Guitar Technology, Gears, Artists News and product reviews

For those of you who have tried to do your own home recordings (without the proper tools) I can totally relate to that. I used to do my recordings using these Sony ‘mini-compo’ thingy. It has two cassette decks? (Yeah those days, it’s cool when you impress the ladies with the compilation of all this popular songs into a cassette and give it to them)

Anyways, what I did was record the drums part on one tape, then played it on the next deck and press record and voila! you have like sort of 2 tracks after you done and repeat the steps until you done all the parts. But the results were all the same. Crappy results. Check this old demo of mine as an example:

Now if you want ‘acceptable’ results, I must say you need the proper tools. PC/laptop recording was not something that I could afford those days. But it’s pretty normal now to do home recordings and I’m pretty excited since now you get to be more creative than ever. Of course it’s not advisable to just plugin your microphone or guitar directly into your laptop ‘mic input’ or ‘line input’. It just doesn’t give you good results. Why? Don’t ask me..:)

Here’s a great solution. What you need is a ‘Audio Interface’. This thing will convert your guitar or mic signal into something that can be received by your PC/laptop. What you get is a sound quality that is 100 times better than what I mentioned earlier. I currently am using a product from M-Audio called the Fast Track USB. Here’s what they say about this product in their website:

If you make music with GarageBand or other software recording programs, Fast Track USB is the easiest way to record your guitar with professional results. Just connect Fast Track USB to the USB port of your computer and you’re ready to rock. Fast Track USB has an input for instruments like guitar, bass and keyboards, plus a microphone input for recording vocals or other acoustic sounds. The included GT Player Express software gives you killer effects and virtual stomp boxes so you don’t need any other gear to sound great. GT Player Express also plays standard audio files like AAC, MP3 and WAV that let you learn and jam along with your favorite music at variable speeds. Fast Track USB is the easy and professional way to add guitar, vocals, and more to your computer music experience.

The best part is, it comes with GT Player Express software where you can have a computer based guitar effects! Plus, you also be getting a professional software bundle including Ableton Live Lite. All this if you purchase from the authorized dealer of M-Audio. Here’s a sample I’ve done using this little baby for one of my songs:

You should check it out. It retails at $129.95 MSRP. More info at M-Audio official website

*By the way, get your term life insurance if you haven’t got one.

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