How to Record Live Music

Step-by-Step Guide

1. 1

   Step 1: Connect everything up.

   This is probably the most confusing step for beginners as there are lots of cables and adapters to connect.
   
   Experiment and make sure you start out at low volume settings and work your way up so you don't blow the speakers or your eardrums.
2. 2

   Step 2: Perform a Sound check.

   Record a short clip while adjusting the mixer so that the instruments and/or sources are balanced with each other.
   
   Also make sure the peaks of the waveforms are not always hitting the very top and bottom of the window, indicating that the recording is "clipping"--too loud and losing quality.
   
   Have your peaks reach the maximum up to 20-40% of the time to record audio that matches the level of most other modern recordings. ,, Various filters may improve the sound and make up for a sub-par recording. "Normalize" the recording if the sound is consistently low.
   
   If that doesn't amplify it enough to your liking, run a "compressor" or "hard limiting" on it, which can make soft portions loud while keeping loud portions from clipping any further.
   
   Fade in and out if you want to avoid the click as a song starts or ends. , The wav format is lossless, which means it does not compromise quality, but it takes up more disk space.
   
   Also export it to a compressed format like mp3 or ogg if you want to share it over the Internet.
3. 3

   Step 3: Record the music.

4. 4

   Step 4: Clean up the recording.

5. 5

   Step 5: Save it as a *.wav file for archiving.

Detailed Guide

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