in this video I'm going to show you how to start making music on your computer
this includes the hardware and software that you'll need to get started
plus I'll show you some of the basics to actually start recording
welcome to simple green tech I'm Radio Zane and on this channel I do audio tech
tips tutorials and reviews to help you unleash your creativity today we're
going to be looking at how to start making music on your computer and just
so you know any of the software or hardware that I use or mention in this
video will be linked in the description below as I'm not going to be going into
great detail on each piece of hardware or software so let's jump in first up
let's look at the hardware needed you'll need an audio interface to record your
voice or your instrument into your computer and these can come in all
shapes and sizes and various price points as well there are two audio
interfaces that I recommend to beginners on a budget
they are the behringer UMC 22 and the behringer um2 now both of these have
very similar inputs and outputs I've actually done a video comparing the two
I'll link to it in the description below and there should also be a card at the
top of the screen right now that you can click on in case you want to check out
the differences between the two interfaces but both of these should give
you great quality audio for a beginner now if you need to record two mics at
the same time you might want to look at getting something like the focusrite 2i2
this gives you two quality mic preamps plus the inputs can also be
switchable between mic inputs or line signals and you also get some decent
plugins included with it if you have the extra budget that you can spend on an
audio interface I highly recommend looking at the Focusrite 2i2 now with
your audio interface you're going to need some quality cables I use Kirlin
brand cables they're very good quality and they're budget-friendly and if
you're going to be using a microphone in your setup you're going to want to get a
female XLR - male XLR cable not one of those XLR to quarter-inch cables they're
not going to give you a good quality sound and if you need phantom power you
won't be able to get it with one of those cables
alright so now we have our audio interface and our cables
we're going to need some software to record into and this recording software
is typically called a DAW D.A.W. or digital audio workstation and there are several
free digital audio workstations available I've actually done a video of
my top 5 picks there should be a card to up here somewhere that you can click on
to check it out or I'll also link to it in the description below the DAW that
I'm going to be using in this video is called tracktion t7 as this is my
personal favorite out of all the free DAWs out there with our audio interface
connected let's open up tracktion t 7 now we want
to make sure that the software is set to use our audio interface so we're going
to go up to settings click on the audio devices tab and right where it says
audio device type click in here and you want to choose ASIO
for this I'm going to be using my focusrite 2i2 so it's all right clicked
on there what's this is set for your one you can create a new project or go into
an existing project and if you're just recording audio to make your music so
maybe you're recording it an instrument and your voice and you don't need any
virtual instruments you can actually get started right away so you'll just take
your track and you want to click in this area here and where it says no input you
want to make sure it's set to the input that you're going to be recording to so
I'm going to be recording to my input 2 I'll click on that then you can click on
this arm for recording button right here and once you click on it you can play on
your guitar or in your mic and you can see that there's some audio going
through which means you can start recording by clicking the record button
down here and any of the tracks that are armed for recording will record when you
press this button
and then you can go to the next track do the same thing and you can move your
clips around the timeline as needed and make your music that way however most of
us are probably going to want to use some virtual instruments like drums or
bass or synthesizer you can download a ton of free plug-ins out there I
recommend for drums using MT power drumkit 2 this is a great free drum
instrument it sounds like real drums because it is real drums that were
recorded and sampled into this instrument plus you get some cool
grooves with it and grooves are just drum beats that are already created
and you can easily drag those into the timeline
and now you have a drum beat already for you and you'll notice that the guitar
that I recorded earlier is a little plain it's just electric guitar going
straight into my interface so what we might want to get is a guitar amp
simulator and the one I recommend is AmpliTube they have a free version that
you can go to their site and download I've link to that in the description as
well so you can check it out so let's add that here and see what the
difference is like
all right so we have our guitar audio here we have a drum pattern over here we
may need to draw in some MIDI notes for say a bassline and we'll use track 3
here and you just want to drag down this red
plus sign into track 3 and click on insert new MIDI clip and we have a MIDI
clip here you can drag this around the timeline as
needed and now we're going to want to bring in a synthesizer so we'll just add
new plugin
I'm going to use xpand2! - it comes free with a lot of MIDI keyboards and you can
also get it for very cheap on plugin boutique they always have sales on it so
check that out if you're interested in this synthesizer and will select a
preset by clicking down here and we want a bass so where is our bass
it's a hard pick bass why not
now we can draw in notes here as we need to
and now we have our bassline of sorts here let's hear how it sounds all right
obviously I was just sort of playing around with this it's not an actual song
that I was putting together but I'm sure when you sit down and you start creating
something you're going to be creating something great and I look forward to
hearing what it is you do create feel free to share that with me in the
comments below and let me know what kind of music you're actually creating with
this and you can repeat the recording process or the MIDI process on as many
tracks as you need you can just adjust them around the timeline as needed for
the song click this video up here to see my free digital audio workstation picks
and click this one here to see what YouTube recommends you watch next thank
you so much for watching also subscribe if you'd like to see more videos like
this one for a simple green tech I'm Radio zane and we'll talk soon