We are assuming here that you have read about How to plug a guitar or bass into a computer and you have successfully plugged in your instrument and it is making an acceptable sound in your computer speakers. If not, you will probably want to read that page first.

The Problem
Now you need to get some recording software and start recording Mp3s. This will cause you some confusion at first. The problem is, Mp3 is not really the format that recording software uses. Recording software usually records in wav format. There are lots of great wav recorders on the market and they have been doing a good job for us for years. Imagine the wav recorder software guy's face when he finds out that he must, absolutely must, start using Mp3 format right now. He doesn't have time to rewrite his whole program based on some other file format. So, he gets a little "helper" application that will "encode" his wav files as Mp3. So, for our purposes in recording, we are recording wav files. Then we "save-as" Mp3.

The Solution
Most Mp3 recording systems consist of a wav recorder and an Mp3 encoder. You can use any combination of the two. Some come as a set, some are sold separately. We don't have any stake in which one you use, but here is one that can be used as an example. Lots of competitors here at Musician War use Gold Wave recording software from www.goldwave.com. Gold Wave is shareware, so you can check it out before you buy it. It also has no time limit, so it won't die on you after 30 days like some shareware.

If you go to goldwave and download the program, it installs very easily and will record wav files. In order to save them as Mp3, you will need to download the BladeEnc Mp3 encoder. Once you have the encoder, it integrates right into Gold Wave and gives you a full set of save-as-mp3 options (including the Musician War standard 64kbps mono settting). BladeEnc can be found on the Gold Wave site here. Just put it into the same directory as Gold Wave and you are done.