Tonelab USB Recording

The USB based recording in the Tonelab ST, is something that helps you achieve true clarity from home and gives almost studio like quality. I bought my VOX a little more than a year ago. When I bought it i was not quite satisfied as I was unable to use it to it's true potential. Learning more about my processor I have started using the USB interface given with it. I use it only for recording though. I have not yet made patches on my computer using it.

The sound that I get is very pleasing and the best part is that you can hear yourself play almost without any lag. It would be better if you could get a firewire interface. The good part about this is that it does not expect you to have even a decent system. I mean even with an atom processor one could record on softwares such as Audition or FL Studio. Even if you have something like Cubase or any of the other Steinberg products I do not think it should cause much of a problem.Even though people do underestimate the power of the atom, I say otherwise after having a first hand experience working on one. Initially even I happened to be hesitant in using the system for recording. Later I noticed if you are not synthesizing many effect then it should not be much of a problem.

 One more important thing to be noted is that if the sound card driver on your system is not very good then you can utilise the USB interface to access your VOX which will act as a temporary card and can handle way more loads than your basic driver. Basically, reduces the load of your processor by focusing the sound card issues to your processor. Another advantage of this is that the quality of sound is enhanced and it can be easily understood. So please do take undue advantage of your processor and record without any issues! 

Guitar Chords Crash Course

G3C or guitar chords crash course is a multipurpose software with which serves to the needs of both beginners and the professionals. The basic chords and the scales are all available there. To add to this there are quite a few advanced level chords and scales too. The software has over a 1000 chords in its database and 48 scale which would be more than enough for anyone to become a master of the instrument!

It has a guitar tuner with the help of which you can tune your guitar and has an option with which we can change the tunings. So we can tune the guitar in different tunings. It's kind of like how it is in guitar pro. You can print the tabulature as it is in the software so its really cool for musicians on the go and those who don't like carrying laptops along with them all the time.


This is the best part about it according to me . It has a drum machine which gives a variety of beats and we can tweak around with it and make our own patterns so that one can stay on time.

It's a free software and you can check out more details at:
http://www.bincsoft.com/g3c/

Guitar Pro

Guitar pro is one of the best softwares a guitarist can possibly have. It may not aid one in recording but it will definitely help you to learn songs or even tabulate and save the songs you create. I have used it and find it really useful. With the help of the rse (real sound engine) it is possible to emulate an almost guitar like sound. or any instrument for that matter, all you need is the rse pack.

Apart from the composing part if you are a self taught guitarist then this is the place for you with an inbuilt chord and a scale dictionary you wont be needing a teacher(you will if you really want to know how to use them properly:-)).

There are also options to change the tuning of the instruments according to your need plus its got a metronome and a tuner.Its amazing as to how many built in features there are in this software. 

Adobe Audition

It is one of the best software's that i have ever worked with for recording purposes. I wouldn't be saying this if i were a mac user or ever used a mac.for windows this is the ideal software for intermediates and higher.It has multiple features and a multitrack environment and it saves every workspace separately. So you can always recover something if you edit it ,that is only if you bother to save the workspace before closing it.The basic format in which it saves is .wav .Though it consumes a lot of space the quality of sound is good.
Options are available in case you would like to save in other audio formats. Even if you do not have a processor or a mixer or even if the environment that you are working in is not very conducive for recording you can still get a good output after proper utilisation of the software. Many tutorials are available online.
The screen is divided into two parts. In one half that is the left one there are multiple options which are subdivided into three major groups:
-real-time effects
-multitrack effects
-process effects
Under process effects there are some really cool features which we can add to make the sound even more attractive,like the stereo field rotate,generate silence,dynamic delay.
in case you are a guitarist and do not have a processor yet want some processed sounds use the real-time effects. You can modify the effects to whatever you want. It has echo,reverb,delay,chorus,flanger,distortion,sweeping phaser,etc.All the basic and some advanced effects are available. Even if you do have a processor this can be used to give a final touch to the sound.
One more feature that is worth mentioning is the metronome. You can set your desired time signature in whatever key you want and record accordingly.The multitrack environment has two main screen blocks , the maina nd the mixer. The main is somewhat a simple and easy to handle screen. The mixer has an EQ setting in which the user is allowed to set their own setting and not just choose amongst some predefined setting.The pan and volume levels are also explicitly set there. There are a few track automation modes also available and are five in number. With each setting we can work differently. For example with the write setting we can record and not with the read. The modes are off,read,write,touch and latch.One last thing about the mixer section is that it has three buttons with M,S,R written on them which are meant for muting the track,playing only that track as in the solo option, and finally the R button which is used to arm the track for recording.
After all the recording is done in different tracks, all the instruments can be summed up and put together in one particular track using either the mixdown to newfile or the bounce to new track feature. Either ways a new file named Mixdown is created with all the tracks in one.
This is just a summary of what Adobe Audition 3.0 is capable of doing.