Saturday, November 11, 2006

computer as recording studio

I have now made a great step into the tech world. At the advice of Robin Andrea, verified by my musical-audio friend Fred, I downloaded Audacity, a freeware program that makes digital recording and editing easy for dummies like me. I had thrown away our cheap computer microphone, so I had to call The Hermit while he was errand-running in Duluth and tell him to pick up an adapter so I could hook up my amateur musician microphone (had to look up on the Web to find out what it is and what it does) to the computer. Apparently we hit upon the right connection because I got the mic up and running. Before I could drag a guitar out, though, the kids had learned the basic commands and were recording themselves. They had a blast.

Oh well, there's always tomorrow. The drawback is that the computer is in the "porch", while I normally practice in the bedroom, on the other side of the house (which isn't a terribly large distance). The advantage is that my microphone picks up very little peripheral noise (video games, shouting matches, etc.) So I could maybe set up in front of the computer with the guitar or mandolin and record a few songs. Or I could even record a guitar track, mandolin track, flute track, and voice track separately if I so desire. This is going to be so FUN!

I am exploring options for sharing my musical experiments with you, my blogging family. I'll probably have to eventually pay for my own site to host mp3 files. We'll see. In the meantime, I'm excited to have recording ability again!

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

That sounds so fun! I can't wait to hear you!

R.Powers said...

New toys rock!

Anonymous said...

I am looking forward to listening!

Deb said...

I found a solution to the location problem; The Hermit has a laptop for work that has a built in microphone. I tried it today and got fairly good sound recording my mandolin. Also looked into Web hosting; I think I can afford the $6.95 a month. Now all I need is a catchy domain name...

This new hobby is going to suck up way more time than blogging, I'm afraid!

Anonymous said...

deb - that's awesome and very exciting!

i'm no pro, but it sounds like you'd be the perfect candidate for podcasting and i'd love to help. shot me an e-mail (greg DOT seitz AT gmail DOT com) before you spend any money. podcasting is huge right now and, like any internet fad, it means there's lots of ways to do things cheaper or free.

MojoMan said...

This sounds way cool. It would be wonderful to hear one of those magical moments you described a few posts back. I have to believe there is - or will soon be - a way to include audio on blogs.

Anonymous said...

Well, now I'm all impatient and curious. Looking forward to your (imminent?) broadcasts!

robin andrea said...

Deb-- I am so glad that worked out for you. Now I can't wait to hear some of your flute and mandolin playing. Recording does eat up a lot of time, but that's probably a good thing during the long winter nights.