I’d like to mix live drumming from a contact miked drum pad with a music track so I can practice drumming to music of my choice via my headphones without bothering my roommate. I rigged a drum pad with a piezo mike running through a pre amp to my microphone in jack on my laptop. Is there a way I can configure Audacity to take that signal and mix it real time with the audio from an MP3 file and output to my headphones. I like practicing my conga to salsa music, but I don’t want to bother my roommate since I like to practice late at night.
You can make an excellent recording with the combination, but you probably can’t listen in real time. It’s called Multi-Track or Overdubbing. This document is under construction, but the basics are there.
http://kozco.com/tech/audacity/overdubbing/overdubbing.html
If you had a special microphone like the Samson G-Track, then you could configure that for perfect listening to your performance and the music track at once.
http://www.kozco.com/tech/audacity/pix/samsonGTrackConnections.jpg
Generally, you can’t do that with just the computer and a plain microphone.
You may run into problems putting your Mic Preamp into the Mic-In of your laptop.
http://www.kozco.com/tech/audacity/windowsRecording.html
Those two don’t always get along. Recording music on a Windows machine can be entertaining…
Koz
You can make an excellent recording with the combination, but you probably can’t listen in real time. It’s called Multi-Track or Overdubbing. This document is under construction, but the basics are there.
Does Audacity have a Monitor function when recording? It seems that this would be essential to laying down vocal tracks. You’d have to hear both yourself and the instrument tracks via headphones like in a recording studio, in order to match the vocal dynamics to the instruments.
Yes.
“Transport menu > Overdub” should be enabled.
(I’m sure that must be covered in the links that Koz posted).
It is. In great detail. However. Unless you’re really sailing with the wind, the headphone sound is going to be one computer later than your live performance. It’s echoy. This generally drives people nuts, but it may work for you.
Yes, the Overdubbing feature works perfectly with exactly correct live voice only using those three hardware devices. They essentially take the foldback headphone voice job away from the computer. Then all you have to do is set Recording Latency (from the instructions) so your two tracks line up when you record them.
And, of course, you have to find a good way to plug your Mic Preamp in and get rid of those Conferencing services.
Doing any sound work on a Windows machine can be interesting.
Koz