Bit by bit (pun intended, you better believe it), computers are replacing the old, clumsy ways we used to do things, supplanting them with new, robust, and streamlined methods. Until very recently, it used to require the entire young male population of at least two countries to fight even the most elementary war -- now it requires nothing more than a fairly up-to-date processor and some cheaply available software.

Similarly, some of you older readers may remember the days when libraries and banks were things you went to, during special hours that were set aside for doing so, to extract enough idle reading matter or cash to get you through the weekend. Now, through the miracle of the Web and ATMs, these resources are literally at your fingertips -- provided that your fingertips are at the appropriate terminal.

Back in the day, if you were, say, the Rolling Stones, you had to schlep the whole band and all your gear to Muscle Shoals, Alabama, hire a team of producers, engineers and splice girls, rent a studio full of hundreds of thousands of dollars in equipment, and stock up on booze and drugs. Only then were you truly ready to rock. That was the analog era. Those days are over. If you don't believe me, here's what the Times has to say on the subject (free registration required).

If you weren't smoking in the stairwell during junior high school physics, you probably know that the sound we hear consists of teeny vibrations in the air. These vibrations are analog, which means (roughly) that they can vibrate any which way they want. When we record them onto tape, they're first translated by a microphone into voltages, and then the voltages are translated into little magnetic patterns on the surface of the tape. Simple enough.

Now that we're in the era of digital recording, though, we have to change those analog voltages into discrete binary bits before we can store them. This is done by an analog-to-digital (A/D) converter, a quasi-magical device that lives on most PC sound cards. (Its arch-nemesis, the digital-to-analog converter, is the part of your CD player that makes the digital bits on your CDs sound like music. Got it?) Once the sound is turned into bits, of course, we can save it on our hard drives, send it as large e-mail attachments, manipulate it in various ways, etc. Bits are easy to deal with. Bits are your tiny friends.

Converting an analog signal to digital is an imperfect process. Analog sound has a whole lot of detail, and our job when converting it is to retain enough detail so it sounds really good, but not so much that it takes 10 DVDs to store a single three-minute song. So we compromise, based on our knowledge of the human percept system, and throw out stuff we don't need -- such as frequencies that are too high to hear.

The CD industry standard calls for 16-bit resolution and a 44.1-KHz sampling rate. That means that the A/D converter listens to the analog audio stream 44,100 times per second, and writes down 16 bits of data each time to describe what it heard. The result of this is that pitches higher than 44.1 KHz are lost, but since it's generally agreed that we humans don't hear those anyway, who needs the extra baggage, right?

Unless you're a spoiled rich kid, the best strategy is probably to start out with a pretty simple setup, and upgrade it as you see fit, when the royalties on your hit single start rolling in. Here's what you need:

• a computer with
• lots of RAM and
• a big hard drive
• recording software
• a full-duplex sound card
• a microphone or other input method
• speakers

The computer doesn't have to be anything special. Macs are good; Windows machines are good. Unix variants have occasional driver issues and a bit of a paucity of software, but that's no reason to rule them out. If you're running Linux, SLab is terrific recording software, and it's free to download. (That's up to thousands of dollars cheaper than the leading competitors that run on other platforms.) Use what you're comfortable with, or what you can get. If your friend is moving and wants you to have her old PC, take it, even if you're a Mac person.

In terms of CPU power, you know what I'm going to say: More is better. You can get by with a pretty minimal system, but the faster your processor, the more tracks you're going to be able to handle simultaneously, and the more tricks you'll be able to do with them. Straight-ahead recording isn't all that demanding of your CPU; other things, like adding reverb effects, can be. Windows users can get a ballpark estimate of what their processors can handle with Echo Reporter, a free program from audiotech heavyweight Echo that calculates just that.

You do want RAM. RAM RAM RAM. There are some wonderful things in this world that you can have too much of: birthday cake, kittens, shoes -- but RAM is not one of these things. The more RAM the merrier. Audio processing and recording is very RAM-intensive, so this is a good area to spend money when you're outfitting your system. I have a lovely amount of leg and elbow room on my workstation, with 768 megs of it ¹, and still I wouldn't say no to more. Only a fool says no to more RAM. If you think you have too much RAM, please mail it to me c/o Wired Digital, 660 Third Street, S.F. CA 94107.

A nice hard drive is necessary too. It's actually a very good idea to have one smaller hard drive with your OS and your software on it, and another, bigger, one just for storing the audio data. That way the drive head doesn't have to run itself ragged skipping back and forth between the software it's running and the music it's writing, which makes for better throughput and fewer errors.

The storage-space rule of thumb is that for CD-quality sound, you're going to eat up about 10 MB of disk space for every minute of music you record. More tracks, or higher-quality recording (which you might later dither down into CD-quality) takes more space. And nothing sucks like running out of room just as you're finally getting that guitar solo perfect. Bigger is better. Treat yourself right. As of this writing, 80GB hard drives are starting around $240 on Price Watch.

The software is the component of your setup that does all the detail work, and it's the component you have to stare in the face every day. Without audio software -- well, if you're reading this, you probably know what a computer without audio software is like. Basically an expensive plastic box that you can use to frag lamers and chat with conspiracy buffs. The recording software substitutes for all the expensive parts of the studio you don't own: it acts as a mixing board, effects processor, compressor, vocal enhancer -- whatever you need. And you can expand your software with plugins whenever you crave a new feature. Software options run the gamut from inexpensive shareware, like n-Track, through medium-price-ware like Cakewalk or CoolEdit, up to pricey high-performance stuff like ProTools, which comes with some dedicated hardware. Many of the popular commercial packages offer limited demos or free versions so you can see how you like them. This makes it easy to start small and shell out later if you decide that you need to. You can check out the options at HitSquad. The nice thing about software, versus hardware, is that you can compare a few different products without opening up your computer each time, or running back and forth to the store every day.

Sound cards, microphones and other such audio hardware is where you get a chance to prove how audiophilic you really are, to the detriment of your pocketbook. You can get a microphone for $10 from Radio Shack, or you can get one for $10,000 from Neumann. If your total credit limit is closer to the former, the Shure SM-57 is a classic all-round workhorse that goes for about $80. Nobody ever got fired for buying a SM-57. Meanwhile, if you're just recording the output of a electric instrument, like a keyboard or an electric guitar, you may not need a microphone at all, though you may want some sort of preamp. It depends on the particular details of how you do that thing you do.

When it comes to sound cards, you easily can spend anywhere from $50 to $1,000. Less money gets you an all-purpose multimedia card, typically designed for a gaming market. As long as it's full-duplex, it'll work for you (full-duplex means you can record and listen at the same time). More money gets you plush cards that are specifically designed for audio recording. What you're paying for, by and large, is the quality of the A/D converter, because that's what makes a big difference in the quality of the final product. Ideally, you want something with a good signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and high resolution (24-bit rather than 16 -- you can always set it lower when you want to), and one that you like the sound of. Don't settle for one that can't handle 16-bit encoding and a 44.1 sample rate. You can check out user reviews at AudioForums.com or other online venues.

Higher-end sound cards will also tend to have more input and output jacks, and the jacks will be in a superior format (balanced XLR rather than 1/8-inch phono). If you meet people who've sunk a lot of money into this hobby, you'll notice that their workstations have sprouted weird appendages that yours doesn't have: breakout boxes with extra jacks, external A/D converters and mixing boards, microphone preamps, as much as the traffic will bear.

Once you've acquired all your equipment and connected it together, you're ready to begin. Sit down in a comfortable seat with a delicious beverage, and read the manual for your software. Once you've read at least the "Quick 'N' Dirty" section of the manual, fire up the software. Make sure the software's preferences understand about your sound card, and which hard drive you want to record on, and so forth. Now give it a try. Check, two, one two. Check check two. Ahem. Go ahead. Record one track, see if it comes out, dub a second track on top. You can fly!

As you settle in, you can play around, add elaborate effects and teach yourself advanced features, without worrying that you're burning through your entire advance on studio fees. Even Thomas Dolby had to start small. (And look at him now.)

Getting Better Performance

So now you're prepared to turn what was once merely a time-consuming, neighbor-irritating hobby into a source of near-unlimited wealth and fame. Jason Heffel, the famously reclusive genius, earns a living composing music for Web sites. His clients include SixFlags and Proxicom. As a special one-time-only Webmonkey bonus feature, we got him to take a little time out of his hectic Renaissance-man schedule to offer a little advice for those who want to break into commercial composing for the Web.

The key to finding jobs, Jason says, in the music business as anywhere, is making connections. The people you want to cultivate here tend to be ad agencies and entertainment companies, as they tend to be the ones buying original music. The Web is a good venue for fledgling composers to get started, as there are many more opportunities here than in, say, movies or TV, and companies are more willing to take a chance on a newcomer. Prepare an online portfolio of your work, and solicit business wherever you can. It can be very helpful to align yourself with a regional organization, such as the San Francisco Composers Forum. And, Jason says, "be prepared to provide free or discounted services as a show of competency and good faith" when you're starting out.

Jason on getting paid: "Compensation can range anywhere from $500 to over $10,000, depending on type and size of project, time constraints, your relationship with the company and your level of experience." Very often, a fixed sum is set aside for music at the beginning of a project, and this sum is non-negotiable, even if the amount of work turns out to be greater than you expected. Don't be afraid to ask up front exactly what the budget allows for, and make your decision on that basis.

Jason on pleasing the client: "Many Web projects are led by committees. Given the highly subjective nature of music, multiple opinions usually lead to multiple versions and consequently more work, for usually the same pay. Before composing anything, first find out exactly what the clients have in mind. This is harder than it sounds. Instead of trying to grapple with potentially vague adjectives (e.g., 'bouncy, smooth and sophisticated'), try to draw out a client's aesthetic, by finding songs similar to what they want. Extract from them exactly what they like about each, and then be sure to use those elements in the composition."