Help In Home recording

[Tim]

Hello there Justaguy or anybody esle. I need some help with home recording. I downloaded the Audacity recording program and the MP3 encoder and installed both on the computer. I have not tried anything as of right now, but plan to experiment later tonight.

I will be putting the guitar through my V-Amp2. From what I understand, no mixing board is needed with this unit. I will come out of the V-Amp2 into the mic input on the back of the computer. Under the Volume Control (window), I choose “line in” for recording.

I open the Audacity program and I am now ready to record. I guess when I am ready to record the guitar; I click on a track, hit the record button and start playing the guitar. When I am finished I just hit the stop button.

I have saved several of the backing tracks from other Fretters in my computer. Where I am having difficulty is I do not know how to get a backing track into Audacity to record over.

Am I correct in thinking that you can record as many tracks as you wish and then delete the ones that do not sound very good? This would leave the original backing track and the best solo track to make into a MP3.

[Justaguyin_nc]

Well Tim, Seeing all computers are a bit different... You will have either just a MIC in on the back of your computer or a few input's Mic and Line.. Use LINE if you have it there... (This is for Windows XP btw) Also the audio control center will look different on computers , the Icon in your taskbar if there should be a little speaker which usually you can adjust your Volume... double click it and the control center will pop-up , from there.. press options, properties and check recording to see what is available on your system.. if the Line In is available make sure to mark/check it there... press "ok" and now your recording control box will pop up allowing you to select which to use.. if you Just connect to a MIC input being the only available on your system then none of this will be needed as it will be your only option.

Audacity is "VERY" simple... load it up... press File, Open.. find the MP3 backing of your choice on your system press ok to load it or just double click the file name... once it loads into Audacity just press the record button.. another track will automaticly be added and while the background mp3 is playing you just start that screaming solo on top of it!!! now you have the backing track and your screaming solo... Press PROJECT, QuickMix and Audacity does it and you now have a mixed track added left click on the Mix track then while it's highlighted press FILE , Export as MP3 now just save that back to your computer under a name of your choosing and get it up on the net so everyone can enjoy the clips... Hope this helped...

Also if you donot have that Speaker icon in your taskbar goto start/settings/control panel and click on sounds and audio devices.. then go to advanced under the volume and you should find the control box has popped up for you

Oh yeah you can just keep hitting Record to auto-add another track and use the M for Mute on each track you want silent during recording , which would be those not wanted screaming solo's... Highlight all the tracks you want mixed at the end.. but better just delete from audacity the tracks your not going to use before the mix... leaving just the backing and the one or two tracks you want mixed down... then do the quickmix and you have it! At any time you can just hit play to hear both the backing and the track you added before a mix..

[Justaguyin_nc]

There is also a bunch of effects in Audacity you can try out Tim, One of them is Normalize which will allow you to take all the tracks and basicly smooth the sound between them.. also a noise removal is available to kill any hiss or pops if they happen to sneak in.. the Help file in Audacity will explain each and every one to you... Goto Index in the help file and read "Import Audio" and you will see you had the answers right there for you on how to get started..

[Tim]

Thanks Justa - I had most of it correctly sorted out. I just was not sure how to get the backing track into Audacity.