recording electric guitar and vocals

D

davecg321

New member
yo

I'm looking to record a song that I play on electric guitar. I want to record the whole thing as one take as this particular track would not suit playing to a click. That and it would lose its 'feel'

What would be the standard approach to do this? Should I use headphones and place the amp in another room? That way I'd get more separation, but again I would lose the vibe of playing next to the amp. If I record both in the same room how far should move the amp away?

tah :guitar:
 
I put the amp in another room and listen through my monitors. Others prefer the vibe of standing next to the amp. Either works.
 
If you're trying to record vocals, too, as your subject line suggests, record them after you record the guitar part for maximum separation!
 
Put the amp in another room and mic it up.

Route it into your DAW and set up a headphone monitor feed so you can hear what you're playing while you sing.
 
This is very much the same question as that whole acoustic + voice thing but with one important difference: with a reasonably loud amp close-miced, you're not nearly as likely to have a problem with vocal bleed in the guitar track. So you can get away with singing while you play so you can get your "groove" or whatever you think you need. Then retrack the vocals while monitoring through headphones.

More importantly, stop using excuses like "feel" and "groove". I don't know you or what you do, but IME most of the time when somebody claims they need to record this way in order to play their best what it really means is that they're not actually paying as close attention to either when they're doing both, so they don't notice as many of the inadequacies in each performance.

Hell, if you really want it to sound like you're playing and singing at the same time, then do that. Embrace the bleed and the room sound and all of it. If you really want each performance to sound it's best - individually and together - then take the time to focus on one at a time and really make each the best it can be.

I have a lot of things that I "need" to play and sing at the same time because the structures are arbitrary and there are times where the guitar reacts or emphasizes things in the vocal. When I go to make the "album version", I'll record scratch tracks of both at the same time, then go back and actually learn to play it and record each track separately.
 
Ok cool. Thanks for all the varied feedback.

I'm quite certain that with this particular track I'd need to sing and play at the same time (without a click) as the guitar and vocals play off one another in dynamics. To then attempt to re-track both guitar and vocals would prove somewhat difficult due to there being no click. Having said that I would probably have more luck in keeping the original guitar track and then re recording the vocals, this just seems slightly more natural, although still slightly tricky because there is no click.

So, if I were to close mic my amp and sing (scrapping the vocal for later re-tracking), should I put the amp in another room? Or does this not really matter as the amp will be fairly loud and close miked..?

Tah
 
It doesn't matter where the amp is. The only reason to put it in another room would be to keep the guitar out of the vocal mic.
 
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