The first step in creating a song is to come up with an idea for your song. You do not necessarily need to play and instrument to do this. In fact, at a bare basic level, you could simply use your computer's built in microphone and "hum" a few bars of a melody then upload it and ask guitar or keyboard players to interpret it into a "scratch track".

To do this, you will need some form of audio-digital interface. There is a list of devices on this page or you can work with the basic sound recording capabilits within your system. Let's say for example, that you have an accoustic guitar and a laptop computer running Windows. You could use the Windows XP built in sound recorded to record basic sections of your song. It is rather limited as it can usually only record up to 60 seconds at a time but that is enough to get an idea across.

First - launch your sound recorder application. The default windows device can be found on most Windows systems by clicking "Start" -> "All Programs" -> "Accessories" -> "Entertainment" -> "Sound Recorder". Once launched, the application looks like this:

[insert photo image here]

Next - test to see if it records. Hit the red "record" button and talk close to your microphone. You should see the green line move as sound waves are recorded by the device. Hit the record button again to stop recording.

If that worked, you are ready to start a very rudimentry recording using your guitar.

IMPORTANT: Before recording any guitar, you should check your tuning to make sure it is where you want it. Most guitars will tune the A string to 440 hz but you can also tune it where you want. Whatever your tuning, you will probably want to make a note of it somewhere for others to work with you.

Simply tune your guitar, then hit the record button and start playing. When you finish the part, hit the recording button again to stop. You can now save your recording. By default, the Windows Sound Recorder will save all work as a file of type *.wav. WAV files are very bulky and take up much more disc space that other formats like OGG or MP3. Before you upload your file for others to listen to, you will need to convert your file from type *.wav to *.mps. There are many free software pacakges available to do this listed on this page.

Your sound recording will sound something like this sample:

sampleguitarrecording-duanenickull

See the next step in workflow for how to now share it with others and declare you need collaborative help.