Can you Suggest a budget setup to play along with music and record with a computer?

[aceplace57]

I’m old enough to remember playing guitar along with a cassette player. That was a lot of fun. :rolleyes: Rewind, then press play to get cued up. Play for 3 minutes, wash and repeat. It beat the hell out of the cassette deck and the cassette. I eventually recorded six versions of the song in a row on the tape. So I could practice and play six times without cuing back up. I recorded myself playing along with a 2nd cassette deck.

CD’s weren’t much better. Same deal, press track advance, cue up, pause, grab your guitar, hit play for 3 minutes, wash and repeat.

Now, we’re in a new digital age. What kind of equipment do I need without busting the budget?

I was thinking about playing the song with Windows Classic Media player with the repeat setting on. So the song would play over and over while I practiced.

They have USB mixers. Here’s a 4 channel USB for $60. Channel 1 accepts a direct input from a Guitar pickup. 4 RCA line level inputs and XLR if I decided to use microphones.

Amazon.com: Alesis MultiMix 4 USB Four-Channel USB Mixer : Musical Instruments

This seems too easy. Is there something I’m overlooking? I’d like to patch the music from the computer’s sound card into the mixer and also Record through USB using Audacity? It’s sort of a circular connection. Music goes out the sound card and music going back in through USB. Is that going to be a problem? Will I need to use a separate laptop pc as my source for the original music?

I’m hoping the Mixer can be used to set the sound level of the original music and the sound level of my guitar. I’d want my guitar a little louder. Makes it easier to listen for any mistakes that I made. I ran the mixer at my Church for years. We had several microphones and a recorder. The pastor wanted his sermons taped. We had several mics for the choir and soloists.

I’m not looking for pro results. I want a simple practice setup and I want to have some fun just playing along with my favorite songs.

Eventually, I might even setup my digital camera. Make a video, and then use a program like Cyberlink Powerdirector to edit the video and include the sound track from Audacity. I can be the next youtube star. I’ve seen a lot worse covers on youtube.

So, feel free to tell me the right way to do this stuff. I’m here to learn. Just remember I don’t have several thousand bucks for a pro setup.

[aceplace57]

A example will probably help.

This guy is doing an awesome cover of Mississippi Queen. Everything is in sync.

I’d be one happy guitarist if I could get setup to practice like that.

One concern, I’ve heard there can be sync problems playing from a computer file. What you hear won’t necessarily be in sync with what the computer is putting out on your sound monitor. Even a half second delay would be a major PITA.

[aceplace57]

Here’s what I don’t want to do. I don’t think this guy is using a mixer at all. The original music sounds like it’s down in a hole. I think he’s just recording using the camcorder’s mic. There’s a hum too.

Not much different from the crappy covers I did 20 years ago with 2 cassette decks. I want a better setup.

[Reply]

Basically, you can set input and outputs independently in programs like Audacity. It’s very simple to play from the headphones (or speakers) and record from a mic at the same time. You don’t even need the fancy USB mixer unless you want it; just record yourself playing, plug in headphones, play it back and then record the mic on another track in Audacity.

If you want a more “modern” solution, though, I think the kids these days make custom recordings or song tracks for games like Rocksmith. You’ve seen Guitar Hero, right? These days you can plug in a real guitar, play real songs to real tabs, and have it score you in real-time. It’s immediate audio-visual feedback.

There are open source solutions like this that let you add your own songs to Rocksmith. There are also similar projects for MIDI piano keyboards and even karaoke.

[Reply]

@aceplace57

Here’s what I don’t want to do. I don’t think this guy is using a mixer at all. The original music sounds like it’s down in a hole. I think he’s just recording using the camcorder’s mic. There’s a hum too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pQI6zfzbUw&list=PL8B591C90AA4729E6

Not much different from the crappy covers I did 20 years ago with 2 cassette decks. I want a better setup.

If you don’t want crappy quality, get something that hooks your guitar up to your PC directly – I don’t know what the cable is called on the guitar end, or if you need an amp for that, sorry. USB will help eliminate line noise from AC voltage and such, and Audacity can easily fake the rest using digital noise removal (you record a few seconds of silence, then it subtracts the noise in that silence from your recording).

But once you’ve played and recorded your cover, syncing is as simple as dragging the waveforms over each other in a program like Audacity. Line up the peaks and troughs and it’ll be close enough for human ears.

[aceplace57]

I bought a Peavey USB adapter for my Strat last week. I did some research and Peavey doesn’t require installing a bunch of crap software. It comes with amplifier modeling software. But, it’s not required. I can just install the Windows drivers (from Peavey’s web site) and crank up Audacity.
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/XPortGuitarUSB?device=c&network=g&matchtype=&gclid=CIyw-cubl74CFWNgMgodpC0AXw

I guess maybe I’m too old school. I was thinking a USB mixer would be the best approach? For example, my wife could sing vocals through a mic, I could play guitar, and the original music would be playing. The mixer lets me set my levels and it combines everything into a digital source through USB. I used a analog mixer for years and am familiar with setting the levels for each channel.

Recording each track through audacity would take more time. I’d have to record my wife singing. Me playing and have a third track of the original music.

What approach are most people taking these days?

[Reply]

@aceplace57

I guess maybe I’m too old school. I was thinking a USB mixer would be the best approach? For example, my wife could sing vocals through a mic, I could play guitar, and the original music would be playing. The mixer lets me set my levels and it combines everything into a digital source through USB. I used a analog mixer for years and am familiar with setting the levels for each channel.

Recording each track through audacity would take more time. I’d have to record my wife singing. Me playing and have a third track of the original music.

I think that totally makes sense if you have multiple simultaneous tracks to record.

The software solution is mainly useful if you already have the source track (such as you covering a YouTube song) or if you’re syncing to something that isn’t real-time anyway (such as you syncing to an earlier playback of your own).

If you and your wife are simultaneously playing, then yeah, independent hardware tracks would make a lot of sense. Separating them out in software, later, would be hellishly difficult.

[aceplace57]

I see your point. A cheap mixer that only outputs a single combined track leaves no room for error. There’s no changing the mix later.

A friend of mine had a 4 Track studio at his home in the late 70’s. He recorded gospel groups. His sound board mixer put out multiple channels to that 4 track tape. Then later the multi track tape could be played and mixed into a single track. I guess a computer can’t do that cheaply. There’s only the single USB input. You can’t simultaneously record multiple tracks without additional hardware.

[aceplace57]

Regardless of what technology is used. There’s no better way to spot errors than recording yourself. I improved a lot 20 years ago just by listening to those cassette recordings I made.

I need a good ass kicking for giving it up for over ten years. Raising my daughters and being with my wife just didn’t leave much free time to play. It’s a vicious circle. You stop playing for awhile and then sound like crap when you do play. So you play even less.

I got a lot of lost ground to make up now.

[Reply]

@aceplace57

I see your point. A cheap mixer that only outputs a single combined track leaves no room for error. There’s no changing the mix later.

A friend of mine had a 4 Track studio at his home in the late 70’s. He recorded gospel groups. His sound board mixer put out multiple channels to that 4 track tape. Then later the multi track tape could be played and mixed into a single track. I guess a computer can’t do that cheaply. There’s only the single USB input. You can’t simultaneously record multiple tracks without additional hardware.

A musician friend of mine used a digital multi-track recorder (the cheapest seem to be about $100 on Amazon), but I can’t remember which exact model. It was a standalone unit that saved onto a SD card and the tracks could later be mixed on the computer.

Audacity lists several PC-based solutions, but they do require additional hardware:

Missing features | Audacity Support

Beyond that, I’ll let the experts take over. Good luck!

[aceplace57]

Thanks Reply! I appreciate the help. This new tech will take awhile for me to figure out.

[aceplace57]

I’d forgotten the term for the digital delay. It’s called latency. Here’s a short discussion I found. DAW is a digital audio workstation. Probably more of a pro solution than I need. But, maybe not? I’m not really sure. I’ve been looking at reviews for REAPER. A DAW with a home user license that’s affordable.

Q: having a problem with a delay in sound from the instrument im recording and the headphones. it records fine but the delay really throws me off. help?
A:
Are you monitoring via DAW? That will inherently cause latency because it has to go through the AD/DA converters (plus whatever latency is induced in the DAW). Its unavoidable if you need to monitor an effected signal, but if you just want to monitor the dry signal, turn up the “To Mon” knob and mute the track you are recording in your DAW. The input monitor sends it to the monitors before any AD conversion, so the latency is practically zero (i mean…its whatever time it takes to travel through the cables which is zero latency to human ears).

[aceplace57]

I think for now I’ll just try recording my guitar with the Peavey USB adapter I ordered late last week. I can play along with my mp3 player thats plugged into amplified multimedia speakers (recycled from an old pc). I already have Audacity on my pc. I know how to bring in the mp3 as an extra track. If I can sync up the two tracks then thats all I need for practicing.

Basically what Reply said this morning.

At some point I may need a better setup for youtube recordings. But theres no rush to spend any money now.