gizmo tunes: The Bangla band Cactus attends a recording session

Your band won a prize at the college music festival last year and you are hoping to cut a CD? Heard a jingle that you think can lead to a foot-tapping song this Puja season? And are you toying with your cool iPods and dreaming of venturing into podcasting?

The time has come for you to stop thinking ? and start acting. If you put your computer to good use, you can start your own Bangla band. But for that, you first need to get ready. It seems to be a commonly held belief that if you have a computer with a sound card and a multimedia microphone, you have a “professional” music studio in your home. But that is certainly not what you want if you seek the quality of professional recording.

But now it’s possible to do that in your own room ? provided you meet all the basic requirements. The top prerequisite for recording good quality audio is a silent environment that is relatively “dead” ? which means that the room doesn’t echo or tend to emphasise certain frequencies.

If you have a large room, preferably irregularly shaped, with a mix of hard and soft surfaces, you should have a good starting place. To make things slightly better, you can hang up duvets or woollen blankets in the area around your MIC to reduce the influence of the room on your recordings. You’ll need to clip or tie this up on the walls, or at least create a “booth” around the performer, so that the sound reflections won’t pick up all the unnecessary noise ? though it can never really be eliminated. You’ll want to do the same thing behind the microphone as well. This way, the projected sound waves do not reflect as much, and the reflected sound waves are reduced.

Before I move on to the other components, let me do a quick status check on your computer. The recommended minimum hardware requirements are: 1Gz processor, at least 512k RAM, Firewire/USB interface, 100+gig hard drive and a CD burner. I prefer a laptop, which provides users mobility.

If you do not have a computer and are thinking of starting afresh, I would recommend buying an Apple Macintosh G4 Powerbook as Mac operating systems are better with Audio/Video applications. If you already have an older system, consider upgrading it.

Here are the other basic components. The Firewire Audio interface, preferably a Firepod, is the device that ties all the pieces together. The Firepod is loaded with eight custom-designed ultra low noise, high headroom microphone preamplifiers, perfect for recording a wide variety of sources including vocals, drums, guitars, keyboards, and more. Eight potentiometers are on the front panel to easily control the input level of each preamplifier. Inputs one and two of the Firepod can be switched between microphone or instrument level, while inputs three to eight can be switched between microphone or line input. The Firepod also includes stereo headphone output on the front panel, as well as mix control to balance monitoring levels between mixed input and main output signals for zero-latency monitoring. Two channels of SPDIF input and output as well as MIDI input and output are also included. This audio interface also includes Steinberg’s CubaseLE 48-track recording software. A cheaper version of an audio interface may not include music recording software.

We are looking at an initial investment of about Rs 1 lakh, assuming you have a decent computer which just needs upgrades. If you’re looking for more professional results, a good rule of thumb is to spend most of your money on your microphones and monitors. The quality of the microphone controls the quality of signal you get into your computer, while your ability to judge the sound quality of your broadcast depends on good quality monitoring.

If you pick out good quality, well-designed equipment to start with, you can keep adding to your set up as your projects get more involved. By thinking through a good purchasing strategy (and sticking to it), you can avoid buying expensive gear that becomes obsolete too quickly or that doesn’t do what you need it to do.