What an exciting time to be a musician!

Since the dawn of time playing music and recording and documenting the art, has gone hand in hand. Elvis, Johnny Cash and Buddy Holly all recorded live in a single track studio. Les Paul, who created the first created the multi-track recorder showed the world about over dubbing. Up until several years ago there were basically 3 ways to record; Pay a studio $30 or more per hour to have them record you, or purchase a 4-track recorder at about $400, or put your amp in front of an old boom box and press record and hope for the best.

Wow how things have changed.

I had until recently recorded all of my ideas onto cassette tape using a 4-track recorder. Recently my 4-track has been falling apart (I have had it and used it for about 10 years). First some of the pots started getting scratchy, and then a couple of the inputs started not to work. It got to the point that I just could not use it without some anomaly screwing every thing up. This is not the musical environment that the Porta-Studio once was.

I used to spend hours with a guitar on my lap, and a drum machine hunched over my Tascam 414 recording and playing. I had so much fun with it, and it was a great way to hear what you are playing rather than what you think you sound like. My playing improved by leaps and bounds. Now my Tascam is falling a part I came to a point where I had a choice, buy a new 4 track or go digital.

I mean the tools are there that any one can be a star, right? There’s Moby, what about Modest Mouse? We live in the era of the ipod, where complete music collections can be carried in a pocket, and the next big thing could come off my MySpace. It does seem to be a very powerful idea, digital recording, distribution, digital marketing all in one nice little package.

My day job is working on PC computers so logically I figured that this was the way to go. I used some craptastic $20 soundcard and $50 speakers and figured I would be ready to roll. WRONG!!! Turns out that my $20 sound card had some serious latency issues.

I have decided that I will continue on with using my computer as my main means of recording. I wanted to use this blog as documentation of the process, both good and bad. Feel free to share your opinions and email me what you think.