Several of my friends a few days ago asked me, “What am I using to record music?” They were listening to some of my tunes. They liked them and wanted to talk about the gear that I used. Uh, was it difficult? How much did it cost? Various other sundry items. Uh, so I thought I’d do this really quickly for them so they could see what I’m doing as I’m doing it, but also more importantly in this video look at the bare minimum gear you would need and an idea of how much it would cost to get started. A few
things. I’m going to make some assumptions. Number one, I’m going to assume you have a computer and I’ll assume that it’s not terrible. That’s going to be important the older your computer gets. If you have a computer that was made in the last seven or eight years and it’s not terrible, it’s probably going to work for what we’re doing, uh, because the software we’re using isn’t going to, uh, punish it too badly. Uh, you’ll also need instruments other than a drum kit. Uh, I’m assuming
you want to record these instruments, whatever they are. I’m going to talk about what I do, which is going to be guitar and bass, uh, with some vocals. And uh I’m going to talk about what I do about drums. To be clear, I know nothing about mking acoustic drums. It’s probably the hardest part of any of these recordings that anyone’s ever going to do, and I’m not even going to touch on it. If you want to know more about mking and recording acoustic drums, I would go to Glenn Fricker’s
YouTube channel, and I’ll link to it below. So, assuming you have a computer and assuming you have instruments and know how to play them at all, we’re going to move forward and I’m going to talk about how to get a starter kit for home recording as inexpensively as possible. Here we go. The first thing we’re going to talk about is your digital audio workstation or DAW. There are a bunch of them out there and if you’ve done any searching at all, somebody somewhere has said, “Well,
ProTools is the industry standard or whatever.” Pro Tools also costs money and it’s very computer inensive. I use Reaper and Reaper is not expensive. In fact, you can download it for free and use it for free as long as you would like. If you are going to use it and you do like it, please pay for it. but you don’t have to. And uh it’s a very very popular DAW. It has a whole lot of free plugins and we’re going to talk about that here in a minute. So, let’s go and we’re going to
download Reaper real quick. Let’s see. I’m using Windows. We’re going to download it here. I’ve already got it downloaded. Super. Now, install it. And once you install it, and I’m not going to do that now because it would totally blow up what I’m doing. Once you install it, you will have your digital audio workstation and it will be free. As I said, Reaper has a lot of free plugins. And so go to reaper.fmplugs, links in the description, and download the plugin files. You can take a tour of the plugins.
It’ll show you the various ones that are in here. There’s a lot of good stuff. Uh these are uh don’t be fooled by the fact that they’re free. They’re very good and uh we’ll talk later in another video about how to set them up and what to do, but go ahead and download them and install them. The instructions on how to install them are here and I will leave you to it. Go ahead and do that now. Now, we’re going to talk about audio interfaces. If you are brand new, which if you’re come if you’re this far in,
you’re probably brand new. Uh, this acts kind of like a sound card, but it’s external from your computer. It’s a little box you can use to plug your guitars into, plug a mic into. I use one now. Anytime you see someone online talking on a video, they’re probably using one. And they are very important, but you don’t have to spend a lot of money to get good results depending on what you’re trying to do. If you are only recording yourself and you’re recording one instrument at a
time, you don’t need to get a complicated audio interface. But remember, this is a fairly sensitive device. And if you get one that is dirt cheap, they can go down as low as $60, you’re going to start having problems. So, I got I’m going to talk about a mid-priced one. We’re looking at the Pressonus Audio Box USB 96 audio interface. Now, as you can see, it’s got two inputs in the front. We can look at the back. Go look at it now before you buy it. I’ll put the link in the
description as with everything else. I’ll stop saying that now. All links are in the description for everything I talk about. Uh it’s $94.99. It is a fantastic starter uh audio interface. I use a Focus right one, but it’s no more complicated than this one. It’s got two inputs. It’s uses powered speakers, the whole thing. So, uh, as far as how much to spend, and you don’t need to use this audio box. But again, if you go less expensive than this, it’s going to be it’s not
going to be worth your time. You’re going to have some problems. The installation could be rough. And I could be wrong. If you’re if somebody out there has a $50 audio interface that they’re using and it’s fantastic, let me know. I’d like to know about that and we can update this information. But the cheapest I would go would be this one and uh it should be all you need. Just check in the description and go look that over. As far as installations and so forth, that’s going to be a little
bit more complicated. We’re not going to talk about it here just yet, but there will be a part two to the uh the video and I’ll talk about installing all this stuff. Now, we’re going to talk about studio monitors. As far as where to spend money, this is going to be the place if you’re just getting crazy and want to buy something you should spend some money on. I’m going to assume since we’re all beginners here that we’re not going to buy incredible studio monitors. So, as far as an affordable monitor that
will get the job done, the M Audio BX5 is great for its price range. I trying to be careful how I say that because monitors are very important and if you don’t want to spend money on monitors eventually you’re going to need to upgrade if you want to move on, get better, have better recordings, even perhaps progress to a progressive level or progress to a professional level. You’re going to need better monitors than this. But for a just raw getting started, the BX5s are really good and
they’re very inexpensive. They’re $49.99 each. So for a h 100red bucks you can get two of them. And again, links below. If you don’t want to use studio monitors or you simply can’t afford them, then you can mix, you can record, mix, do various things with just headphones. That is not uh that’s not recommended. And again, if you’re going to spend money, studio monitors is a great place to spend it. If you can’t afford studio monitors, you can always get headphones. Not recommended, but in the beginning,
if this is all you can do, doing something’s better than doing nothing. So, these Behringer BH40s are just fine. They’re 50 bucks. They’re available at Sweetwater. They will do the job. Uh, studio monitors always preferred, but again, this is uh this is down and dirty. This is cheap and we’re gonna get something done with whatever we can afford. Let’s talk about drums. Again, we are not recording acoustic drums. I can’t and won’t learn how to do that. There’s other places for that. But
I do love programming drums. And if we want to save money and have great sounding drums, then the Extinction Level Event uh kit is fantastic. It’s on sale right now for $60. Apparently, it’s normally $120. It is available at Spectre Digital, and I highly recommend these. There’s a little bit of tweaking you’re going to have to go in, make some changes, uh turn some knobs, but there’s presets that you can use that’ll get you almost all the way there if you need it. So, uh if you want to save some money,
get a great kit. $60 cannot be beat. I also use Superior Drummer 3 and it is a little more expensive. Superior Drummer 3 is from Toon Track and it is crazy good. I love it. Uh, it’s got hundreds of drums, all kinds of expansions you can get, effects, mixing, crazy. It is as complicated as you want it to be. And again, it’s got some presets that are pretty good that you can deal with. Uh, it’s about $400 and that is what places it a little bit outside our uh starter kit. Um, and regardless, I also use
extension level event when I’m recording dependent upon what I’m doing. And if you’re into really heavy stuff, Extinction Level Event is definitely going to work. If you need access to a more diverse set of kits, you need some jazz, you need some pop, you maybe want something that sounds a little more country, you can do all that with Extinction Level, but you have to know how to make the adjustments yourself. Superior Drummer is going to have a different kit for each thing that you’re
looking to uh or for each different sound you’re trying to trying to create. So, if you want to spend $400, that’s fine. But our starter kit, I highly recommend Extinction Level Event. The amp modeler that I use more often than not is Line 6 Helix. I’ve got the hardware back there and I use it, but more often than not, I just throw the plug into a track and uh and take it from there. the uh Helix Native is what the plugin is called and it does almost anything that the hardware can do. And
if you’ve got a beefy computer, you’ll never have a problem and you won’t need the hardware. The hardware is great for live stuff or if you have an older guitar and need some extra pro or excuse me, an older computer and need some extra processing, it can be good for that. Right now, the uh Line 6 Helix Native is on sale at Sweetwater for 159 bucks. I unfortunately paid a lot more than that and didn’t realize it was so cheap. That’s why I’m throwing it in here. I am going to discuss a different
modeler, but I wanted to make you aware that not only this is what I use most of the time, and it is $240 off. So, think about that. Now, let’s talk about the one that I had planned on using today. If you know what you’re doing and you’ve been doing this a while, you’re laughing right now because I’m going to use amplification light. Uh, it is ridiculously simplistic. It uh is absolutely free forever. It’s tiny and although it’s not going to do a whole lot, it’s going to do a little bit
perfectly well. So, we’re going to use this when we make our recording. And we will. We’re going to use all of this gear. Um, but amplification light free entirely and ultra simplistic. And the reason why I want to stay simple is since we’ve never done anything like this before, I don’t want us to get lost in a bunch of knobs and buttons and a million different sounds. What we want to do is build a foundation. And this is simply the first brick of that foundation. And we’re going to keep it
super super simple. So, Amplification Light, download it, install it. The installation is going to be a little bit different. It doesn’t have a.exe file with it. So, you’re going to have to put it in the right folder, but don’t worry. It tells you exactly how to do that on the readme file that comes with this. If you have any problems finding that, just let me know and I will put it in the comments below. Never mind. I’m doing it now. I found a great video. It’s about 11 years old and it is how to install
this tiny little simple plugin. I’m putting the link below. I watched the video. It’s fine. Works perfect. I used it. I set it up. Everything’s great. Just use that. Lastly, we’re going to talk about a microphone. As you can see by this microphone, I am not using that microphone. This microphone is a little more expensive than that one. However, it works just fine because remember, none of us are uh platinum record selling producers or singers for that matter, more than likely. If you are,
you’re watching the wrong video. Immediately go do something else. You’re wasting your time. But if you’re not a platinum selling artist, the Mackie EM 91C will get you started. There are two items that we’ve talked about today where spending more money will actually dramatically improve the sound. This is going to be one of them. As far as how much to spend on a mic, anything over $400 is getting weird. And anything as cheap, that’s not a very nice word, anything as inexpensive as this,
uh, is probably going to have a, uh, a lesser result. If you’re going to spend money, this is one of the areas to spend it. The other area, of course, as we said, were studio monitors. Great monitors can get a much better sound. A better sound gives you a better idea of what you’re doing. On and on and on and on. So again, we’re just starting out and we’re going to get things moving as quickly as possible and the Mackie EM will help do that. So if you got nothing, this is better than that and it’s cheap. Go do
it. So what are we going to do about the bass guitar? We’ve got the guitar amp and the guitar sim could be used in a pinch for your bass, but it would not sound great. And actually what I use is Element Bass, which is a plugin also available at Spectre Digital. Looks like it’s also on sale for 75 bucks, which is great. Essentially, that’s all. And in fact, there is a preset on Element Bass called Fix Your Base. And I actually just use that. I use bass direct into my uh audio input and put Element Bass in the track,
put it on fixture bass. That’s it. Super easy. 75 bucks. Well worth it. Again, I think I paid 150. So, I really should be paying attention to my videos because this sale is is pretty badass. So, what do we got? We got a DAW Reaper. It’s free. We got our audio interface about a 100 bucks. We got our studio monitors about a hundred bucks for two. Fantastic price. Uh, if we didn’t get our studio monitors, we got our headphones which costs around $50. Uh, we have our drums extinction level event for uh, 60 bucks.
We got our bass amp element bass $75. And we bought our microphone, the EM91C from Mackie, and that was around $50. So, if we chose to go with monitors, we spent $584.99. If we chose to go with the headphones, we spent $334.99. Again, given how closely these are priced, get the studio monitors. All right? It’s just a better way to go. Uh you’re going to need various cables to plug all this stuff in. I’m not going to go over that here and waste your time. But as you are buying these, pay very
close attention to the cables that you need because if this is your first time, you’re not going to have them. If you have any questions about what cables you should get for this, feel free to ask it below and I will answer it. But every one of these uh devices will tell you in the description what you need as far as cabling goes. It’s very important because they uh a couple of them may come with the cables. Be sure to look for that, but it is unlikely that they all will. So, be careful. Now we got our
audio set up and uh we’re ready to install everything. The installation for each one of these devices or products are in the description and you don’t need need me to walk you through it. It’s too much. Do things one at a time. Take it slow. Follow the instructions that are here. When you’re done installing them, we’re going to talk about how to record something for the first time. If along the way you have trouble installing something, you get errors or whatever, stick it in the
comments and I will try to reply with an answer or a link to the answer. Better yet, uh, most of these are fairly intuitive. However, areas of concern are going to be your audio interface may have a hard time communicating with your computer dependent upon what you have. That’s really where I would see if there is going to be a problem, that’s probably where it’s going to crop up. There’s going to be some driver confusion or something. I am going to include links below on how to
deal with that. So, now that you have your stuff, get it set up and then we’re going to record something. I’ll see you next time.