Yes that’s right! You can record your own tracks on your PC for free!

There are lots of great products out there, both hardware and software, which are aimed specifically at music production. Whether it be sequencing software, mixers, plugins, or audio interfaces, they all do their own specific job, and they do it well (most of the time). The downside for many home musicians however, is price. Many products out there are simply out of a lot of peoples price range. So, what do you do? You want to set up your own little studio for recording your tracks, but cant afford to spend out on all the hardware and software. Read on!

Suppose you could download free software that meets even the needs of many professional producers, and not have to spend out on any hardware at all (assuming you already have a PC with a sound card, and a jack to mini jack adapter for plugging your instrument into your PC).

You can! Here’s how…

GNU/Linux and Open Source software!

Never heard of it? Well from now on you’ll be glad you did!

For more information on GNU/Linux, please visit

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux

What does this mean?

The Linux operating system provides super low latency audio (even more so than other operating systems often provide even with the right drivers and hardware), and a whole list of free “open source” audio production software. This doesn’t usually require anything more than your average pc to get brilliant studio quality results.

Most distributions of Linux are freely downloadable from the developers website (often in both 32bit and 64bit architectures), and with free support from the online community. On top of this, many distributions (or distros) can be downloaded as a “Live CD”. This enables you to optionally boot from the cd as opposed to having to install it; so you can try out the software first, without having to install a single thing on your pc.

I personally recommend the Ubuntu Studio distribution (based on Ubuntu), which is what I use for recording my own tracks (see http://www.ubuntustudio.org and http://www.ubuntu.com for more info).

This distribution comes preinstalled with all the audio apps you will need to record your tracks, such as an audio sequencer, drum sequencer, audio mastering tools etc. It also features a low latency audio server called Jack. This ensures the lowest possible latency when recording and playing back audio.

I know what you’re thinking…

Why bother when I can just use my current operating system?

Simply put, because no other operating system has such low latency audio, and such a vast assortment of commercial quality free software. When I converted to Linux I discovered this, and i’m still blown away by its performance today.

I use both a laptop and desktop PC for recording my tracks (both more than a few years old), and get no detectable latency when recording or playing back.

The specs are as follows:
Laptop -
Mobile AMD Athlon M 1.80 GHz Processor
512MB Ram (266MHz)
Onboard AC97 Sound

Desktop -
AMD Sempron 1.83 GHz Processor
512MB Ram (333MHz)
Onboard AC97 Sound

As you can see… Nothing special. Onboard sound. Pretty old really!

The apps I usually use are Ardour (for my audio sequencer), and Hydrogen (for sequencing drums). Both these programs work flawlessly, have lots of free plugins, and are constantly being updated and improved, as is all open source software.

As with all software, there will be a small learning curve. Therefore it will take a while to get used to it and be efficient in it. However, with Linux, you are using free, open source software, so take your time and read the software manuals. Before long you will be making studio quality tracks for free.

If however you do find yourself using the software quite a lot (for instance, to produce full albums), please consider donating a small amount to the developers via their website, so that open source software can continue its growth.

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