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Going Digital |
If your band hasn't gone digital, you're probably throwing money away. The same money you spend on a few days' recording could buy a state of the art digital recording studio - and once you've got the hang of it, you can use it to make entire albums. It's time to go digital. Mac Daddies I'm going to focus on rock music and PCs here, because that's what I know about. That doesn't mean Apple Macs aren't great for music - Radiohead's last few albums and videos were made primarily on PowerBooks, and ProTools-equipped Macs are a big part of recording studios - but if you're a guitar band, new to this digital lark and on a tight budget, a PC is the best option. We'll add articles about Macs and music at a later date. What you need Even a cheap PC will be fine, but watch the spec: a big hard disk is essential (at least 20Gb; we're running at 40Gb and space is tight already). As a rule of thumb, each track of a song will be about 60Mb in size for a three minute song, so an eight-track song will take up 480Mb of disk space. Say twelve songs to an album, and you're looking at almost 6Gb of disk space. Twelve-track recording means nearly 9Gb of disk space for your album, and that's before you add different mixes, demos and the hardcore porn your girlfriend doesn't know you've been downloading. You also need lots of memory. PCs are still being sold with just 64Mb of RAM; 128Mb should be considered a bare minimum, but get 256Mb if you're thinking of multitrack recording. Processor speed isn't that important - we've done stuff on a 500MHz machine - but try to get the fastest one you can afford; at the time of writing, 1.4GHz Pentiums are plummeting in price. In addition to the PC itself, you'll need decent speakers (ideally with a subwoofer) and a decent sound card. The SoundBlaster Live! Platinum and Guillemot Maxi Studio ISIS are both safe bets. Expect to pay up to £200, but it's worth it: both cards use breakout boxes, which give you additional inputs that you can use to plug guitars or microphones into. Don't even think about using Windows NT or 2000 for making music, because hardware support is poor. Your best bet is Windows 98 or the unlovely Windows Me; once it's been out for a few months, Windows XP (Home or Professional edition, it doesn't matter) will be better still. However, if you rush out to buy XP the day it ships, don't be surprised if you have to wait a few months before the manufacturers release drivers for your sound card and other bits and bobs. Where to buy it Never, ever buy from PC World - they are agents of Satan, sent to this world to destroy us all. Or at least, to charge ridiculous prices for bog-standard PCs. And your friendly neighbourhood PC bucket shop isn't the place to go unless you're prepared to get stuck into computer configuration and repairs on a regular basis. Get a credit card, get on the Internet, and buy a decent machine from Gateway, Dell, IBM or Compaq (other manufacturers may make good kit too, but these are the ones we know and like, because they're well-built and very reliable. The parts tend to be high quality too, so everything's nice and fast). Most online PC companies offer a range of machines at specific prices: £699, £799, £899 and £999. The kit you can get for around a grand is frighteningly powerful. Concentrate on the important stuff - a bigger hard disk is more useful than a bundle of software that you'll never use. Bundled printers? You can buy them separately if you need one. Play around with different packages and configurations and concentrate on the big three: processor speed, memory and disk space. If you can't get 256Mb RAM, 40Gb disk space and a Pentium 1.3GHz or faster for less than a grand, you're not trying hard enough. Don't buy a Celeron processor or a notebook PC. What to put on it The choice of software is entirely up to you, and you'll usually get some free stuff with your sound card. Different musicians choose different programs; we use Sonic Foundry's Acid Pro 3, which copes happily with loops and with live recordings; for multitracking, Cool Edit Pro is well regarded. Jo Squander won't shut up about Logic Audio (which is complicated but clever), Tim Bozilla raves about Making Waves, others go for Cubase VST. Our advice? Download lots of demos to see what's best for you. Then go and buy Acid Pro, 'cause it rules :-) Good places to go for more info / reviews / opinions are Computer Music (www.computermusic.co.uk), Intermusic (www.intermusic.com) and Harmony Central (www.harmonycentral.com). What to do with it Computer recording can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be. By way of example, I'll explain how we recorded the Littlest Album version of See You Fall, which you can download from our MP3s page.
Sounds easy? That's because it was. The whole process - from downloading the drum loop to having the song up on our Web site - took three days, and most of that time was spent faffing about and re-recording my acoustic guitar parts when I kept making mistakes. No matter what music program you choose, it takes a while to get used to it; it also takes a while to get to grips with effects such as compressors, EQs and so on. But it's well worth the effort: we already had the PC, so the cost of creating our wee digital studio was just software - around £300 - and another £150 for a CD burner so we can make our own CDs too. Had we spend the same amount in a studio, we'd have got one day of recording; instead, we've got a studio that we can use whenever we want and a CD burner we can use to put out records whenever we feel like it. Think about that the next time you spend £600 on a demo that you're not entirely happy with. Comment added September 2001: It's been pointed out to us by more knowledgeable types that PC recording is still no substitute for professional - and expensive - studio equipment. However, if you're an unsigned band it's still a very effective halfway point for those of you who find digital portastudios too limited or expensive, but who can't afford to shell out stacks of cash on recording time. © 2001 Gary Marshall. All rights reserved.
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