Recording.

[Will Robinson]

How do you people in bands record stuff? I don't want to spend a lot of money. We've just been using a tape recorder, and everything sounds awful. You can barely hear the drums, and there's always a constant buzz in the background.

[santana]

What kind of tape recorder are we talking about? Is it like, just a boombox, or are you using or 4-track?

You're going to get a lot of background noise no matter what since you probably aren't using a noise gate or compressor.

If you don't have one already, I would suggest getting a decent 4-track tape recorder (Tascam makes a decent one for about $100), and a mixer for the drums (Behringer makes a good 8-input mixer for about $40).

With the mixer, you can mic the drums a bit better. Assuming you are using a standard 5-piece set, you can use 1 on the hi-hats, bass drum, 1 for the 2 toms, floor tom, snare, ride cymbal, and 2 additional symbol. Mix the sound until your drums are good sound good enough, and record those all to one track.

Then you can put guitar bass and vocals on their own track.

Like I said, you'll still get some buzz in the background, but not as much.

[-Sephiroth-]

I think he meant that he actually didn't plug anything into the tape recorder... Just used the tape recorders mic to record all in one.

Will. You will need mic's for the drums, then a mixer or soundcard or something to plug all the instruments into.. You will have to spend some money

[David Coppard]

To get better quality you could try plugging the electric instruments straight into the recorder. Provided that the amps you use have headphone sockets and the tape recorder has a mic input. If they do, use a double headed jack to connect to phones to the mic in and play away. Then agaon this only gives single instruents recordings and you will need something to mix them together. Like asound card and some mixing software on your pc.