Review, Sychronize and Execute!

Let's review what I have so far.

To start with I have my instruments that I wish to record; electric guitar, acoustic guitar, bass, keyboard and of course vocals. "What, no drums?" you ask. Unfortunately I'm not much of a drummer but I can program a mean drum machine, so to cover the percussive side of my songs I will be using a 24bit version of the Alesis SR-16. A great and reliable recording tool not to mention writing aid, perfect for small home studios such as mine. Yes there are some better sounding DM's out on the market and within a decent price range, however I am very familiar and comfortable with the programming of this machine. Besides I own two of them so I might as well make use of them.

After the instruments comes the analog to digital converter (please refer to my "To Begin, Let's Convert" post). I will be using the Tascam US-122 for this task. All instruments and vocals will plug directly or indirectly (I will explain this in a later post) into this device for transfer to..........

.....the computer (see "Give Me Power, Give Me Speed" post). Which will in turn record and store all that is performed in the form of WAV files to the hard drive. I say WAV files because it is the most common format used in home recording mostly because files can be saved in 24bit. Most likely you will have a choice as to what format to save as. Personally I recommend WAV for it's universal recognition especially between Mac and PC platforms.

Which now brings us to the brains of the operation, The Recording Software. This is the force that will sort all the hoopla out, make some sense of it and tell it what to do, where to go and how to do it. Where sound engineers once had no choice but to be offspring of octopi like creatures, with eight limbs hovering over a 64 track mixing console operating dozens of sliders, knobs and dials at once. There is now only a computer keyboard, two hands and LCD Monitor to work all the same magic. Ah technology, gotta love it.
There are literally dozens upon dozens of recording software packages out there the most popular being Digidesign's Pro Tools. And while this is an exceptional piece of program coding, I do not believe it is the only choice you have when it comes to professional sounding home recordings. For this project I will be using Steinberg's Cubase 5 - VST32. Once again I can only say that it is a software that I am familiar and comfortable with and is in my price range. Time will tell if the results are what I am looking for in a finished product.
Note that the software image I have inserted is Cubase LE not Cubase 5. This is the software that came with my Tascam converter and I took some screen shots for example. As soon as I start my recording projects I will post some Cubase 5 screen shots. They are very similar programs in look but LE is a bit more simplistic in feel and abilities. Not a bad program to learn on by any means.

I will get into the nitty gritty of using the recording software in later posts as I start my projects. There is a lot to this bundle of goodness. Not only do you have the power of a 32 Track recording console at your fingertips but buried beneath is a digital sequencer able to control many things at once, making live digital recording a wonderful MIDI experience. And you thought I was crazy for using a drum machine.