WorshipCentral

our best bet is to go with a recording interface. If all you want to be alt to do is guitar and vox then you could get a 2 input one so you could record them a the same time on seperate tracks. There is another thread in the Anything else section about mic choice.

I think the best thing to do would be to go into your local audio tech store and tell them yur needs. They should help you out. But it isnt necisaraly the cheepest thing to get yourself into.

Hope that helps

Iain

Hi James,

I'd just stick to something very simple. I use a Mac Laptop for songwriting and demo'ing for the bands at church, so just run a basic mic (SM58) into an interface which is just a box with 2 mic/line inputs and a USB connection. That bit of kit is about £30. Then I use a simple program like Garageband. My advice would be to keep it really simple and put your energy into the songwriting rather than making the track sound amazing. That's usually a waste of time, and tends to distract from crafting and thinking hard about the song craft. Also, people are less keen to change a song when they've spent four days perfecting an arrangement and recording lots of parts.

Al

"That bit of kit is about £30"

What on earth are you using at thea price al?

I’d agree with the keep it simple. You can drop tons of money and not see much for it! Another option, more on the high end, is the mBox from digidesign. Since they have a version 2 now the version 1 mBox is quite a bit cheaper, plug two mics in and you’re off. But that is still a little more spendy than what Al and Ian are talking about. Maybe not worth it.

Another vote for keep it simple - I use an external sound card (don't get me started on laptop's internal cards!) and an Yamaha MG102C that deals with all the balancing then chucks it out to the soundcard. In terms of mics I just use a couple of cheap but great for the money condensors - pair of EM700's for Thomann.
That said, even that might be overkill - I've got the desk in there beacuse I've done a fair bit of classical recording as well where I've been scrutinising over every detail until I've got something right and for things like that I prefer that extra bit of control, as well as the fact I use it elsewhere. If you want the cheapest (best in this case?) option I'd go with what Al suggested.

Michael

Hey, i would again echo the keeping it simple option, i use a Samsung CO1U condenser microphone to do my recordings. It costs only about up to £50 (i got it a while ago for just over £40) and is pretty good quality, and it can cope with vocals and guitar. I also use a free program to record the sound called Audacity, which works great. The mic also is really good for podcasting, if you're into that.

Hope that helps!
Josh

Haven't used the USB version but teh samson (not samsung :P) C01 did surprise me for the price. The only thing I've heard with it is that sometimes it can be non-trivial to get the computer to see it! And Audacity is good on the software front but it's not as flexible as cubase, so if you have already got that / that's what you're used to I'd stick with it. I use Audacity though :)

Al/Iain/anyone else who knows:
What examples of these recording interface boxes/thingies do you know of so that i could have a look at them? And Al, plz share what this £30 piece of kit is lol!
God Bless
James

I don't know where Al's £30 one is, but if you go to studiospares.com, navigate to computer zone and select audio interfaces there's a fair few there. Lots of them will probably be out of your price range though!

Michael

Mine's an old M-Audio simple interface - you can pick them up on eBay for between £20-£50 (depending how much of an eBay hawk you are!). Something like this: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/M-Audio-MobilePre-USB-P...