recording your own tracks

[Phil]

I looked over cakewalk and all that stuff. Now....I noticed that you can record your keyboard into a track (duh). But. since i only got 1 guitar, is it possable record your keyboard drums/bass? Or....is there any other way to record your own created drum/bass tracks without drums or bass? (Im trying to stay away from the pre made tracks). thanks

[RADAR_Brian]

You might try hammerhead rhythm station...

http://www.threechords.com/hammerhead/

it's kinda cool.

[Mark U.]

Do a search for VSTi plugins, there are a lot on the internet. Most would require a midi device to record them in but you could also write them in with cakewalk just using your mouse and keyboard.

[Liquidmantis]

If you're looking for a non-loopbased drummer, check out JamStix (http://www.rayzoon.com/). It can monitor your track and play more aggressively to match your style. It has a lot of power and customization but is easy to use out of the box (all I've really done with it so far).

[Edit] Oops, misread your post. If you want to lay down the tracks yourself then like Mark said, you'd need a VSTi. JamStix will still work in that fashion too, you can disable the "brain" and just trigger the samples yourself. If you want a MIDI input device, Bome's Mouse Keyboard (http://www.bome.com/midi/keyboard/) will let you use your computer keyboard as a MIDI keyboard.

A passable solution for bass is to get a pitch shifter VST and record your guitar. I did that for a bit before getting a cheap bass.

[RADAR_Brian]

what software were you using the Jamstix with?

[Liquidmantis]

Reaper (http://www.reaper.fm). The Reaper forum is actually where I found out about JamStix. I was looking at DFH Ezdrummer before that. You can [should be able to] use JS in any VST host app though.

[RADAR_Brian]

Yeah, I was trying to see it in Mixcraft.. but I wasn't able to pull up the jamstix plugin...

I'll give it another shot.

[Liquidmantis]

It doesn't look like Mixcraft has VSTi support. From a quick look in their forum it looks like it will have it in v.4 which might have a beta coming out soon.

[RADAR_Brian]

Ok.. I installed Reaper... it's pretty cool.. but I couldn't seem to find where to hook the jamstix into it...

[Liquidmantis]

I'll do a new install later to go through all the steps, but you may have to tell Reaper the folder to scan for VSTs. Did JS install its VST module to c:\program files\steinberg\vstplugins? If so you'll have to add it to Reaper's setup under Options -> Preferences -> Plugins\VST.

Once you have it added in, insert a track for JS and click the FX button and you'll see the VSTi category, Jamstix should be listed there.

[Edit] Ok, JS doesn't copy its DLLs to the VSTPlugins directory. The easiest thing is to go to Reaper's VST config as above and click the Add button then browse to your Jamstix installation directory.