The title is appropriate, you fucking idiot. Use The Fucking Search Function

I'm just playin'.Forget about getting some magical advice from steve or anybody else. Just borrow what gear you can and start hacking away. You will learn more by trial and error than you will through one vague thread. Look for info on mic placement; that's the most important thing.

I'd say dummies, but anything that involves anything with buttons and knobs makes my head spin so therefore, complete fucking idiots.Anyway, I wanted to record a demo of an industrial project I've been working on with a friend - vocals, guitars, synth and a drum machine. Neither of us (even when we pool our money) can afford studio time cause the cost of studio time in Sydney or anywhere on the east coast of Australia is fucking ridiculous. So we decided to DIY, but neither of us knows how to record other than some stuff I've played with on GarageBand, I decided here would be the best place to ask given our shared love for Big Black, Shellac and Jesus Lizard.- What exactly would we need? I can possibly borrow or buy a shitty 4 track if that would do the job. And we tend to record a lot of stuff at low volume anyway - for some reason it makes it sound better when you turn it up.- Is there anything else to it other than hitting record and hoping we don't screw up? If so, can someone (obviously Steve's opinion would be the best, but I'll take any good advice I can get) give me a general idea of what we need to do?Basically the only idea for this is to get something on record so we can start playing a few gigs and sell some music.

i'm sure there are people in sydney who can record you cheaply with better quality than you're going to be able to achieve on your own any time soon. do you know anyone at all in the sydney music community? surely someone can point you in the way of some person with a home setup who can do a reasonable job.i have a smallish setup in brisbane, and i know a bunch of other people with similar sorts of setups up here. i'm also aware of a bunch of people in melbourne who do the project studio thing. i'm not aware of anyone in sydney specifically, but i know they're there.

The important thing is trial and error--as well as the learning curve. There's no quick or easy way to get to the level of being great, and it can be easy to get frustrated at how shitty some of the first attempts at recording can be.Get accustomed to the fact that there will be alot of shitty recordings and alot of shitty songs, and that there will also be some things that you end up liking. Be objective with yourself as to what you like and what you don't like, try to step outside of yourself and throw away what you don't like, and keep what it is that you do like. I say this because there's no gear---not even proper studios--that will be able to get you to what you want to hear, unless you develop a keen ear out of what you objectively want to hear out of yourself. When you've got that down, then the gear comes second, it's just a matter of capturing what's there and what you want. Digital gear is so good now, that if you know what you want to hear, it's just a matter of putting the right ideas into it....and it depends on how much you want to spend, and how extensive you want to go. If you go too small, you may be creatively constricted and frustrated with the lack of options; if you go too big, you may get frustrated with too many options that you don't know how to use. I remember when I got my first digital multitrack about 10 years ago--the manual was 3/4 or so of an inch thick, and that was just an 8 track!

Fish wrote:- What exactly would we need? I can possibly borrow or buy a shitty 4 track if that would do the job. And we tend to record a lot of stuff at low volume anyway - for some reason it makes it sound better when you turn it up.What kind of recording equipment you'll need depends on... hmm... a few things, actually. If you're unfamiliar with recording equipment in general, then evaluate who between the two of you has a better knack for learning the gear you get your hands on. If it's a cassette four track you're thinking of, buy an excess of blank cassettes so you can fuck things up over and over until you get the process just right. Learn by doing.Don't overwhelm yourself, Ryan said it best above, "... if you go too big, you may get frustrated with too many options that you don't know how to use."If you have a super-non-existent budget, you can pick up a couple things from RadioShack. (Do you have RadioShack in Australia? If that sounds like a dumb question, it's only because I've never been there.) Cheap mics and cheap cables for now.Fish wrote:- Is there anything else to it other than hitting record and hoping we don't screw up? If so, can someone (obviously Steve's opinion would be the best, but I'll take any good advice I can get) give me a general idea of what we need to do?If you screw up, rewind the tape and start over.

I'm in Sydney, will record you cheap (4-track or 8-track, your choice), and/or teach you some stuff if you want. If you're interested pm me.edit: damn, this thread is pretty old, I didn't realise