Microphone suggestion

I have heard that one of the best ways to learn and improve your Ukulele playing is to record yourself.

Anyone have any hardware or software recommendations?

You really don't need very expensive equiptment to do this.

Back when I didn't have anything fancy, I'd just use a digital recorder that I used to record lectures and that worked fine. Sound quality wasn't quite studio quality, but hey, it worked, and it was what I had. (I acually mainly used that method to make like a ghetto loop pedal...so I could pratice improving over it, lol)

Eventually I came around to recording on my computer for fun. And I just used freeware. In my case, I use Audacity. Its great. I still use it even though I have a copy of Adobe Audition (which I haven't installed yet.) And I just used my computer's built in mic. Worked fine.

Now that I have a bit more gear, I can plug into my combo amp and put some reverb on it or whatever, and use the aux out from the amp to go into my computer using a quarter inch to stereo headphone cable. That works great too.

But you really don't need anything fancy. Just get Audacity and you'll be good to go.

I love my Blue Snowball (Blue is the brand name, Snowball is the product name). Its a plug-n-play usb microphone, and works very well for its price. I use it for all my audio recordings of covers (http://www.last.fm/music/Don't+Stop+Running/First+Takes+EP).

Yesterday, I bought a refurbished microphone from M-Audio off from woot! for $50. Unfortunately, the deal is over and costs ~$99 for a new one at most places.

It's called the M-Audio Session Music Producer, and it comes with PC software similar to Mac's GarageBand. It seems to be a reasonably well-priced, entry-level production microphone (or at least the reviews have told me). Here's a c|net review: http://reviews.cnet.com/microphones/m-audio-session-music/4505-6469_7-32625216.html?tag=box4505

I'm still searching for a good set of monitor speakers or headphones, but I'm still pretty stoked about getting a microphone 100x better than the one on my webcam.

I use my digital camera's video option. It has a really good microphone inside it and all I do is transfer it to my laptop afterward so that I can analyze my playing. All of my videos uploaded onto youtube are done so in that manner.

If you're going to listen to yourself, you might as well watch yourself strut your stuff. People will not just be listening to you, they'll also be watching you play. So while you do what you do, throw in some action

Give the people what they want; a show.
And then watch them :bowdown:to your awesomeness.

I was kind of shocked to find this out myself, but you can use a microphone from the video game "Rock Band" and plug it into the usb drive on your laptop. I think the playstation version is the only one that has the usb chord, not xbox, but I could be wrong.

Anyway, I went to Gamestop and picked up a used one for only ten bucks! It sounds way better then my laptop's microphone. I have a mac by the way, so if you do too and need some help setting it up, just pm me.

You can download the video software that I use here: http://www.nchsoftware.com/capture/index.html

In retrospect, I should have given a little more information. I would want to do this on my PC so having the link to the softare is a great benefit thanks. I'll look around for a mic then, I was thinking about just stopping by Guitar Center and getting something but maybe now I'll stop by Best Buy.

rossjr said:

In retrospect, I should have given a little more information. I would want to do this on my PC so having the link to the softare is a great benefit thanks. I'll look around for a mic then, I was thinking about just stopping by Guitar Center and getting something but maybe now I'll stop by Best Buy.

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If all you need is just a check of how your playing is coming along, then yeah, any el-cheapo mic from Best Buy should do the trick.

I'll second the recommendation of Audacity. It's free, it's cross-platform, and it works.

If you want to get fancy, I'll also second the recommendation of the Blue Snowball. It's overkill for just practicing, but it will come in handy down the road when you want to record something that sounds nice. Amazon usually has the cheapest price (and Guitar Center will match it if you'd prefer to buy it in person).

JJ

I would definitely say that the Mic from Rock Band (the Xbox 360 one is a standard usb mic) will work, but I thought it picked up a lot of noise, so I didn't use it to do any recording. I picked up the M-Audio Producer USB mic and have used that when recording the last few of my videos for YouTube and I think it works great.