Knock, Knock...

[C. Hanson]

Hi everyone.
Ok, this is my first post here. I usually hang around poetry forums (yeah, I know…) but am keen to rediscover some musical interests.

I live in Australia, about 4 hours drive west of Sydney. Play in a couple of weekend bands (guitar in a duo, using midi/MP3 files; bass in a pretty good, loud rock band; bass in a country/middle-of-road band; occasional gig on piano in a cocktail bar/restaurant). Also have a background in brass bands, school musicals (I'm a teacher)—so, generally an all-rounder.

I used to love recording on my old Tascam 4-track tape machine, and at one point had what I thought were some pretty decent songs (at least, to suit my taste). About 10 yrs ago, bought the Logic Pro Isis system for my old Win98 computer. They didn't, to my knowledge, put out any new drivers after that, so I stuck with that setup for years (still got it out the back). Got sick of clicking from screen to screen, with all the excess capacity of computer systems, so opted for a basic stand-alone Tascam DP01FX-CD, which is really easy to use, but, alas, only allows 2 inputs at a time.

So, I'm selling that and buying a Yamaha AW1600 to get myself back into this game more fully—I really prefer stand-alone, hard-disk recorders—and I want to do some decent recordings like I used to, but with newer songs, whether or not they lead to anything.

I've missed it.
Just flicking through some of the pages and sub-forums here, it looks pretty good. I'll probably do a lot of reading before I make a tool of myself.
Thanks in advance for all the tips.

[Hippofish]

Welcome to the forum. I am new here too but I noticed your background with recording is similar to mine. I too was broken in with a Tascam 4-track recorder. I also thought that, well at the time, my recordings were pretty decent. I have since moved on to other stand alone systems and then into the computer age from which I will never return.

I am sure that the Yamaha stand alone is a wise investment but make sure you at least check out what is available on computers these days. They are MUCH more versatile and user friendly then they used to be. I was one of those people who thought he would NEVER step into the modern age with computer based recording, but once I grabbed my first mouse and was able to click and drag a mistake out of the way, I was hooked for good.

Again welcome to the forum and we hope to hear from you about your experiences with whatever you choose to use. It's all in the end result. As long as you get the recording you want then it doesn't matter what system you use. Just have fun with it and create some music, then post it and let us listen to it. We would love to hear it.

Michael

[C. Hanson]

Thanks for the welcome, Michael.
Just to clarify--I'm not dismissive of computer recording at all, and realise the potential for editing, mastering and all that, which may go beyond the hard-disk recorder's capabilities. In fact, I'm keen to try it (finances allowing)
I just like to have real, live faders to jiggle and real knobs to turn.

Chris

[Hippofish]

Oh yeah I hear ya with the knobs to jiggles and sliders to slide. I still can't stand that part of digital recording. It does take away from the experience, at least for me, when I slide the mouse up and down on the graphically displayed fader in the program. You do lose that touchy/tactile part of recording.

If you want though, you can use a nice mixer to input your stuff into the computer and then you will have the best of both worlds. LOL.

Michael