Rock Song "In The Box" – The PC Recording Studio

Now that I am married and settled, touring and playing gigs with a rock band are definitely a thing of the past. But I’m still amusician, and I still write songs.  So home music recording is now very important.  Luckily my wife and I are both singer/songwriter/guitar-payers with our own niche audience in the acoustic folk world, so there is still an outlet for the “playing live” jones.  But every now and then I feel like playing some RAWK.  For years, there was really nothing I could do about that.  But since starting Home Brew Audio, I decided it was time to dust off the electric guitar and bass and see what I could do as a 1-man-band.

All In The Box

So what do I mean by “in the box?”  I’m talking about the computer.  This song (there is an mp3 of what this song sounds like so far at the end of this post;  follow along as I complete it) was recorded in my home pc recording studio.  I don’t have a drum kit, so that was a computer program.  I don’t have a bass amp, so that was a computer program.  I do have a guitar amp, but didn’t want to bother with it, so that was recorded with a virtual amp like the bass.  Finally, there is a synthesizer which was…you guessed it…a computer program.  So what I have thus far is a drum track that I “programmed” with drum software, two electric guitar parts I played with my electric guitar plugged into my computer through a USB interface and virtual amps from a software program, a bass recorded the same way, and a synthesizer software program whose notes I played on a tiny USB keyboard.  That’s it.
When you listen, try to forget the fact that it was not a typical rock band recording.  If I hadn’t told you, would you have known?  Be honest.

One Man Band

I still need to add a few more guitar licks, a bit more synth, and all the vocals.  For the singing, I will use a microphone plugged into an interface with a pre-amp and connected to my computer via USB.  So even though I don’t have a drum kit, and I don’t have a bass amp, and I have no backup singers, every single thing in this song will have been played/sung by me through the magic of multi-track recording, overdubbing, and some pretty cool software programs.
Below is the link to the 1st 15 or 20 seconds of the song so far (remember no vocals yet and it’s still missing some accent guitar and synth).  I’ll post the next phase soon.  Watch this space!
[jwplayer config=”Custom Audio Player-250″ mediaid=”1120″]
Enjoy!