new guy recording question

[victorian4]

Hello all. I am new to this stuff so I have a question. I have a Tascam 2488 Neo digital recorder and i have purchased toontrack solo and ezdrummer. I typically just downloaded my music as wave files into Audacity to play with on the computer. I now want to add drums. I am looking for the easiest way to add drums along side my wave files after the fact. I tried by recording intros, fills, choruses etc. to my Tascam at the same tempo and then downloading as wave files and finally cutting and pasting clips around the song. This proved to be very tedious.
I am a guitar player well before a computer programmer and drummer. All suggestions are greatly appreciated.
Mike

Topic

[VOLiTiAN]

Hello buddy,

If you want the harsh reality, I think it’s fair to say that adding drums retrospectively isn’t going to make life easy either, there is an inherent groove you follow when recording to drums, it’s all the little details that really get a track to pump or flow, computer programmer or not it’s time to invest in a DAW, it’s a very visual way of being able to lay up your recorded audio alongside midi VSTi’s etc the tascam was never really intended to work this way, you’d punch in an out your takes but with the expectancy your drums would already be there or a click track embedded into all tracks (or some kinda timecode stamp) but if timestretching was need etc then the HDR is not going to cut it, i had a hell of a headache with a VS880 once and vowed never to go back 🙂

Not positive but hope it helps.

Kind regards

D.

www.myspace.com/VOLiTiAN www.soundclick.com/VOLiTiAN www.reverbnation.com/VOLiTiAN www.soundcloud.com/VOLiTiAN

[victorian4]

This is what I need to hear good or bad. Any suggestions for a guy on a budget with a new PC laptop?
Thanks.

[VOLiTiAN]

Sorry, I don’t quite understand, do you have a PC at the moment? Either way, what tasks do you want it to be able to handle, how many tracks of audio, are you looking to mix on this setup etc…

Kind regards

D.

www.myspace.com/VOLiTiAN www.soundclick.com/VOLiTiAN www.reverbnation.com/VOLiTiAN www.soundcloud.com/VOLiTiAN

[victorian4]

Yes I have a PC laptop. I have been importing my tracks in from my Tascam to my PC as wave files and using the freeware Audacity to play with them. Audacity does not work with EZdrummer as I know some programs do. I am very impressed with the sound quality of my Tascam, however I realize what your saying would require me to record with the DAW. What is a reasonably priced DAW that might fit my needs and interface properly with EZ drummer. I have seen examples on Toontrack where the drums can be programmed on an individual strike basis.
Thanks a ton.

[VOLiTiAN]

Hey buddy,

Always happy to help where I can, it’s difficult to say exactly which DAW best suits your needs there are premium ones such as Steinberg Cubase, Logic Audio, Cakewalk Sonar that I’m sure most could recommend aside fromthat there’s a well known freebie called “reaper” that’s very popular aswell although I can’t personally vouch for that one having never used it.

So basically as I understand it you’re using your tascam effectively as your audio interface, except you’re capturing the audio there and then importing to the PC, can the tascam actually be used as an ASIO device? In such a a way that you are still plugged into it but yet the computer is capturing the audio? Either way the best way forward is some sort of interface to be able to connect directly to your laptop then after that choose your DAW.

Most if not all DAW will feature some sort of inline/in window editing which will normally include a specific midi drum editor to be able to visualise the hits over the bars and make adjustments accordingly.

Kind regards

D.

www.myspace.com/VOLiTiAN www.soundclick.com/VOLiTiAN www.reverbnation.com/VOLiTiAN www.soundcloud.com/VOLiTiAN

[Jesper Borsch]

Hey dont know if you found ny strat daw yet.
But to get The fealing u can trye crystal. This app is today presonus studio one.
The free version is here
http://www.kreatives.org/kristal/index.php

[ralphenz32]

Checkout my Tascam 2488 NEO reply – http://www.toontrack.com/forum/tm.aspx?m=112274&mpage=1&key=tascam&#125524

Guitarists are well Strung!

[VOLiTiAN]

Whilst I respect the post, there is nothing ingenius or particularly fluid about the workflow.

In this modern age, the necessity for importing audio after it’s been recorded has been completely done away with, effectively, all he’s doing is using the HDR as an external ADAT style device, and in all fairness what would make the most sense is to have the S/PDIF sending timecode and just having the two projects sync correctly.

There’s a touting of pre-processing that can be done by the HDR due to it’s own DSP however once committed to the final take the editing process does then actually become destructive which is what most engineers seek to avoid.

This whole process can be done in 2 simple steps with a suitable ASIO device…. and I’m loathe to admit this reminds me of too many times in the past where i’ve tried to make an old piece of equipment work just for the sake of being tight and wanting to make use of it, but all the time knowing there’s a far simpler solution which you’d never look back from.

My ideal setup….

Fast powerful plenty of headroom PC
Novation nocturn or similar
Tascam USB2400 or similar
great ASIO interface with good solid mic pre’s
as much visual real estate space as you can afford….

kinda like this…

http://i1137.photobucket.com/albums/n509/VOLiTiANMusic/15122009075-1.jpg

Regards

D.

www.myspace.com/VOLiTiAN www.soundclick.com/VOLiTiAN www.reverbnation.com/VOLiTiAN www.soundcloud.com/VOLiTiAN

[Author]

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