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How would I go about orchestrating and executing this computer music project?

Am basically looking for step by step directions on what I would need to do to carry out a family project I had in mind for my daughter and her dad. It was initially and has been their idea to do a song together for some time now. My daughter 14 likes the Band Of Horses song The funeral. She learned all the lyrics and how to sing the song. Her dad did the same while learning to play it on guitar. Her father has just moved to Minnesota from Tacoma. How can my daughter record herself signing using a microphone and the computer, save (as a wav file) the recording then send the file to her dad for him to add the music to and do whatever mixing? What kind of microphone for relatively cheap would be good for this project? What kind of music software program would they need if any? I have heard of members of bands coming together collaborating using this method vaguely before. Where bands make and put together their songs entirely over computer or online using a specific program or whatever. Does any one know what I am talking about that could maybe simplify this process and explain it in easily usable detail? I am sure it is very possible. Even for someone having no expert knowledge what so ever to get this accomplished if proactive enough about finding out exactly how and what is needed.

Clementine asked in Science & Technology about 1 year ago | Report

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  • Labcoat_small
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    Danger

    Hi, I've been doing digital music creation and distance recording between musicians for a while. Your project is pretty simple and should be fairly easy to realize. I've broken down all that you need to know to get started into three topics:

    1) Hardware

    You obviously need a microphone. If you were considering getting more serious about recording you would need to get a good mic and something called a preamp that boosts the signal from the mic to the computer. But since this sounds like a pretty casual thing I would suggest an inexpensive usb mic that should provide reasonable quality for a fairly low cost.You may have to play around with the position to get the best sound, especially with the guitar. I would suggest putting it close to the bottom of the sound hole.

    The other thing the vocalist will need is a pair of head phones. This is so she can listen to the guitar track while recording the vocals and not have the guitar bleed into the vocal track. You can get as fancy as you want. Anything that fully covers the ear is best, but in a pinch earbud can be used. Just bear in mind that prolonged use at even med. high volumes can be damaging. Don't crank any head phones up and listen for hours. Take breaks before your ears start to hurt.

    2) Software

    When I started 10 years ago the free software options were pretty crude, but fortunately there are tons of great, free multitrack software recording programs. Multitrack means it will be able to play an audio file while recording another one at the same time. This is better than recording both vocals and guitar over each other so that you can adjust volume or other quality characteristics individually after recording. I would suggest Audacity because it works really well and it runs on windows and mac. There will be a slight learning curve, but it is very easy to use. Everytime you click record it will automatically record a new wav file while playing back the others that you have already recorded. When you have a track (wav file) that you like just select it and click File->Export to save and send it by email. You may need to send an mp3 for file size reasons, but the quality will be pretty much indistinguishable from wav.

    3) Method

    The only things I would suggest are to record the guitar first and add vocals later. It is extraordinarily difficult to do it the other way around and it will give your daughter a chance to practice fitting the vocals to the music before recording. Secondly, tune the guitar with a real tuner so that everybody is on the same page tonally.

    Good luck. Feel free to direct an questions at me personally if you need any other help.

    Danger answered in Science & Technology about 1 year ago | Report
    2 comments by Clementine and Danger…
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