How to record your own music and put it online

PCs are sometimes thought of as tools for the overworked and under-creative, for boring suits who would rather read emails and write documents than make music and movies. Windows Vista changes all that, and contains plenty of scope to express your creative side.

Back in the dark old days before the internet existed (we know it’s painful to remember but do try) becoming a successful musician took great dedication. Hopefuls would spend years learning instruments, writing songs and playing gigs, to work their way from total unknown to virtual obscurity; and from there, the long rocky climb to stardom.

Arguably, die-hard music fans will still insist this is the true path to greatness. However, things have changed, and the era of the internet and home technology has meant that bedroom producers and DJs are rocketing themselves to the top of the charts armed with only a laptop and an internet connection.

Sheer Audicity

Even professional musicians have made the change from lengthy recording sessions in dark studios to a bit of impromptu mixing with a laptop in the comfort of their own home, finding it easier to harness creative juices in a familiar environment.

The equipment needed to get started really depends on what you’re doing. If you only plan to use one instrument, or you own one of those one-man band contraptions with a giant drum and a harmonica, you don’t have to buy a lot of expensive equipment.

Just attach a microphone to the linein on your sound card and you can use Audacity to make your own recordings which you can save as MP3s, re-edit or use as samples in other songs – the choice is yours.

Audacity is a free music application, which allows you to record and arrange your songs through the recording socket on your sound card. The only investment would be microphones to capture your sound, and the cabling to attach them to your PC. When you’re connected, you will probably need to reconfigure the sound controls in Windows Vista to pick up your inputs. (Check out the guide above.)

If you’re in a band and want to record your songs, you probably need to invest in a multi-channel mixer, to feed all the elements of the band into the line-in on your sound card. Again, this can be recorded and saved in Audacity.

If you want to start editing and arranging your own tunes, you are probably going to have to invest in some software to do it, but which type depends on your musical style.

There’s plenty of software on the market which can turn your home PC into a fully fledged home studio, but choosing it can be a tricky business; there is very little free software out there that can provide a complete audio solution for users who aren’t music production professionals.

Choosing which software package you want requires a little honesty about what you are actually going to use it for. Beginners who just want to have a play around with samples and music arrangements should try a simple program such as eJay.

This is an ideal place for beginners to get some practice and ideas, but probably won’t earn you a top 10 hit. The interface is basic, easy to use and there are loads of samples which are ready to drop in to make decent tunes.

However, if you have a definite idea of what you want your track to sound like this probably isn’t going to cut it.

If you’re a little more advanced, and want more control to recreate the beat in your head, software like Magix Music Studio or FL Studio (previously known as Fruity Loops), offers a lot more diversity and control over samples and arrangements. However, these are more difficult to use and it will take a good deal longer to produce a noise you will be happy to play to your friends.

Getting noticed

Of course, making your music is only half the journey to fame and fortune, and as many artists will tell you, it’s probably the easy bit, too. However, the internet has revolutionised the music industry, and now it’s easier than ever to make that step to stardom.

A key part of trying to make it big used to be sending off a hastily prepared demo tape to record label bigwigs – who would probably throw it in the bin as soon as they received it. Obviously, you can still record and dispatch your music today; you can use Windows Media Player to copy all your tracks and build a demo CD in seconds.

However, this is the old-fashioned way to get people talking about and listening to your music. Now you can get people listening without licking a stamp, leaving your house, or fishing anything out of a bin.

The hot word in the music industry now is ‘MySpace’ and the way young people have influenced which bands have made it over the last few years has been attributed to ‘the MySpace generation’.

Now it’s harder to find bands that haven’t been internet sensations before they released their first single, than it is to pinpoint the old crooners that have been playing the circuit for years.

Artists Lily Allen and the Arctic Monkeys have reached the dizzy heights of popular beat songstress/ combo in less than two years, and they both took advantage of MySpace to do it.

Setting up a MySpace music account is easy, and your page will come with a player where you can add as many tracks as you wish. However, getting people to your page is the next task.

MySpace is a community experience that enables you to search for similar acts to your own, and link to them to your space. The hope is that those artistes will be so delighted they will link to you; soon networks develop and people will be logging on to your space from all around the world.

This is also a great way to meet fellow musicians, which is the perfect way to expand your musical horizons.

Beats and blogs

To complement your MySpace site, you can also post MP3s on blogs using services like Blogger. To do this simply upload your MP3s to a free hosting service, such as Garage Band, which allow you to store, link and play your music.

By setting up a blog, you can then add your music to blog aggregators such as The Hype Machine, which has been responsible for exposing hundreds of bands to the public early in their music careers.

While the likelihood is that most of us will never become superstar DJs or the next big music sensation, uploading your music is an easy way to express your natural creativity, and turn your PC into a centre of fun.

Six steps to recording your sounds