Newb Question

[Fabricator]

I would like to record takes of our band practicing any particular song for the purpose of song development. It would be of great benefit to be able to play loops of our work as well as commercial material for the same reasons. Possibly even slowing down the loops dramatically in order to pick out finer nuances.

We have a nice practice facility that is acoustically accurate (within reason) with a separate control room, drum room, etc. We use a A&H 32 channel GL-2400 live mixer in house as well as gigs.

With that said, I am looking for advice on the best route to take for our recording needs. We have tried a yamaha digital recorder that drove us all crazy with it lack of user friendliness(read this as old guys with short tempers). Our purpose is to develop and perform the music, not to spend our limited time on complication.

Any advise would be greatly appreciated.

[Phil O'Keefe]

I would have a look at the Zoom H4n. It's a small recorder with some of the features you're looking for... for example, it can play back with "varispeed" - slower or faster than "normal" speed. I don't think it, or anything similar out there, will loop for you, but it does come bundled with a "lite" version of Cubase (Cubase LE) that would allow you to loop stuff on your computer.

[UstadKhanAli]

That seems like a good suggestion. Whatever it is, you want it to be good and fast and easy to operate so you can get on with playing.

 

We used some sort of iPod with a recording attachment, shoving several mics through a small A&H mini-mixer.