Learning new skills!

[William Sharkey]

Off the wall,

I admire any person who is willing to give computers a shot when they did not grow up with them.

Possibly add your location, like, what city you are near, to your profile. Maybe you will find someone you get along with well who lives near you. A real life tutorial would be best I believe. It's a long shot, but who knows. Also, don't be swayed by the media. When someone says you "need" something, they are usually poor advisors. I think you own a very capable computer recording system, now you just need a good teacher. The tutorials you seek just are not there.

- William

[deastman]

Hopefully this text will display correctly on your system... The basic difference between an insert and a send is:

Insert:
Guitar->Distortion->Main Mix

Send:
->Reverb->Effects Return on Main Mix
/
Guitar->Main Mix


In other words, an insert is like plugging the output of your guitar into a fuzz box, and then routing the output of that to your main mix.

A send is like running the output of your guitar to two places at once: 1)the dry guitar signal goes straight to the main mix, and 2)also goes to a reverb unit, the output of which is also sent to the main mix. This is useful for two reasons: 1)You can blend the dry and effected signals together, and 2)several audio channels such as guitar, drums, and bass, can all be sent to one reverb unit.

[offthewall]

Thanks for all the advice, folks.

I think I'll just stick with trying to learn the cubase, as usual by trial and error.
I've learned most other things that way....what the heck!

[Sascha Franck]

One question, offthewall: Do you know about the "concept" of a hardware mixer?

[Hink]

I admire any person who is willing to give computers a shot when they did not grow up with them.

I agree...but I must add that I'm 46....I didn't get my first real pc until 2000, I would say to everyone my age and older that you can teach an old dog new tricks...though it may seem hard at first to switch from the days of tape recording, to the use of a pc, anyone can do it. Suddenly (at least for me) oneday everything just clicks and makes sense....to this day I still have many moments of "oh I get it", for very basic things.

We have the disadvantage of not having computers available to us when we were in school. When I started in high school (tech High School) we had a computer shop (not store shop, but shop class shop) the computer for those who chose "Computer Science" as a vocation (or shop as we called it, I was machine shop) did have a computer in the computer shop...there was one choice for computer sciences and the one computer they had was the size of one classroom...by the time I graduated they had doubled the size of the school (actually my second year) and more then doubled the amount of shops (originally there were only 13), then they had other computer options including graphic arts.

I was forced (part of learning to be a machinist) to also get my journeymen in mechanical drawing (drafting)...but that was all by hand with T-squares, dividers, ect...however in machine shop we were being training in cnc...which was not really computer but programming a machine to run multiple tasks, that ran off a tape, the tape was written on a weird typewriter called a flexi-writer...that really helped me a lot to learn the computer. But the downside of my education was I never learned to type (though it never shows ). Anyhow my point is we can learn, a lot of times we may find the strangest route to learn something because of how and what we were taught in school but it does come easier as you go along.

I often say that technology begets technology squared...well the same can said for learning the pc. Often learning one thing also brings with it the understanding of many things. This too is almost a squared principle, but I think cubed is more accurate...there will come a period of time where it seems you can't turn on the computer without discovering ten new things. Too me discovery is often the best way to learn.

Fortunately one upside of being older is that older people tend to be less of the "I want it and I want it now mindset" (not to say when we were young we were not), we have a little more patience and this case it proves patience is a virtue. So advice I give to older folk learning the pc is, if you dont get it now, don't fret it...it will come in it's own time.

Never ever be afraid to ask, trust me for every one person that says "I can't believe he asked that" there will be many more that are saying "Oh I see, I'm glad he asked that"....

[offthewall]

One question, offthewall: Do you know about the "concept" of a hardware mixer?

Sascha,
I know that if I plug my mike or guitar into the input of my Behringer, twiddle the knobs and plug the output into my soundcard, that I can now get the audio signal into the computer to work with!

[bobbyblank]

aaahahaha. judging by the fuzz/tape machine project you described, I think you've got more of a handle on hardware 'concepts' than most of us put together. how's it coming along, offthewall?

[james0tucson]

One area that might present a challenge, is that if you don't know a lot of the vernacular language of recording and mixing (never mind computers), and if you also don't know the computer jargon, it's hard to separate which is which.

A lot of the learning curve in computer music production has nothing to do with the computer, but with the difficulty that falls in your lap when you suddenly have all the power that comes with working in the idiom of a full-blown recording studio.

What the newbie might need to do, is learn enough of a host program that he can work as if it's a 4-track recorder maybe with a reverb unit or so.

Most host programs these days are the learning-curve equivalent of walking into a 64-track digital mixing studio where the board has been zeroed out and all the patchbays have been unplugged, and the engineer quit.

But if you grab a host, any host, the stuff that comes with an issue of Computer Music Magazine will do; or the demo version of FLStudio, or EnergyXT, or the free version of Ableton that comes with some sound cards, or the free version of Cakewalk that comes with some other sound cards, or Tracktion if that's your thing... Any host program, learn to arm a mixer track so it records from your sound card's input, and play it back. Just start there. You'll be doing way, way more in no time.

[offthewall]

bobbyblank asks:

how's it coming along

Well.....slowly getting there, I think.
Thanks to browsing the 'tutorial' section on this forum, I have been saved a whole lot of work.
A recent project had me record audio tracks of guitar chords, guitar lead, bass guitar and a Midi track of simple keyboard fill-in. When I tried to mixdown the keyboard had disappeared!
Then I found the tutorial explaining that I need to record the Midi as an Audio track and re-insert it into the mix.....Magic!
But I wouldn't have guessed that without the tutorial!
Some 'simple' things just aren't intuitive.

[birrbits]

here's a program that might suit your needs (or at least until you outgrow it) the best thing is its free, and with an extra download supports VSTs.

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

That being said, I myself have never used it But I have heard alot of good comments about it here at kvr.

-edit: bah now I see why noone has reccomended it, no midi support sorry, still, a nice looking editor.

[offthewall]

Thanks, birrbits,
I looked at that one, but as you say...no Midi.
To be honest I would be really happy with (free) Kristal Audio Engine if that had Midi support. It's very simple to use for audio applications.