Guide to Using Your Computer To Record Your Guitar
I thought I'd put together a tutorial for people wanting to record your well crafted guitars.
Starting with the best budget interfaces. Ive kept it to simple usb interfaces that can be used on PC'S And Macs too.
Last edited by kimball492; 28-12-2014 at 09:25 PM.
I can't forget to add the
Very good ESI interface as I think Jarrod will testify to. If you have any suggestions or questions please feel free to ask http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/aug0...esiesu1808.htm
Best Wishes
Kimball
Last edited by kimball492; 28-12-2014 at 08:24 PM.
I've got a fairly grunty PC running Win 8.1 with Reaper 4.76 ( 64 bit )
The hardware is a Peavey PV6 mixer and a Sennheiser MD427 mic.
When fooling around at home I DI the guitar via various pedals into the mixer rather than mic the amp and when I am recording a jam session I simply hang the mic in between the three of us.
The guys I jam with one plays lap steel / dobro & sings and the other plays a Takamine & sings, I play bass or 6 stringer depending on the song.
At the jams I use my wife's lappy running Vista and the same release of Reaper via the Peavey mixer.
The Peavey only gives you two out which is fine for my needs
Last edited by dave.king1; 29-12-2014 at 06:53 AM.
Hi Dave, Reapers one of the best budget DAWS (Digital Audio Workstations )Around bargain wise and it just gets better and better with each release . For a price of $60.00 nothing beats it. I use both PC'S and Macs . But find windows 8.1 really good .thats another great thing about reaper to you don't need a brand new computer to run it. I hated Apples Mavericks operating system it was slow and buggy. I'm hoping yosemite is going to be much better. Pro tools 11 is an amazing price currently $199.00 if you upgrade from previous version never been cheaper. But can be buggy and needs a compatible pro tools friendly computer .64 bit certainly has changed so much allowing us all to use the full memory of the computer. There's nothing like sitting in a room with other musicians and just playing .
Last edited by kimball492; 29-12-2014 at 07:32 AM.
I should add that I don't do any audio or video processing on the laptop it's just a convenient portable storage device.
I'm using Audacity to break up a very large .aif file from a jam on Saturday ( 2.5 hrs ), there were six of us, keys, electric guitars ( all Grestch 3x Falcon 1x Electrojet ) Magnum pedal steel, D35 & D28 Martin acoustics and my old Yamaha bass, the other five all sing like birds so there were some sensational harmonies. Genres included, country, bluegrass, jazz, rock & swing with solos getting handed off mid passage.
Reaper is teh awesomesauce. You can go from raw takes to mastered song without needing anything else software-wise, it even includes an autotune clone.
BIG note on recording though, and this is from years of experience in bands demoing songs and recording our own releases, use an external recording device. The ones at the top of this post are pretty good, I'm currently using a Zoom R16 which allows for a variety of input types and has some built in effects of its own.
The other pearl of wisdom is to record your instruments 100% clean unless there's a really good reason not to (i.e. playing with fuzzed out feedback). You can take your clean source and run it through a variety of real gear later to get your sound, and it allows for fine tuning you can't do live (like adjusting pedals whilst playing). I guarantee you can get your live sound this way, as I've done it several times with great results. Just output your take into where your guitar normally goes, and then record the end result. Make sure you mic your amp too as that will give a slightly different sound, and allow you to blend your ideal tone.
I saw this thread and felt compelled to throw my 2 cents in. I'm actually quite a noob to the world of computer recording, having only purchased a little 2 channel M-Audio M-Track interface a quarter of the way through this year. Before that I was live tracking everything through a Korg D3200 then importing into my DAW for post production.
My DAW of choice is FL-Studio(11) for the simple fact that I do quite a bit of electronic production in addition to my guitar based stuff (mainly house, drum n bass a bit of trance) and the "Piano Roll" feature on FL-Studio is second to none IMO, having also dabbled with Ableton and Pro-Tools.
Fl-Studio started life as Fruity Loops and was nothing more than a basic beat creation sequencer but over time has evolved into a fully fledged, fully functional DAW.
A lot of rock purists and probably many electronic musicians would probably turn their noses up at this DAW for some of the bigger names out there but personally when it stops doing what I need it to I'll consider changing...thankfully that hasn't happened yet.
Although cracked, fully working pirate copies are readily available of FL-Studio (for trial purposes of course) I had no problems forking out the $200 U.S for the "Producer Edition" which unlocks all the features available, although there are cheaper options with less functionality depending on your needs.
The $200 price tag may seem a little hefty but when you take into consideration this includes a lifetime of upgrades, meaning all future releases are free, it's pretty good value, not to mention versions are constantly being updated and customer service is really good going on past experience.
The M-Track interface was an absolute breeze to get my head around and simply plugs into a USB port, set up the in/out in your DAW and you're good to go, it's got 2 high HZ guitar ins and two XLR jacks for mics in addition to a headphone jack, and a few level and gain controls so for sitting at home recording it suits my needs perfectly. My only gripe would be that I didn't buy one 3 years ago and save myself soooo much dicking around importing files into the PC.
I never use a DI, and hardly ever mic up the amp opting to record direct into FL-Studio through the Guitar Rig 5 vst plugin, the selection of amps and sounds available within this plugin is staggering and pretty much all I need most of the time.
Another plugin that I'll give a shout-out to would be Izotope Ozone, it's primarily a mastering tool but I literally use it everywhere, all the time because it's got great multi band compressors, spacial effects, mid/side EQing, volume maximizer, exciters and the list goes on, definitely my favorite plugin ever.
Here's a couple of tracks done completely in FL-Studio, one's ambient house/dnb track, the others a hard rock number recorded straight into FL using Guiitar Rig
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