Write your songs down on paper, record your practice sessions to help pinpoint things that need work, practice practice practice, get a job, save, practice, go to a recording studio and get a professional to record it. If you're tight and have no troubles laying down the phat a real studio will do wonders for you.

You can muck around and make your own stuff but at the end of the day I bet your instruments are cheap and nasty, your gear is nasty and your chops aren't there yet... You need to learn for yourself, no magic code will help you. But a quality acoustically treated studio with gear and an engineer with an ear will add alot of goodness into the mix.

Otherwise start doing it yourself then ask for help when you have specific problems. Also, read stuff. Tweakheads have some good newbie guides.

Greener wrote: Write your songs down on paper, record your practice sessions to help pinpoint things that need work, practice practice practice, get a job, save, practice, go to a recording studio and get a professional to record it. If you're tight and have no troubles laying down the phat a real studio will do wonders for you.

You can muck around and make your own stuff but at the end of the day I bet your instruments are cheap and nasty, your gear is nasty and your chops aren't there yet... You need to learn for yourself, no magic code will help you. But a quality acoustically treated studio with gear and an engineer with an ear will add alot of goodness into the mix.

Otherwise start doing it yourself then ask for help when you have specific problems. Also, read stuff. Tweakheads have some good newbie guides.

I know how to practice. I've been playing music for most of my life. I have good equipment for performing live, but recording has never been a priority so we lack equipment in that area due to spending money on gear. We have good equipment. I'm just asking how to get a good sound out of Garageband so people have an idea what we sound like. Now, can anybody help me?

I was trying to say do it, then when you find a problem ask for help. What else can anyone say?

Do you have an interface to get your sounds into GB?

Greener wrote: I was trying to say do it, then when you find a problem ask for help. What else can anyone say?

Do you have an interface to get your sounds into GB?

yeah
it's just a converter for a guitar cable into the input on my mac and for the mixing board just standard audio cables. Is there a better way?

I don't think there is a worse way than what you describe.

I use an Edirol UA-25 but there are many other options.

Basically the interface gives you better inputs and outputs and better converters.

[sarcasm]
Don't listen to him, he's a hack. If you can't make good sounds with a soundblaster then you are a failure of an engineer.
[/sarcasm]

If I asked you to put a golf ball into a 3" hole 200yds away then gave you a hockey stick...? THAT is what SoundBlasters are like.
You might get the job done but you'll encounter so many problems.
Then you'll decide to buy a golf club.

BeholdJesse,
your going to need a decent interface to record multi track. You may also need to update GarageBand to utilize more bit depth, I have iLife 08, which is 24 bit. In GB08 You can utilize multiple tracks when you look to the bottom right where it says "input source", just simply select the inputs from the interface for the track, then be sure to set the level properly. I would check if you can record multiple tracks simotainouslly with your current version before upgrading to GB09
Happy recordings,
Bret

Edit- wait a second, just realized you cannot record multi track till you have installed drivers for a multi input device such as my firestudio.
BeholdJesse,
I recomend the presonus products at amazon.com, your going to need at least 8 inputs to get the drums and guitars. You can always come back and do vocals last.

If you have access to a newer generation Pod (I use a POD XT Live), you can record digital straight in over USB.

I'm still tweaking patches, but it sounds decent. I suspect it can sound better.

Still, for quality, I view it as a real swell sketchpad. I wouldn't even attempt to use this stuff for a real CD.

I'm liking GB.

Your Mileage May Vary (YMMV).

FWIW, it sure seems as if you original question was answered with way more 'tude than neccessary. Overal tone of this place seems a bit on the rough and testy side. Not sure if I'll keep hanging here.

I guess Greener is psychic, or maybe a little psychotic today.
"I bet your instruments are cheap and nasty, your gear is nasty and your chops aren't there yet... "
Gee, thats tolerant and patient. I agree that some of these questions regarding beginning setups could well be addressed by the poster reading some of the forums postings prior to asking questions, because it seems like 17 people a week ask basically that same question. But really...
Look a single input for a guitar into your Mac is not going to get you even an abysmally poor recording of a band. You could run everything into your mixer into one mono channel out and record but you would get only the mix you had going out without any ability to alter anything about the sound. You could record each instrument individually and mix in GB but for example the drum mix would have to be sub mixed on your board and you will have to live with what you get. Neither of these ways are likely to yield good results, not even by amatuer standards.
The answer is you will need an interface (8 in preferrably) that will work with your laptop and I am not familiar with Mac or Mini so you will need to be careful that the interface will be compatible, that you have enough RAM and CPU as well as firewire or whatever method the interface requires to sync with your computer. Search the last couple of months forums for questions similar to this and look into some gear and come back with specific questions if you want intelligent help.

"Neither of these ways are likely to yield good results, not even by amatuer standards."

I disagree.
Call my responses terse, call my standards low, call my interface crap, call my recordings terrible.
But I still disagree.

Only today?

I would just spend a couple hundred bucks and get the Mbox mini that comes with protools, and just start working with that.
the best way to find a good recording with guitar is to just get some experience.
I'd also recommend getting a USB keyboard, its a great tool for any recording scenario

Your responses are terse,maybe your standards are low, lol, I don't know maybe your interface is crap, I have not to be perfectly frank listened to any of your recordings so....Codemonkey I did not say you could not make good recordings using those or the few other methods available using this equipment, just that I thought it was unlikely. I know you are a swami in the use of budget equip. and I don't mean that badly. I have made some great recordings on a PXR-4 (Korg Pandora's Box) using the built in mic, but the stars were aligned with the planet Mars, because other times the recordings sucked, but it was probably the nut behind the recorder.

ive been around here a couple of days myself, while i personally havent met adversity, i do notice some pretentiousness and attitude. thats the audio business it seems. people tend to take themselves too serious. then again, answering the same questions over and over on forums tends to get to a person after a while.

that said, hello all. i am dave. ive done a little recording and learned the basics in a professional studio @ 15 years ago. i am a self proclaimed barband hack, and strictly recording hobbyist, just getting back into it.

my .02

definately get an interface of some sort, and a set of cans (headphones).

start with a song you want to put down

record a scratch track of the whole band into the mic

mic up the drum kit (4 mics and the mixer into the interface will do), i would try kick, snare and 2 overhead. experiment with placement. and then have the drummer track his part.

next have the bass player go direct into the interface and track his part

next guitar(s). mic the cab, and maybe do a direct too for the heck of it

then vox

redo's and/or punch ins next

little compression and mild verb on the vox, and a little compression on the drums.

rinse, repeat

edited because i just realized you have a drum mic kit

My 2 cents, again to make up a half dollar in this thread would be.
Why would anyone be able to tell anyone else who has no experience how to make good recordings...
Coming in asking for a how to guide on recording when you list barely nothing in the way of gear is like asking for a magic potion to make you look good.
It's BS what people say, you learn from doing not reading. You need reference. Reference material is there to reference against experience and reality. Not as a step by step how to...
Sorry if I come across as psychotic but that's not what worries me.
When has Codemonkey been anything but gracious and helpful? Calling Codemonkey terse is just wrong.

Codemonkey wrote: "Neither of these ways are likely to yield good results, not even by amatuer standards."

I disagree.
Call my responses terse, call my standards low, call my interface crap, call my recordings terrible.
But I still disagree.

He said to tell him his responses were terse so I did. I agree that he has only been gracious and helpful. It was meant to be humorous sorry if it didn't come off that way.

I have no idea what's going on.

[[url=http://[/URL]="http://i369.photobu…"]This picture[/]="http://i369.photobu…"]This picture[/] sums it up, I think.

I would suggest if you are doing some sort of hardcore or death metal that as well as a decent interface you should try the program Drumtracker. In my opinion what gives good death metal recordings there sound is drum replacement. To get the really punchy clicky sounding bass drum you should try this out. It is not very hard to use and there are some video tutorials on it. With some practice you will be able to make it sound a million times better. As previously stated you want to mic your guitar cab with a decent quality mic and i do prefer DI for bass.