Basic recording through Cubase

pcorry

I am trying to get a Demo done.I have never recorded drums and bass on a cubase project and am used to just recordinga few guitar tracks and vocal

I have come up with a basic idea of how to to record. will it work?

1. record drums and main guitar rpart togethjer (live)) on my mates 8 track and then burn the mix onto cd as an audio file.

2.import that file onto a new cubase project

3. overdub lead guitar by simply miking my amp up through soundcard

4.overdub bass (same method)

5.overdub lead vocal

Before i do all this can anyone see any problem in doin this method??suggestions appreciated

cornbb

Yep, you can do all of that using the method you described. However, instead of burning the drums/guitar mix onto CD as one audio file, try burning a seperate audio file for each instrument and give each one it's own dedicated track in Cubase. Your mate's 8 track will probably let you do this if you can mute/solo tracks as appropriate. Doing this will allow you to later adjust the volume/EQ/effects etc of each track individually and you should get a higher quality mix at the end.

Also its worth mentioning that plugging mics or instruments directly into your soundcard won't give you the best quality in the world. But it'll do fine unless you want to spend a couple of hundred euros on hardware.

pcorry

sound, so would i need some sort of pre-amp or what?
I wouldnt be plugging guitars staright in to soundcard just the mic.

also, any suggestions on effects for a lo-fi (mildly distorted) vocal sound?

cornbb

Exactly, a preamp would give you great results. They are usually part of audio interfaces

As for the distortion effect, Cubase comes with a few plug-ins that might give you the results you need. Otherwise try http://www.kvraudio.com, you can download tons of free plug ins here

Anima

Izotope Trash is a very good commercial distortion plugin. Has all of the major types (overdrive, bit reduction etc) and has amp simulation aswell as filters.

Theres a free one called Glitch which is quite good. Has a sequencer built in so that you can change between distortion types over time, quite good for a dynamic kind of sound.

mdreeling

Hi there,

2 pieces of advice.

(1) Pick a BPM for your song and get your drummer to record to a metronome or click track. This will allow you to splice up his drumming in Cubase and take the best fills etc, it will also tighten your demo.

(2) Think about using drum samples to record your song (Brutal Beats by Geoff Dougmore is an excellent live drum cd) to provide a proof of concept to your drummer. This CD has hundreds of beats, with variations, it only takes about 2 minutes to find the one you want. You might actually find you don't even want to change the beats, they are that good.

This is how we do it, and our demos sound alot better for it.

- Mick

pcorry

good stuff, am actually looking for Drum samples. Wheres the best place to get that CD (or other samples)?