Recording Software

The second obstacle we dealt with is software.  There are a lot of recording packages out there of varying quality.  Audacity is a long standing favorite in the free software world, but it does lack some features and ease of use of other non-free packages.  Several of us had the Line 6 software available with our Line 6 devices, but this was not an option for everyone.  Garageband was a favorite among the Mac users, but we didn’t have a good way for us Windows guys to coordinate with them.  We also did some recording through our Jam Hub hardware, which was great for capturing our jams and ideas, but was not the ideal quality for a release track.  We ended up using Ohm Studio, which is available for free through Valve’s Steam software.  We already had the band connected on Steam since we make heavy use of the Rocksmith game for learning songs, so Ohm Studio was a natural choice when we found it.  This software allowed us to individually record and tweak our tracks on our own time and put everything together effortlessly into one project (it works somewhat like shared Google Docs, if you have tried simultaneous editing there).  Also, one of our members does have a license for Logic Pro, a much more professional recording solution, so we ended up exporting the project to that software from Ohm Studio for final mixing before release.  This workflow was essential for a group like us that only meets to play together once every two weeks.  If we had to setup recording sessions for all of us to be together, we would have never made it this far.