I've got an electric guitar, and a midi keyboard with mod wheel.
I've got garritan personal orchestra.
I have a powerful computer with a Soundblster X-F.I Professionl, which comes with the jacks in front to plug stuff like instruments or microphones in.
I need some programs that will bring it all together though.
-I need something that will let me use my soundcard as an amp, playing the guitar directly through the computer for recording and combining with synthized music or the garritn orchestra sounds.
-I need some way to actually record, arrange, and play save all the garritan sounds I produce. The program itself doesn't appear to be able to do anything more than playback direct input from my keyboard.
I don't know what would be best for my needs though, as I'm new to this.
Brien
audacity or Krystal are two free programs for the beginner, gratis
Terry
Just a word of warning on using your pc as an amp.
PC speakers, headphones or Hi-Fi/monitor speakers are not
built to cope with high the volume levels produced with an electronic instrument.
Don't get carried away like I did, push up the volume and blow a tweeter.
The cones of instrument speakers are stiffer than Hi-Fi speakers and are
designed to handle the loud transients produced by guitars etc.
I also have a Soundblaster audio card with the front inputs and use a pair
of 100w RMS Advent speakers I use as monitors.
Quick and easy to plug the guitar in and practice but I got carried away
with the end result a 3 month wait for a replacement tweeter.
The recording level should be as high as possible without distortion with
occasional peaks into the red acceptable but keep the output to the speakers down when monitoring the guitar.
Cheers:)
PCMS
For under a hundred bucks you could do a lot worse than SONAR home Studio. It will record 64 audio tracks, supports ACID files, VST synths and MIDI.
As a guitar player you might prefer Home Studio XL as it includes the session drummer which can give you some pretty good drum tracks.
