Recording Workshop

As I mentioned in my last post on recording, I learned that Guitar Center gives free recording workshops on Saturday mornings. It's a four-part workshop, which repeats every month. Part 1 ("Overview on studio setup and capturing audio") was last Saturday, and sounded like just what I need, so I signed up.

Two GC employees ran the demo/workshop - one running the controls and the other playing a guitar. Their setup was an electric guitar, but no amplifier - the guitar ran into an audio interface (exactly like the Tascam unit I now have), and from there into a Macintosh running the GarageBand software. Also attached to the audio interface were a pair of studio monitors (for sound output.)

GarageBand can model a huge number of different amps, settings, and effects. In other words, you can use your Mac as a guitar amp - simply amazing.

GarageBand also has clips and loops you can use. They set up a project and imported a drum loop in. Then they used the multi-track recording capability to record first a rhythm guitar track, and then a guitar solo on top of that. I've done that using Audacity, but the ability to bring in drum loops was eye-opening.

They didn't demo this, but the alternative to using GarageBand as your amp is to record your actual amplifier. You just set up the microphone in front of your amp, and record that.

This was a very valuable session. It was nice to get some confirmation that I'm basically on the right track. But it also showed me how much more there is.

I grabbed Darling Wife's MacBook last Sunday when she was out and fired up GarageBand - playing with some of the amp models. But as cool as GarageBand is, I can't use her laptop as my recording workstation.

I suspect that Cubase has a number of the GB features, just not in as user-friendly a format. I need to figure that out.

The Guitar Center free workshops are highly recommended. Yes, of course they're trying to sell gear, but they're also genuinely trying to help people get set up to record.