RedSGShredder

In order to get started with home recording, you will first need something to capture your music on. A Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) is a tool that lets you do this. One type of DAW would be an integrated digital multitrack recording system. There are many of those on the market. Some popular brands are Boss, Zoom, and Roland.

GarageBand screenshot. The horizontal bars are individual instrument tracks.

The type of DAW I use is computer-based. This is software that runs on your computer, so having a powerful computer system helps if you choose this route. Once again, there are many brands of recording software available. I use Apple Logic Express, and in the past I have used Apple GarageBand. These are not available on Windows. Some other brands you may have heard of are ProTools, Reaper, and Cubase. There are some free DAWs as well such as Audacity and Kristal, but their features are usually limited.

A DAW is basically a virtual studio in software. You can record tracks and layer them together, and apply various effects to those tracks. Usually, you will need to have some way of getting analog signals (from your guitar) into digital signals on your computer. One way of accomplishing this is by using a guitar processor as an interface. I use a Pod X3 Live connected to my computer via USB to accomplish this.

Multitrack Recording
Having multiple tracks allows you to record and process instruments separately. At the end, you mix them together into a final result, commonly called the “master” track. This requires balancing the volumes and EQ ranges of each track so that they all sound good together.

MIDI and Software Instruments
One thing that MIDI can be used for is a format for notating music, just like tabs or actual musical charts. It can be used to describe the notes and arrangement of an instrument. This data can then be fed into a synthesizer in the DAW to simulate many instruments like pianos, flutes, drums, and more. You can find many MIDI files all over the internet. The data inside GuitarPro/TuxGuitar tab files are actually implemented in MIDI.

This is a MIDI track in GarageBand.

A software instrument takes that MIDI data and plays it. The resulting music sounds like an instrument. They are the pianos and flutes mentioned earlier. They can also be used to play individual sound samples to simulate other instruments, like drums.