Let's talk about... the least amount of equipment you've used to record with...

I'm working on some songs at the moment where I've intentionally restricted the instruments to a cheap Yamaha preset keyboard with mini keys, a homemade octave guitar, a mic, Reaper, and FL Studio. No soft synths are being used.
What is the least amount of gear that other people here have used to record?

i once had the plan of making a whole record with just my casio. didn't get far, though it would have been groovy if i'd had the inspiration

In high school I used nothing but freeware Fruity Loops, Cool Edit Pro and a $8 computer microphone.

Did you do any field recordings and then manipulate them inside the computer? Sort of like Peter Gabriel? Because that's the kind of thing where someone could leverage advances in computer technology over what was possible in the early 80's.

(xpost) I have to admit that being able to mangle up the sound of the keyboard in Reaper has made the whole project possible.

leverage advances in computer technology

And to put that a slightly less dorky way, what I meant was that what PG did with a hugely expensive Fairlight is possible for anyone with a computer today.

Two broken Tascam Mark 428mkII 4 tracks (received broken & since repaired)
A bunch of shitty microphones that were given to me for free or bought for cheap off ebay
A ton of vintage effect pedals bought off some idiot who wanted to buy a Crate "modeling" amp. Ever pay $30 for an original Electro Harmonix Memory Man Deluxe? I did.

Considering that I learned to mix and record using Pete Townshend's Neve 80 Series Console before using a Mackie, I obviously don't give a fuck. It is about the instruments/amplifier, room, mic placement and the type of microphone. Everything else is pointless. Get that shit down & you're set.

boombox, guitar

prop boombox on paperback book if orientation of indwelling condenser mic toward soundhole is desired

lean toward mic over guitar when singing

this setup has yielded remarkable dividends to me over the years

over the past week i've gone back to recording via the same set-up i used for a lot of my recording immediately post-college: tascam cassette 8-track (now falling apart), alesis hr-16 drum machine (also falling part), shitty mic i bought at a thrift store, keyboard and guitar. only difference is i have a nicer keyboard now than i did back then. it's been really liberating, mainly because i'm so comfortable with all these tools and i don't have to waste like 30 minutes each time trying to figure out why something in my computer isn't working or listening to 400 different shitty digital guitar tone options before i can record.

however the absolute least amount of equipment i've used was when visiting my family in hong kong over xmas break from college, when i had pledged to write and record a song every day. those were all done with a handheld tape recorder and acoustic guitar.

i remember listening to tunes on a dude's myspace that were recorded using only the pinhole mic on his iMac, sounded surprisingly good. i really like the idea of imposing limitations like this.

I was thinking what if someone used an Alesis Air Synth, but then I remembered this guy Gary Kibler who made an entire album with a Korg Kaossilator
http://www.reverbnation.com/136984
..and Norman Fairbanks, who made an entire album with a Tenori-On
http://www.normanfairbanks.com/7days.html
Although those two synths have the advantage of having either a built in memory or a sequencer, respectively. I'd like to hear an album done just with a Casio VL-Tone...

Guitar, vocals, kicking a briefcase for drums, done on a shitty tape mono recorder that you could actually do double tracking on if you mucked about with the tape heads.

The results weren't actually that bad, considering.

It felt like heaven when I got my first 4-track.

MXL 990, PreSonus TubePre, guitar, voice, Audacity. Audacity being the most minimal part I guess. Pretty much what I always use to record, except I use Reaper now. Mm, Reaper.

lol, yeah... Reaper >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Audacity

guitar, karoake machine, 2 cassette tapes. by the 4th or 5th overdub, the original track would have almost faded away

just got a realistic concermate keyboard (direct ripoff of casio sk-1) - was thinking about trying to make 3 or 4 songs using nothing but that

i think i have one old 8-track song where all the music was made with my casio sk-5 (rip)

(xpost) I did this with two separate mono cassette recorders. Played the sequences from my 8-bit lol 80's home computer through it's internal speaker, along with the backing track on the first recorder through it's internal speaker, while recording the noises from both (along with ambient room noise) on the second recorder's built in microphone.

i also used to do dual tape deck stereo recordings when i was in high school, similar to the karaoke machine recordings described above

Later I actually got a proper dual deck boombox and that made a lot of difference. It had input sockets for mics and an echo effect to boost the sound of my weedy instruments. Kind of like the jump from recording on wax cylinder to recording on tape...

all the stuff I have up on myspace was recorded with an acoustic guitar and this

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/Olympus240-minuteDigitalVoiceRecord.jpg

I once tried ping-ponging with two Sony cassette boomboxes: recording rhythm guitar within earshot of one, then playing it back pointed vaguely at the other while adding percussion, then playing the resulting "multitrack" recording one more time into the air for a vocal. Rather dispiriting in retrospect.

Things went marginally better with a Portastudio P01 and the cheapie mic that came with it-- playing guitar and bass through a Crate practice amp over the beat of me Boss DR3. The resulting 4-track recordings were then shlurped into a laptop's "mic in" jack and into Audacity. No effects, no Dolby, no pool, no pets.

The "ping pong thru the air" trick doesn't work well with real instruments. Anything that makes pulse waves though (previously mentioned lol 80's computer) is OK. I actually managed to ruin a midi hi-fi system while recording a noise album. A friend gave it to me because it wasn't working, I sort-of-fixed it, and, er, then broke it again. The funny thing is that I didn't notice I'd broken it until I'd finished the album and tried to use it as a hi-fi again, only to have a terrible squalling noise come out instead of pristine stereo sound.