line-in (mic?) socket of the powerbook. The recordings are fine.

But I want to be able to record more than 1 person playing at a time. Is this possible? What do I need? The problem is, the sound of the guitar comes out of the powerbook, which is all very well and good when it's just me, but not really what we want when recording more than 1 instrument!

I don't really know much about this computer music recording stuff, so any help appreciated in simple terms! I keep thinking I need a Griffin iMic, but can't really figure out why...

Help!

Thanks!

torie,

the zero cost option is to overdub the second part. Record the first part, play it back via headphones for the second player to listen to, record the second part on another track ( the second player could be you again of course ). Then mix the two tracks together to taste. The process can be repeated many times in order to create complex arrangements.

The next cheapest option would be some sort of audio mixer. Look at some of the very cheap Behringer mixers, they start at under £50. You can choose one that has an appropriate number of inputs and mix them all together into one stereo feed to plug into your Mac.

After that, you're getting into quite expensive solutions, with multi-channels audio interfaces. Look through this sound forum for more information if that's the way you might be thinking of going.

AlanAudio,
Thanks for that.. but would like to record the whole band at the same time. So will look into the mixer option... and hunt around these forums as well.

I'm a bit of an idiot when it comes to this technical stuff - so get confused easily!

I'm afraid I'm going to blow up my speakers on the powerbook if I put the music straight into it....!

t0rie

torie,

what sort of music ?
Which instruments ?
What do you want to do with the finished results ?
What would you rather spend - time & effort, or money ?

It needn't be difficult, nor does it have to be technically challenging.

I'm not sure what you mean about the music blowing up the speakers - It won't, but the built-in speakers won't do justice to the music. Maybe you were being self deprecating about your musical efforts.

Hey Alan
So I tried to take the powerbook to the rehearsal studio and just let the computer record but it completely overloaded the mic (kinda expected that!). So it's just overly fuzzy... (does that make sense?) I tried turning down the level that the built in mic would input to the lowest, but still no joy...

Unfortunately, the PA that was in the room was just for the vocals, so plugging the powerbook direct into the PA didn't work.

The music is punk, and we're trying to record the guitar, bass, drums and vocals.

I thought about perhaps getting a microphone (via ebay, of course) and just setting that up in the room hooked up to the powerbook - think that would work?

I did figure out how to get the powerbook NOT to playback while recording, so at least I don't have to worry bout blowing the speakers! heh!

t0rie

torie,

if you're going to use just one microphone, bear in mind that it will either need to be a USB microphone, or will need to be pre-amplified before feeding it into the Mac's line input socket, or else you'll need to use some sort of external audio interface.

Recording a band with just one microphone is possible, but the results are likely to be disappointing. It will depend on how well balanced all the elements of the band sound at that precise point in the room. It may sound OK to your ears, but microphones 'hear' in a subtly different way to ears and the results can be unpredictable.

As you've discovered, the PA feed is most certainly not the thing to tap into if you want to record a band. The PA only needs to amplify stuff that's too quiet, so stuff like drums or amplified guitars doesn't need much amplification. As a result, you get a mix with no balls.

If you want to record a special session, you could try tapping into the PA mixer, but making sure that everything is properly mic'ed up and mixed properly for recording- listing on headphones or a speaker outside of the performing room. What you hear that way is what goes to the Mac.