I attended the LIFT Worship Collective back in February in Atlanta. The conference was led by Chris Tomlin, Matt Redman, and Louie Giglio. Check out these photos I took of Chris Tomlin leading worship:
It was a good conference. I’m still planning to post up some notes about it. Here are some shots of Matt Redman.
Once you have something creating sound and a way to capture it (like a microphone), you have to get that sound into your computer for editing. I will refer to these kinds of devices as “interfaces”. In a nutshell, they capture your source (either analog or digital), convert analog sources to digital, and then feed those sources to your computer. Some interfaces are all-in-one setups and don’t require a computer.
A good recording starts with a good source. Next, you have to capture that source, which is where microphones come in. The bottom line is this: you need at least one good microphone. The built-in mic on your computer just won’t get you the results you want. Thankfully, we live in a time when you can get a good microphone on a serious budget.
In this post, we’ll cover the basic typs of microphones, the kinds and specific mic’s that I use, and what I would recommend for the DIY Musici who’s just starting out. See the other posts in the “Basics of Recording Series” here.
Here are the more common types of microphones and their typical uses :
A few days ago I covered the basic stuff you’re going to need to start recording, all the way from the source making the noise to the software used to mix it down. I’m often asked what specific camera or microphone (or other gear) I use to for audio recording.
In this post, I’ll highlight what I use to get the job done. You can view the “Gear I use” page (coming soon) to view all the gear I own (and ever have owned), but in this post I’ll just focus on audio stuff.
See all posts in the “Basics of Recording” series here.
So what do I use?
My phone (I have an iPhone 4) is one of the most valuable tools I use for songwriting. So is Evernote. Besides my Bible, my brain ,and my guitar, they are probably #4 and #5 on the importance list (I see a “top 5″ post coming soon). Anyway, my songwriting process usually looks like this:
This all typically happens in one sitting.
So, yesterday I wrote out a simple verse and chorus from Psalm 23. I titled it “Though I Walk Through The Valley”. This morning I put in another verse and a bridge and recorded a rough demo with my phone. Here’s what I’ve got:
I’d love to hear your thoughts and suggestions on the song itself, as well as your songwriting process.
Allow me to introduce some great music from John Claybrook. John and I haven’t met in person before, but we’re twitter friends, and I’ve been enjoying his music lately. He is a really cool guy, and he’s a really good musician. Here’s a bit about him from his website:
John Claybrook is from Alexander City, AL and has been playing music since the earliest years of his life. A master of his craft, Claybrook has led worship in his home church and across the nation for years and has garnered attention from major Christian artists such as Michael W. Smith and Third Day.
If you read on, you’ll find that in 2007 he was selected as a finalist and appeared on national television for the Christian Artist Talent Search. That is pretty sweet!
Here’s “Reign Over Me”, one of my favorite songs from John’s album “Masterpiece”. I’d describe John’s music as pretty straight-up Rock and Roll, but with some acoustic influences. He writes a good hook, too – great stuff all around!
You can preview the whole album and buy it for $10 on his website.
Also – visit John’s:
See all posts in the “Basics of Recording” series here.
In order to record, there are several things that you absolutely need to make it happen. I’m going to briefly describe the essential ingredients here, but I’ll plan to dig deeper into each one in future posts. They are:
This could be a lot of different things. I’m talking about whatever it is that is making (or triggering) the sound that you’re trying to record. Common examples include your voice, a guitar, etc.
Homer says "Eat More Salad"
Nobody wants to hear fitness advice from a fat guy, so I would suspect that nobody wants to hear audio/video advice from a guy who doesn’t know anything about it. I’ll start with a bit of my background in recording.
Home digital recording really hit its stride as an affordable option for hobby musicians when I was in college as a freshman or sophomore. At first, I bought a microphone and a cheap mixer and went straight into the sound card on my computer. That sounded pretty terrible, so I picked up an M-Audio Delta 44 and dove into home recording.
Ten years later I’m still at it. I’m not a professional sound engineer or video technician, but I’ve learned a ton of things along the way, and the music I create sounds way better now than it did back then. I’ve been into making videos for a while now, too.
I can talk all I want, but I figured it would be better to show you rather than tell you.
I record all my music with my dinky little home-recording setup. I’ve been asked more than a few times about my recording and video editing process, so I’m going to write a series of posts on the basics of audio recording. You’ll learn all you need to know to get your songs out of your head and into your stereo (or iPod).
Check back to this page as I’ll link to each post in the series right here. Planned post topics include:
1. Essential Hardware – What You Need to Get Started
2. Hardware I Use
3. Microphones
4. Interfaces
5. Software
6. Prepping For Recording
7. Mic Placement
Once we get the groundwork laid, I’ll go into posts about more software-specific basics like EQ, compression, mixing, etc.
Is there anything else you’d like to know specifically about recording? Let me know in the comments, and I’ll add it to the list.
Songs (buy links direct to iTunes)Charts for all these songs can be found on the charts page.
We did the same set for both Evergreen and River Oaks. In the band we had drums, keys, bass, electric (lead) and me on acoustic, plus three vocalists (myself included). The band did great!
Both services were really good. At River Oaks, we saw 6 or 8 new people today. It was really cool to get to know some new people, and I hope we’ll see them again next week.
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