Hey peeps, I’ve been playing harmonica for a while. I want to record my playing and put it with the vocals of my friend and do some experiments with it. I’ve a little bit of idea that I do need a DAW on my PC, where I can experiment with it, but don’t have the exact roadmap of how all the things from record to edit will happen. Please suggest your ideas with me if you have experienced this. Any small info would be helpful. Thank you.
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Lots of detailed info and video on youtube. I would start there.
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You’ll also need an audio interface unless you’ve already got one. you can get some free Daw’s from the net.
Check out this page for where to go to get software.
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I’ve got simple and cheap hardware setup: laptop + Zoom H1n microphone. Microphone acts as ASIO interface, and works nice. Here is example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaP4LBSZuT8
About software:
I’m using Ableton Live Lite which was bundled to my midi keyboard, but I think that You can record using some free software (Audacity).
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With my original songs, I usually record harmonica with a USB microphone called the Blue Snowball. If you’re looking for a decent quality USB microphone on a budget, you really can’t go wrong with the snowball. There are better USB mics out there that I haven’t tried yet (I haven’t tried Audio-Technica’s USB mics, but I’ve heard they’re really good), so it all depends on how much you want to spend.
For my DAW, I actually use Reaper. Although some people think of it as a free DAW, it actually comes with a 30/60 day trial period and is actually quite cheap to buy at $60USD for a personal license. It comes with all of these different plug-ins bundled in so you can learn mixing right away. And as an added bonus, it’s available on nearly every PC format, from Windows to MacOS to even Linux (by itself or using the program Wine for using the Windows version).
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Thanks for your suggestion!
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Hello, thank you for your reply. How’s the Blue Snowball in comparison with Audio-Technica’s USB mics? There is a huge difference between the price point, so I think Audio-Technica would be better, but I think that is pretty expensive for me to start with.
I don’t know much about DAWs. Have you ever tried a completely free DAW that is good and get the job done?
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I’ve used Waveform it’s ok it’ll do the job.
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Hey thank you for your suggestion, I have gone through all the DAWs, and I like the garageband. I’m going to try to record harmonica with the help of garageband, and then I’ll see if it can give good quality or not.
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It is also free like garageband, right? which is better?
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I lay the harmonica tract separate from other tracks so harmonica track can be copied an edited before mixing the entire recording.
Have fun with it!
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