Hello beautiful people, I’ve started playing guitar recently and I’m learning with the help of YouTube videos. I’ve been recording myself with the mobile camera and mic, but I’m not getting the good quality. Now I want to record my playing with as high quality as possible. During my research I have found that to record I need a software - DAW. I’ve watched so many videos on the DAWs but the interface of all the DAWs are looking a bit complicated to me. So, I want to know is the DAW a necessary thing to record?
no of course not, you can literally record on your phone. however there is a reason people use a DAW, the quality is much higher than other methods and it is (somewhat) easy to do.
It is actually pretty simple, once you’ve got the hang of it. I use GarageBand on my iPhone as the DAW. The Interface is then simply a way of getting the signal from your bass into the DAW, i.e. you plug the bass into the interface, then the interface into (in my case) the iPhone, hit record and your away. (OK, you need to set levels to ensure your not ‘clipping’, i.e. distorting the recorded track, and you need to ensure that the interface is recording on the right channel in the DAW, but that’s just a case of flicking a digital switch). A good, and relatively cheap, interface is a Focusrite Scarlett Solo. In the UK, where I am, you can get a second hand 3rd gen one for £50. Then you just need some cables - bass to interface (guitar lead) and one to link the interface with the device with your DAW on it. Oh, and you might want headphones so you can hear yourself.
There are some pretty detailed instructions here:
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If all you want to do is record your bass line, just to review and hear what you sound like, and you have even a basic DAI, you can use Audacity. It’s a generic sound recorder that is open source and free, and it works fine for that.
If you want to record you playing along with music or anything like that, Audacity might not be the best bet, and you’ll probably want a proper DAW.
~~~
P.S. That’s not entirely true, you can record yourself playing along with audio with Audacity… my first cover was done with it… but it’s not the right tool for the job.
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an excellent and free entry point 
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think of a DAW like a cell phone. it seems everyday I have the struggle with my mom and dad of them trying to figure out how to use an iPhone, this thing is so complicated we don’t know what half of this does. and that is true, an iPhone is complicated and it can do a lot of complicated things. but you can also learn just to make phone calls on it very simply, you might not at this point need every advanced feature available to you. start slowly, and there are a lot of online resources to help and you’ll be fine.
For the price of a Mac 
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I asked myself the same thing yesterday. I’ve managed to record “happy birthday” with garage band on mac so far but trying to do a bass cover raised questions concerning the backing audio.
I usually buy songs I try to play, so I can load the audio-file in garage band as Pam and John did in the video tutorial. Unfortunately I find the EQ-options in garage band not very straight forward, I couldn’t tune down the bass part in the original song. Also couldn’t find help for that special use case yesterday 
Is the way to go with covers made in garage band to just reduce the overall volume of the original song?
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ehh they got it for windows now. don’t they? i think they do
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Not to the best of my knowledge. Mac/iPad/iPhone only.
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hunh. i did not know. i coulda sworn 
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2 ways would be an AU eq plugin that you like or stem splitting which you would need to do outside of garageband and just import the split tracks.
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looks like I need to go software hunting. Or just download reaper 
I would do this anyway. It’s comparatively small and yet still one of the most powerful DAW.
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Use UVR5 to remove the bass. It’s great … and free!
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Thanks! That could help out until I’m ready to face unlimited options within a DAW like reaper 
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I don’t know GarageBand personally, but I do know some people in the local punk & rap scene that use it to make commercial songs. So, I would not underestimate it.
For covers it’s suffient. Look at @sundog’s stuff - he does everything with Garageband. Of course Garageband turns you into a cartoon character, but that’s a small price to pay 
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Errmmmm…?
The cartoonification is in iMovie, not GarageBand, get your apps right!!! 
Seriously, and I think I have said this before, the fact that my iPhone contains the core* of a recording studio and a video editing suite is beyond amazing!!
*I say ‘core’, because you obviously need a separate interface to connect an external instrument or microphone.
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I don’t trust cartoon characters!
Trust me, I’m a bassist!!
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