Lee Gibling

There has always been an ongoing argument about what home equipment you need to be able to beatbox and record at home. Hopefully below I will be able to guide you onto what basic equipment and set-up you need so that you can record your beatboxing at home, stick it on your phone and play your new tracks loudly on the bus!

The Hardware…

Microphone

Don’t have a mic? get one. The main talked about industry standard is the Shure SM58 Vocal Microphone. These microphones generally range from £70 – £100 each depending on where you buy them from. Ok, this is quite expensive for a first mic but not to worry, as there are many much cheaper mics which are surprisingly similar in performance to use from home. The Behringer XM8500 is a great little microphone with a similar size and weight. I would even recommend visiting your local music shop and have a ‘taster’ of some of the mics on offer and compare them to the more expensive mics.

Mixer

You will need a basic mixer to be able to plug your microphone into. It also gives you the added benefits of controlling the microphone volume and any EQ settings. Plugging your mic straight into your PC removes any benefit of balanced noise reduction. Microphones have a three-pin XLR plug on them. As a general rule, jack plugs are used for unbalanced equipment and XLR (three pin) plugs are used for balanced equipment. A mixer has an XLR input and can therefore deal with it properly before sending the sound to your PC.

The PHONIC AM 240 is a good example of what is needed but there are many more good budget mixers available.

Leads

You should only need 2 leads to complete this setup.

• An XLR to XLR lead for connecting your microphone to your mixer
• and a phono to mini jack for connecting the mixer to the PC

Software..

There is only really one free good piece of recording software available in my opinion and this is AUDACITY. Its an amazingly simple piece of software to use with the added bonus of being able to edit, cut, copy and add effects if you want. This is also a great way of layering tracks if you’re feeling creative and you can export them as MP3 files.

Total cost of this set-up:

Microphone: £17.00
Mixer: £40.00
Leads: £10.00

TOTAL: £67.00