Wanting to record my own ambient project, not sure where to begin

[William Braddell]

I've been playing guitar for around 8 and a half years and have developed a taste for ambient music during that time. What I want to do is my own project that will be a mix of ambient/dark ambient and more overdriven guitar orientated stuff (I don't know exactly how it will sound in all honesty). I don't have a synthesizer right now but my pedal board will be good enough to take care of the ambient sections for the present future. I'll probably use voiceovers/clips in places as well but no actual vocals apart from that. I'll be wanting to use my tube amp.

Problem is, I'm a bit lost on everything I'd need to record for all this. I'd want something that I can use with my tube amp and that can model drums and everything. Actually, its hard for me to list off exactly what I want because I'm such a novice when it comes to recording. Would something like Ableton be what I'm after?

Give me a general rundown of what I'd be looking at if any of you has the time and care to. Thanks.

 

[Sunbreak Music]

Any daw program will be able to record the live parts no problem. Ableton is really popular among ambient types as it's instruments, looping and mangling potential is limitless.

The downside is that it's structured very differently from other products, so if you don't have any experience that might be a good thing. It took me a while to get my head around it, and I'm still only using about 30% of the program, haha.

Download the demo and check it out--I think it's 30 days.

 

[William Braddell]

^Thanks, I'll do just that.

 

[eodchewy]

Depending on your previous recording experience and how deep you want to go down the rabbit hole, you might want to consider starting with something like Garageband 2.0 if you have an iPad or iPhone. For $5 you get a stripped down DAW with a lot of virtual instrument selections. As a small example, the Smart Drums lets you instantly play a drum loop with built-in variations and the sampler will let you easily import those audio clips you want to work with. The only other things you would really need are a pair of studio monitors (headphones would get tiresome, especially if you are wading through sound samples) and a microphone (the Apogee MiC is nice but a little expensive).

You could create a lot of great music with just this simple setup.

 

[William Braddell]

Eh, for some reason my computer won't recognize the Ableton demo as a valid winzip file and won't install it.

I don't have an Ipad or Iphone unfortunately, I must get one someday.

 

[Monotremata]

You can try Reaper for free (literally forever). Its a pretty awesome full fledged DAW as opposed to being loop based like Live.