Recording: Audio Interface

I posted in December about my initial experiments in recording my guitar playing on my laptop. I ran a guitar amp's "line out" to capture an electric guitar, and used the laptop's voice mic to capture an acoustic guitar. It worked, though the quality was not wonderful, and I was able to record a simple multi-track project that I was able to make into an MP3.

That was basically step 1 - proof of concept. I was certain that it's possible to capture better quality sound, and my Internet research indicated that the first necessity was a USB audio interface. Instead of running amps or microphones directly into the laptop (with its rudimentary sound card), everything plugs into the audio interface unit, which then plugs (via USB) into the laptop.

Musician's Friend has any number of these, and I had a few in mind when I went into Guitar Center with Eric's (Christmas gift) gift card in my pocket. After a discussion with an employee there, I walked out with a Tascam TrackPack SE - an audio interface bundled with a nice microphone, closed-ear headphones, and Cubase LE5 software.

Cubase is an alternative to Audacity - the recording/editing software. It apparently has many more features, but is also considerably more complicated than Audacity, and I simply haven't had the time to go through tutorials and get a feel for it.

I've set up the audio interface, installed drivers, etc., and done a little playing with it, but I still felt like something was missing.

Once again, Guitar Center comes to the rescue. I'm on their e-mail list, and get a list of coupons/promotions just about every day. I noticed that they hold free recording workshops on Saturday mornings - a four week course in home recording with your laptop that repeats every month. Part 1 was yesterday, and I thought that would be perfect - rather than continue to fumble around, I could go and watch someone who knows what they're doing.

I'm very glad I went.

(To be continued)