Okay, so you’ve got a guitar idea and you want to track something just to see if it’s going anywhere. If you’re anything like me you want a way to capture your ideas that’s pretty much as simple as pressing record on an old four-track player. What I like about Live is how simple it is to get started, and how quickly you can be laying down tracks for the ideas you have. Here’s how I go about it.

First things first. The nio acts as your recording input so that needs to be plugged in, with nioFxRack running. The first thing to do in Live is hit the ‘Preferences’ menu and pick the nio 2/4 for both input and output device. What this means is that Live will look for sound coming in through the nio when in record and also all sound coming from Live will be routed out through the nio’s headphone socket. With the monitor settings on the nio, you can adjust the levels of what you’re playing and listening to as you go, but I’ll come on to that in part two. (more…)

I’m going to start in my area of speciality: where else but in the bass place? Doing justice to the sound of the bass guitar is one of the hardest things to get right whatever you’re recording, whether it be tin-pot little demos or your shiny new multi-million pound major-label debut. How do you get it to sound crunchy, ominous, crackling with energy and yet still retain that bowel-rumbling intensity that is so important to carry the weight, the heart, the balls of a recording? This is really my ongoing quest, my Holy Grail in many ways, so it’s something I’m keen to explore with the nio 2/4. (more…)

For my recording needs I’ve been after something really portable with straightforward controls and a quick way to get sounds up and running. I am anything but a sound geek: in fact I am a sound engineer’s worst nightmare: a musician. Only joking! But now I know the difference between XLR, headphone socket and midi (and it took a while), I’m ready to start playing around on my own with a computer and a guitar. If I’m doing stuff on the fly, and I’m talking tour buses and kitchen tables here, I’m not interested in waiting two hours while somebody connects a bundle of cables into some complicated looking units. I just want to plug in and start playing. (more…)