You definitely could.
http://moternmedia.com/news.html

But where will we ever get 10 bucks? I'll do it.

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Related issue: I'm still thinking of putting some rocking tunes up on Soundcloud/ Spotify/ whatever, but have not yet gotten off my ass long enough to follow through with any of the advice given to me on 54evil (mostly on account of it all requiring me to buy new gear).

So, any tips on recording crappy music __with nothing more than__ a keyboard, a laptop, and a USB cable?

Old Zircon knows all that kinda thingy.

Yeah, I know, he was very helpful on 54evil! But again, I'm too broke / busy / lazy to buy new gear, so if anyone knows of a way to do it with "household parts", so to speak, I would appreciate suggestions. The only thing I can come up with is recording it on my cellphone, which is a terrible idea.

Depending on your cellphone you might be able to use a line in, so it might not be that bad. There's iOS multitrack recorders galore at the very least, your platform may vary however.

If you've got an iPhone, Garageband for iPhone's actually not that bad. Most of the stuff I do on my own isn't that different from my other band, whose recording equipment looks more expensive than what I make in a year. But then again I like lofi and mainly record off my piano, but you can get some pretty cool field recordings.

No Apple products. I have not approved of Apple since Woz left the company.

I was the same way, but my work bought us all iPhones back in 2011 or so, and it was the first apple product I had since my dad brought home an Apple IIE in like 1985 so I was kind of stuck with it. Not sure if there's an equivalent for Galaxies Droids or what have you, otherwise Audacity's pretty sweet, or Mixxx if you're looking for mixing tools and use Ubuntu like I do.

Keyboard, laptop and USB cable? Well, if your keyboard has a USB midi output and you don't need to record any sound in (or don't mind using your laptop's mediocre-at-best-by-definition built in audio input - which can be cool for a certain kind of sound but isn't exactly the optimal choice) you're good to go. I'd say download Reaper and find some freeware plugins/softsynths (KVR is a goo site for that) and start messing with it.


Or you could go really minimal and grab Sunvox, which is a completely awesome modular tracker that's free for mac, windows and PalmOS, almost free for iOS/Android:

http://warmplace.ru/soft/sunvox/

Everything on that site is completely awesome in one way or another and it's almost all free for desktops.

You'll also want some semi-decent headphones (or better yet, monitor speakers) if you're going to do much arrangement though. But to get started you don't need much. Case in point: I have a pair of the exact headphones he's using , got em for at a thrift shop a decade ago. They're awful, but for something simple like he's doing they're plenty.

I made some terrible music for a friend a couple years ago using a jerry-rigged M-Audio hookup and Audacity. If the music wasn't awful, it would've worked great. Just used an assortment of cords and adapters and my guitar, put it on a CD and shipped it to his fraternity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXznhFP0Oa0

Number one recommendation is Reaper though. Every bit as good as any other recording software I've used (and better than a lot of them) but it's free to demo indefinitely, and only like i you actually end up buying it. I've been running the demo for maybe 5 years so far, but I'm going to actually buy it when the next major release comes out (you get two major upgrades for free and even though there are point releases all the time the major releases seem to be a year or two apart, so that goes a long way).

Down the road, for microphones on a seriously tight budget, you should check out these:

http://www.karmamics.com/shop/K-Micro-Matched-Pair.html

The price has gone through the roof (I got three of them when they first came out and they were each shipped) but for a pair is still good and they actually sound pretty great for the money. The downside is you'd need phantom power but almost any audio interface with a mic input should have that these days.

I've also heard good things about the extremely affordable mics that Monoprice sells, and since that's the place you'd want to get your cables and mic stands (seriously, anyone who's buying cables or stands should go there now, because they're amazing for the price. Their headphones come highly recommended, too, I've known a few people who got them and they all loved them, and the tape-op reviews are pretty flattering, too.


Speaking of Monoprice, I got one of their tablets a few weeks ago and it absolutely lives up to the hype. I'd say it's 90% of the way to being a Wacom (and that last 10% is all minor stuff like the feel of the button on the pen and the fact that the writing surface is just a bit rougher than I'd like - as far as performance it's flawless so far) except that a Wacom the same size is almost 0 but the Monoprice is .

http://www.reaper.fm/

Lord Croc I like it! It sounds like the beginning to some Swans song that was never made.

I'm feeling kind of stuck right now because my old band's singer got preggers and the rest of the band is in a much more well-known band, so I'm looking for new projects

Thanks yaaa! I have a lot more, but I forgot the login info to that YT channel so I have to come up with another pseudonym to release it under I guess, I'm open to suggestions. Really liked the sound of Richard Malley though....

Where's your stuff?

Not trying to stalk you, just curious. I was really digging OZ and Cena's music that they posted.

http://sockpuppet.us/ which really needs an overhaul. Best to just go straight to my bandcamp at http://music.sockpuppet.us/

Hear hear. It's nice that the internet robber barons are paying us serfs for the services we render unto them by toiling endlessly in their digital fields (well, some of them pay us, at any rate), but they still exploit us without mercy.

Yeah. My first reaction to that was "only 23k?"

Well, consider that he probably doesn't get a lot of repeat listeners.

But yeah Spotify is bullshit and online pay-per-stream services are a horrible value proposition for musicians who aren't already making millions on their lucrative mainstream record deals. And most of the new-economy music distributors are just old-economy music distributors wrapped up in new clothing; iTunes, Amazon Music, etc. are all set up with stupid levels of middlemen just for the sake of preserving jobs that should have gone extinct years ago.

The only music sales channel I've found that's actually fair and provides a great experience both to the musicians and to the listeners is Bandcamp.