So this whole Guitar Idol 2008 thing got me motivated to record myself.  I know I won't win but it was the inspiration I needed to take my finger out my bum and give this recording stuff a proper college try.

So I grabbed my Roland 30 + Francis' Ibanez (that I'm borrowing until I can afford to buy it ) and headed to my laptop in the lounge.  And then the fun began.

Audacity is a pretty decent program so I decided to give it a go.  It's easy enough to import a backing track, add another track, hit record and just jam.  Much like the BR600 in ease of use but without the drums and maybe other stuff I'm too dof to miss

Problem comes in that that mic-in on my laptop that I was using to record through is crap.  I've read on some Linux forums now that it's "too sensitive" for the output that would be coming from my amp.  So here I sit with a recording that has loud, blunt, bad guitar playing all over it

I tried all sorts of things to lower the input level of the mic but it just didn't work.  I've never tried this in Windows so I have no idea if it's a Linux problem or if there really is an issue with recording using a laptop mic-jack goodie.

In my naivety, I decided to give Ardour a shot.  It's apparently much better recording software and, as soon as I opened it, I could see why -- it's COMPLEX!  I eventually figured out the basics (add track, select input, arm track, record)

But the same problem was there.

What have I learned?  That I should probably get a decent external sound card if I want to record on this laptop, using a direct line from my amp.  Oh and Ardour is AWESOME but very complex and will probably take me the better part of five years to learn to use

I don't have much dosh to be spending right now so that probably marks the end of my foray into recording for a little while but I'm hoping that this post will inspire someone to download a free copy of Ardour (not sure if it's available for Windows) and give it a go.  They say it's designed to be used by pros so my appeal goes out to Alan to try it and give us some feedback ;D

Well, that was fun.  Back to work now

About Ardour - I don't have a Nix box. So I can't try it out.

I was thinking of mic'ing my amp up but all I have is a USB headset and while that's fine for recording ideas, it's not so good for much else.

Will have to wait on some bucks before I carry on with this.

Maybe I can come to CT with my laptop and you can show me how to work this stuff.  Then I can post videos here for everyone else.

I think affordable recording solutions are very much in demand.

I may have an old Shure 515SD (similar to a SM57) somewhere. I was saving it for a good cause (but you'll do ;D). Only thing is I can't remember seeing it for a few years, so no promises. I'll check to see if I can find it and let you know.

OK, found the soundcard I'll be using for this project.  See the "soundcards" topic to see how I found it. (Thanks Mr M!)



Should cost between R300 and R400 and give "good enough" results.  Definitely compatible with Linux.  And so the fun begins

Once you have Ubuntu Studio installed and working properly (remember to reboot after the above), check this link out for some help...

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuStudio

I'll be posting my own progress here as I go along, but for this in a hurry, go ahead, check it out!

OK!  I'm finally at a point where I know EXACTLY what I'm doing and need to do in order for this Linux-recording stuff to work.  I've learned a lot about sound-recording (in general) which I'm sure will be useful on any platform and also lots about how sound things best work in Linux.

A quick highlight of how things fit together and where the challenges lie...

jackd - This is an incredibly powerful piece of software which allows you to "patch" the output of one program (or physical source) into the input of another.  As described above, you can "plug" your guitar into your effects program, and then into a specific track on your recording software.  You can also "plug" a drum machine's output into another track and a synth program into a 3rd track.  (Hope I'm keeping count correctly )

Problems...

1.  INCREDIBLY hard to figure out the first time around.  I'm an advanced Linux user/admin, I'd hate to see what a newbie would go through trying to figure this all out!

2.  Only supports 1 card at a time.  Big problem.  This SoundTech LightSnake acts as a soundcard.  So, as things stand, I can only record from my cable, or playback something I've already recording.  Definitely no monitoring!  Huge pain in the ass.

Solution:  Alsa (soundcard drivers for linux) supports running 2 cards as 1 virtual card.  If I ever get my configuration right, this could work.  Although the cards won't be perfectly in-sync, it should be good enough to monitor what I'm playing as I'm recording.

Other than the above issues, I actually love jackd.  Powerful bit of software ONCE you figure out all the kinks.  (This tends to be the case with Linux software in the beginning.  Things usually smooth out once the software gets a bit more mainstream usage.)

ardour - Fantastic recording software!  It's modeled on professional software available out there and it confuses the heck out of me but not because it's badly designed, just because i'm new to recording.  I finally understand how it works and it's quite powerful.  Has nice features like a Click Track and, erm, other stuff I don't understand yet

Can definitely see myself falling in love with this software.  I could use something simple like Audacity (and I may yet) but I'd like to see if I can manage with something more pro-orientated.  I figure it will be good practise for when I'm working on industry-standard software, later on.

hydrogen - Groovy drum machine.  Very easy to use.  You create "patterns", which are generally single bars of drumming.  And then you string them together to form a "song".  Very easy to use.  You can click with your mouse or use your keyboard.  Sounds are very good.  Very authentic, to my untrained ears anyway.

ZynAddSubFX - Virtual synth keyboard goodie.  Very cool.  Plenty of stuff available in the instrument bank.  I can see myself creating great backing tracks with this baby.  Some of the sounds are very authentic while others are absolute rubbish.  No idea, yet, if it supports instrument-bank files available on the net.  Will investigate as time moves on.

Jack Rack - Supposed to be a real-time guitar effects (stack-like) program.  Haven't had a chance to test it out yet, thanks to my above issues with jackd.  Seems to have a wide range of sounds and tweaking available.  Time will tell how good this is.  User-interface is crap.

Creox - More or less same thing as Jack Rack but much less versatile.  I've actually played with this one before but couldn't get decent performance out of it -- this was before I set up my machine to run with a real-time kernel and before I understood anything about jackd.  Will post more after I test this properly.

That pretty much covers everything you'd use in the beginning when recording on Linux.  I'll post more once I can actually record and monitor what I'm recording.  Will also post links to sites that have been helpful.

Comments on the above?

I hear the Micro$loth is going to stop selling XP this year - So I'm saving this threat for when I migrate to Ubuntu, because I sure as hell never going to use Vista to do music again.