Totaly Lost

[beerninja]

Let me first start with some background. I have been playing music in one form or another since I was 9 I am now 30. I started on the accordion, played tenor sax in Jr High, picked up my first bass when I was about 14, played in one band until I was about 18 when it broke it. We did the usualy ten million backyard parties, and a bunch of club gigs. played in several differnt bands after that and did some MINOR recording, you know the come in lay my tracks down and continue partying type of recording. played classical piano in community college for about 2yrs. then I joined the Navy when I was 24 and am still active duty. Needless to say I pretty much stopped playing music once I joined as being on a boat for 6 months at a time doesn't leave much room for it, but I still played a little tiny bit maybe once a month if I was lucky no bands or any recording. Now I am on Shore duty and have started playing again. I bought an Mbox, a Yamaha 16/6 4 bus mixer, Event TR6 biamped monitor pair, and 3 crappy mics, with that I have my carvin 5 string, a CB Drum kit (pretty cheap but I take what I can get), 1 classical and 1 standard acoustic guitar, and on fendor strat. oh yeah an a real crappy set of bongo's that have been with me since I was about 16.

My problem is I am so overwhelmed I don't even know what I need to ask. I can hook up the mic and record an acoustic track with no prob, I can even add some plugin effects to it, but after that I am lost. I have no clue where to go after that. I have tried using reason but I can't seem to make it do what I want it to do. Part of the problem is I am not even really sure what I want it to do. I have tried reading the PT manual and all the other manuals for that matter, but they just confuse me even more. I guess what I am looking for here is some good advice on how to take a little piece to start with and go from there. you know learn to crawl before I try running marathons. I don't know if this made sense to anyone but I figured I would give it a shot, I read the forums everyday most of it I don't understand but I am definatly trying. Thank you in advance for anyone and everyone that adds any kind of advice here.

THANK YOU

[brinaddison]

Well Totaly Lost,
why don't you try putting a song together. It doesn't have to be a work of art, just a song...as a test. Record your guitar, or better yet a beat with your kit, then ad a bass line (if you have a bass) or just a guitar part. Then do a vocal track just for fun ok. Now once you've got that going, try a mix. Basicaly get the balance of the instruments where you like them and try putting a little EQ on them and mabe some reverb...all in moderation, or, exaguration whatever spikes your interest. That's a mix. Set up a master fader (you don't actually have to but this way you can control the overall level) make sure you don't go into the red..and then "Bounce to disc" this will mix the song into 2 track format that you could then burn onto a CD. Et voila! Done.

Next time go a little further into the details and soon you'll be rockin' Protools. There are also a lot of books available (do a search online for Protools books)and they will have lots of tricks and tips for you.

You need to experrrrrrrriment...a lot!

Good luck and welcom to Protools LE.

[Bender]

Check out "Producing beats with Reason".
It is a pretty easy tutorial that will get you up to speed pretty quick.

Stay Safe

[mindnoise]

you are in deep need of some basics!

go here with a lot of time and READ!

http://www.theprojectstudiohandbook.com/directory.htm

I also suggest some reading from Bob Katz, try Amazon.

and try searching thhe forum on topics like recording, mastering, composition, mic, preamp etc.
there are many good hints.

you won´t regret it! But you will only learn by doing it!
And as suggested start with simple things.
Perhaps start with hanging two mics into the room, connect them to the appropriate inputs of your
digidesign hardware.
record a bongo rhythem or drum rhythem.
play it back to you while playing guitar or sax or what ever till it feels right.
create to next track to record to, and record what you play.
this way you can add up a little song, it DOESN`t have to sound like anything. just to give you a feeling for what it´s like in digital recording.

best

[Stiff]

I have to agree with brinaddison. I'm sure you're a much better musician than me beerninja and I got things rolling pretty quickly by just taking one step at a time. "Well now I got a sweet drumbeat, let's add some bass on that... Oh and maybe this guitarpart...". Keep it simple the first times. And when you got something that sound decent, try some panning and some eq and compressing. Things will float on pretty naturally after a while

I have no idea if that helped you or not though

Oh, and btw, as mindnoise said, do some reading... You will learn a whole bunch of stuff in notime. There are som good websites... and books too I've been told

[stewie]

buy producing in the home studio with protools by david franz and hangout here as much as you can and just play around a lot.

[beerninja]

Thank you all very much for the tips. I have been doing some of that stuff allready, I have been reading a ton but most of it just confuses me. Like right now I have a song in the works it is just an acoustic track with no real intro and no real ending but a track none the less, and a very basic reason drum beat that I threw together. Now the problem I am running into is I want to lay another guitar track on top of this, I set up my levels and get it all set to go, but when I want to record if I change to input monitoring only I can't hear the drum track and if I try to level it out between input and playback monitoring I get the latent input from my acoustic. How can I record and hear only the tracks that are allready there and not the one I am currently recording, I tried haveing the track I am currently recording on record enable and mute but when I recorded it it didn't record anything. so I have been sifting through the manual for about an hour now and have found anything that will help me other then change my buffer size. And the whole fader thing really has me confused. Is a master fader like the master track that everything will go to? If so how do I set that up? But thanks again to everyone that has reply'd allready, and extra special thanks for not giving me the standard go read the manual you loser type of response, this has been a very friendly board compared to others I have been on. So thank you again

[GORILLA]

Many of your questions can be answered in the "home recording with Pro Tools" book. If you can't afford the books, go to the stores and read em'. I did, and still do
Maybe a class or two?
Or seriously......hit the search button, for unanswered Q's & A's. More than likely your not the only one who has had the problems your having. There's TONS....I mean TONS of info right here in the DUC...and best of all ...it's FREE.....just gotta find it sometimes
Or just plain ol' O.J.T. -On the job training......
It'll take one thing, and hopefully you got a lot of it.............time! Good Luck

It's a long way to the top...if ya wanna rock-n-roll! -AC/DC

[brinaddison]

I think you need to add a track or two? I could be wrong but if you arm the new track and you're in input monitoring then you should hear everything else and the new part without actually recording it.(like an audition) When you're ready to "take" the track, put it in record and there you go. You should still be able to hear all the other tracks all the time. If you Record and Mute...you'll hear nothing on that track.

Think of it like a 4 track recorder but expadable up to 32 tracks. Just keep adding tracks as you need them. If you ad a master fader, all the designated outputs will be routed to the master fader and at that point you can adjust the overall level. The individual levels will still need independant balancing and panning. These are basic recording techniques. The suggestion to go to your local music store and sit and read is a great one that I think everybody will admit to. Saves money and you can learn a lot, untill they tell you to buy something or leave....at which point you need to do your business elsewhere.

Good luck and Read, read, read..it will all come together eventually.