{"id":4248,"date":"2013-06-10T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-06-10T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/?p=4248"},"modified":"2014-03-08T18:49:32","modified_gmt":"2014-03-08T23:49:32","slug":"whats-the-best-way-to-capture-scratch-ideas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/ideas\/whats-the-best-way-to-capture-scratch-ideas.html","title":{"rendered":"What’s the best way to capture “scratch” ideas?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A situation that every player runs into is that you come up with The Best Bass Line Ever, scramble to find some way to record so you can show it to your band-mates later (or refer back to it for yourself to record in your own home studio), and by the time you find something to record with, you’ve lost the idea.<\/p>\n

It totally sucks when that happens, and it happens quite often.<\/p>\n

The solution to this is to have a right-now way of recording that you can literally have ready-to-go in less than 30 seconds.<\/p>\n

Sound impossible? It’s not if you go about it in a certain way.<\/p>\n

Important note before continuing: The idea here is not to capture super-pristine-quality recordings, but rather just to get the idea put to a recording medium in the fastest, easiest way possible.<\/p>\n

Method 1 (Band): A ready-to-go standalone recorder<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some bands have been doing this for years, but it amazes me how many don’t do this.<\/p>\n

In your practice spot, your band probably uses a mixer. As you know, mixers have the ability to output to standalone recorders (obviously) to record with.<\/p>\n

Connect some kind of standalone recorder to the mixer where any one of the band members at any time can just walk up to it, hit a button and record.<\/p>\n

This standalone recorder does not have to be anything grandiose. It can be a cheap little 4-track digital recorder, maybe an old laptop or PC, or heck, it could even be a tape deck<\/em> (why you would use one I have no idea, but it’s an option). Whatever you use, something has to be there where you can just record and go. <\/p>\n

True, the recording will be awful and mixed improperly, but the point is that you’ve got the idea recorded.<\/p>\n

Method 2 (Self): Cell phone<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don’t know of too many cell phones these days that don’t have a dictation feature. Since your phone is always on you or usually within arm’s reach, if you’re by yourself and plucking away when that idea<\/em> happens, grab the phone, load the dictation app, shove it in front of the cabinet and record.<\/p>\n

Yes, it will be a totally crappy recording, but again, you got the musical idea recorded and that’s what counts.<\/p>\n

Method 3 (Self): Tiny multi-track recorder<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"br80\"<\/p>\n

The above is a BOSS BR-80. This is an itty-bitty multi-track recorder which not only has the ability to record but also provide simple accompaniment (i.e. a drum track).<\/p>\n

Why this little thing? Because it has a real 1\/4-inch input<\/em> that you can plug your bass right into whereas your phone doesn’t (or not without some special connector). It also has tiny microphones on it if you wanted to record that way, such as for singing a vocal track along with your bass line.<\/p>\n

The BR-80 is something you can grab and get recording with very quickly. While not as fast as doing it with the phone, it does have the extra features of multi-tracking and accompaniment, so it might be something worth considering.<\/p>\n

What do you use to record scratch tracks with?<\/h3>\n

Standalone recorder? Cell phone? Tape deck (which would be weird)? Something I missed perhaps? Post a comment or two with the way you record your scratch tracks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A situation that every player runs into is that you come up with The Best Bass Line Ever, scramble to find some way to record so you can show it to your band-mates later (or refer back to it for yourself to record in your own home studio), and by the time you find something … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":4246,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[24],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4248"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4248\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}