How to do home recording for free

By Darrin Koltow

You've worked on that Sor etude, or that tune by Clapton, or that Metallica tab you just got from Olga, and you're ready to share it with your pal Gus who lives in Seattle. (You live in Smyrna, Georgia. And, no, you don't know Julia Roberts personally, but your great maiden Aunt Aubrey gave her mom's car a fender bender last year.)

You sit down in front of the old tape recorder and record the tune for Gus. It takes you about eleven tries, rewinding and recording, before you're satisfied with your performance. You send the tape to Gus, who sends you an email in response:

"My tape player ate your song, man!"

After trashing your tape recorder in rage, you read the Guitar Study newsletter to find out how to make home recordings of your performances. You then use your knowledge of home recording to save a "snapshot" of your progress in playing through essential exercises like the Chord Melody Workout (CMW).

CMW helps you create solos, learn the fretboard better, improvise, and generally makes you a better person. No kidding.

Recording Equipment and Software

You've probably made recordings on your computer already. The hardware needed is cheap, and you probably already have it. This includes the sound card, microphone and speakers.

You *could* spend buckets of money for a *great* sound system, but we're here to talk about the bare minimum you need to make decent recordings of your shining guitar moments.

What software do you need to make home recordings? I don't know if the version of Windows you're running still has this component, but my old Win 95 tank has Sound Recorder (sndrec32.exe) on it. I used to use this for all my recording. I also used to shave with a butter knife, but we're not here to dwell on my mistakes. Pay attention, will ya?

Sound Recorder

With Sound Recorder, you can make .WAV sound files of selectable quality. On the one hand, the low quality option sounds like you're talking to someone on the moon using tin cans connected with old guitar string -- but the file size is nice and small.

On the other hand, the higher quality stuff that you want to impress Gus of Seattle with sounds acceptable (not great), but it's slamming your system: it sucks up too much ram and disk space.

Plus, if your system is like mine, Sound Recorder doesn't let you make extended recordings -- at least, not by default. After a minute or two of recording, the program stops.

There *is* a way around this: after you start the Sound Recorder application, record just a wee bit of sound -- any old thing lasting no more than a second or two.

Next, hit control-C (Copy). Then hit control-V (Paste). Hit control-V repeatedly until you get the recording duration you want to work with. After that, all you need do is move the slider back to the start of the file, and start recording.

Where to get a free MP3 recorder

So much for Sound Recorder, which creates just WAV files. Wav files are okay, but we live in a world of MP3s now: much higher quality sound, yet much smaller file size. What software can you record MP3s with?

I searched a long time for some freebie software I could record MP3s with, and came up with squat -- until I finally happened upon Messer, which you can learn more about here: http://www.dago.pmp.com.pl

With Messer, which stands for Memo Session Sound Recorder, not only can you do live microphone recording of MP3s, you can also schedule the app to automatically stop and start, without you needing to fuss with it. It's kind of like that timer feature on VCRs.

Why would you need such a timer feature? Maybe your favorite radio station is having an interview with Wynton Marsalis on at 2 pm, when you're at work. Or, maybe there's a cool talk radio show on at 3 am that you want to record. That's what this Messer feature is for -- and you won't find it in any other sound recorder, at least not a free one.

Other features of Messer

Messer can create both WAV and MP3 files sampled from soundcard input. Here's an overview of its other features, which is from the URL given previously.

It can automatically stop and start recording at any moment you choose, and do optional simple processing on the recorded file, such as normalizing and mp3 compression. You can schedule multiple sessions with it, and even shut down the computer.

You get all this for free, in a file size that's barely more than 1/2 Meg. Not bad. To be honest, you need to get more than just the Messer download, if you actually want to install and run it. But these extra files are also free and have a small size.

One of the extra files is called lame_enc.dll (153 K) and the other is called bladeenc.dll (112 K). On the Messer download page Messer's author, Dariusz Sieradzki, tells you how to use these.

What to do after download

Once you do the download, installing it goes pretty smoothly. Be aware that there's no help file, although Dariusz says you can email him. His site comes across as pretty friendly, so I'd be confident about getting support from him.

Also, on the configuration tab, which is where you might need the most help, there's plenty of helpful text next to many of the options. Plus, you get an extensive, easy to understand readme.txt file. Use this file to set Messer's many configuration options.

Don't be put off when you go to record and see the ".wav" file extension in the Save As dialog box. The .mp3 option is there. You just have to scroll down a bit.

If you have a slow system, and you're recording onto MP3 instead of WAV, you'll need to shut down all other applications besides Messer. If you don't, your system won't have enough resources, and the sound file you get back will have skips in it.

To make the best MP3s with Messer, you might need to configure it to use the Lamenc DLL instead of the bladeenc DLL. If it sounds like I'm speaking Ancient Greek to you, don't worry: I'm not a wingnut tech-head. If I can figure out how to use Messer, anyone can.

Another thing you'll like about Messer is that it's pretty stable. I've used it many times, and it's never crashed -- and I don't have the most stable system, either.

The sound quality of the MP3s you make with Messer will blow you away, especially if all you've ever heard are WAV files and Real Player files.

Guitar Chords (GC) builds your chops, so you can sound your best on those home recordings. GC shows you how to substitute and combine chords; play Jazz, Rock and Blues progressions; transpose songs; put chords to a melody; apply fingerpicking, alternating bass, arpeggios, and much more.

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