PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production Why Use A DAW When There Is Band-in-a-Box? (Discussion) [Resolved]

We use neither a DAW nor Real Band. Just BIAB. My recording process is somewhere between archaic and Neanderthal. But I like the sound I get. And that's what matters. I don't even use a mixing board. Everything I do is straight of the BIAB chord input page to Audacity to Soundcloud. We use the guitar amp for my guitar tracks and as a powered mixer for the vocals.


My process:

Create backing tracks in BIAB. Save as a WAV file in Audacity. All I do in Audacity is a bit of compression and minor EQ adjustments.

For vocals I use an AT 2035 condenser mic. I run the mic straight into my Peavey Nashville 112 guitar amp. We record with reverb already on the amp (rather than dry) and set the vocal and guitar EQ with just the Low - Mid - High - Presence knobs. We adjust the the vocal/guitar volume with the main volume and and gain knobs.

We send the vocal or guitar to Audacity from the amp's headphone jack straight into the PC's mic input with Audacity running on the PC. We do a little touch-up on the vocal in Audacity and save it as a WAV file. We then mix the backing tracks and the vocal/guitar track in Audacity and save it as another (final) WAV file. We upload that to Soundcloud and a few other places. we're done!

I do all my backing track editing on the BIAB chord input page. I use the included BIAB VSTs as needed.

Here are two examples of totally different songs. One is a Boss Nova with my wife on vocals and the other is a really weird psychedelic guitar instrumental. I think they are good examples of the variety of sounds we can get from this method using BIAB. Both of these songs were created and recorded exactly as described above. We use no third party tools other than Audacity - no external loops, VSTs or tracks. Just BIAB plus our vocals or my guitar track. I often get nice comments on the mixing and over-all sound.

1. You (Bossa Nova with my wife on vocals): https://soundcloud.com/alananddi/you-remix

2. Beyond the Ozone - Into the No Parking Zone (Psychedelic Instrumental): https://soundcloud.com/alananddi/beyond-the-ozone-into-the-no-parking-zone

Hope this contributed something worthwhile to the discussion.

Alan


PS:: The lead guitar on the psychedelic track was all BIAB - no outside tools whatsoever.