cubase
Jan 3 2008 19:59
i was chatting to a friend in the pub briefly about this the other day, he said i could get one of ebay quite cheap - he also mentioned somehting about an interface and sound card - i would be using a laptop for this so not sure what this would entail. does anyone know anything about what kind of 'interface' i would need and mic etc.
Jan 3 2008 21:26
#2
go to the tech forums at electrical.com
Jan 3 2008 22:36
#3
M-audio do a good range of USB/firewire soundcards/audio interfaces, some with one or more mic pre-amps if you want to record from a microphone. check out digitalvillage or turnkey for prices. you can get a crack of cubase for free - what is it you want to do? if you don't want to record from external sources (microphones/keyboards etc) then you probably won't even need an extra audio interface, at least to start with as your laptop's soundcard should suffice. cubase is a pretty good example of bloatware, powerful but needlessly complex. i tend to use ableton for pretty much everything (when i actually get the time to do stuff, which isn't often).
Jan 6 2008 19:09
#4
Joseph K. wrote:
what is it you want to do? if you don't want to record from external sources (microphones/keyboards etc) then you probably won't even need an extra audio interface, at least to start with as your laptop's soundcard should suffice.
hi jk it's to record from an extenal source catch above mentioned that i would need to input each note by hand or would need to buy a keyboard or something but i'm not sure if this would apply in my case since it is for percussion at the moment my drum which is synthetic only plays in one key so i'm not too fussed about the key but would that mean when i record it and play it back would it sound exactly the same or would it play it back in a distorted key?
Jan 6 2008 19:39
#5
basically there are two kinds of input an interface can handle - audio and MIDI.
audio is literally the sound output from a bit of gear, e.g. a headphone output is an audio output, so is the cable on an electric guitar.
MIDI is just the note information (a digital equivalent of a musical score), plus information like the duration of a note and velocity (useful for percussion) - [MIDI is what catch is talking about by putting notes in by hand]
by synthetic drum do you mean one of those digital drum pad things? if you can play in pretty good time (or use ableton live to record which has clever timing-correction features) you'd only need an audio interface (like this).
MIDI would let you record the actual rhythm you play as notes (all the same one since its percussion), which could be edited on-screen (e.g. for tightening up the timing) - this assumes your drum has a MIDI output and input, in which case you'd want a MIDI interface too (like this). you can also get combined MIDI/audio interfaces if you decide you need both, which can work out cheaper depending on what you're looking at.
If all this sounds a bit complicated, just go with the audio interface and use a version of ableton live software to record with, which allows a lot of tweaking after you've recorded your part. hope this helps, this is one of my non-politics nerdy topics so let me know if its impenetrable jargon 
Jan 6 2008 20:11
#6
by synthetic i mean the material is synthetic - it's not animal skin, so it's really difficult to change the key it sounds like i would need an MIDI keyboard. apparently you can pick up cubase on ebay quite cheap but if i just buy any program would any MIDI keyboard be compatible with it or would i need to get them together?
Jan 6 2008 20:33
#7
oh right ok, so a real drum. in that case you need a dynamic microphone (e.g. this) and an audio interface with a microphone input (e.g. this - which comes with a basic version of ableton software). actually, a much cheaper solution might be this, which is a microphone and interface combined - i didn't know it existed and have never used one so i don't know if it's cheap for a reason though! it's worth googling for reviews of whatever you decide to go for to get a feel for if it's any good.
compatability-wise, pretty much all interfaces will be compatible with all major software programs, so it shouldn't be an issue. you'll also be pleased to hear you don't need to worry about MIDI at all unless you want to play keyboards as well.
hmm, I'm a few years out of date on this, but you need some kind of sound card yes (most laptops probably have something you can use because they support mics for webcams etc., otherwise there are external USB sound cards now, dunno if they're any good). microphone - same rules as buying any kind of microphone really, although you may need to run it through a mixing desk/pre-amp first to get the right signal level depending on what you get.
Interface - well to input music you can use MIDI keyboards and other input devices, or you can do it by hand, note by note. Again - all depends on what you want to do.