Record in stereo?

[I.E. Veritas]

How do I record in stereo? I am recording acoustic with pickups and voice. I am using Ableton live and TASCAM us-122. Can i plug guitar and mic in at same time (although that seems pointless)? Whenever I play back what i've recorded, it's only out of L or R speakers.
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[gullfo]

what you're doing is recording each in mono - vox on one track, guitar on another. if you have a mixer or software capable of mixing, you can arrange the playback to be "stereo" by panning the vox and instruments to taste.

for "true stereo", you would need to record it that way. unless you have a godd sounding room, you're better off using the mono recording technique you're currently using. if you do have a nice room to record in, then look up techniques like "M/S" (mid-side) and other stereo techniques. This will capture the instruments and vox AND the room sound. Depending on what else you do, this may be exactly what you want, if you're planning on building up the mix of instruments, then it may not be effective as the "spaciousness" of the stereo recording may get buried in the mix.

HTH

[I.E. Veritas]

Thanks for your reply. Not much of that makes sense to me at this point, though. I guess I'll stay with mono.

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Originally Posted by I.E. Veritas

Whenever I play back what i've recorded, it's only out of L or R speakers.

OK, by that pharase I think you might be asking something a bit different. It sounds like what you might be saying is that you actually ARE recording in stereo right now and not quite realizing what's going on.

Are you saying you are plugging your pickup into, say, channel 1 of your 122 and nothing into channel 2, and when you record it gives you a recording that only plays back your guitar in the left channel? If so, then it's a matter of understanding and adjusting how you have your Abelton set up to record.

If the above is true, what may be happening is that Abelton is set up right now to record both inputs from your Tascam into a single stereo track. Tascam channel 1 is going to the left side of your stereo track and channel 2 to the right side. What you need to do is switch Abelton's recording settings so that each channel of the Tascam is going to a seperate mono track instead of being combined into a single stereo track. Then the Tascam channel 1 will be going to mono track 1 in Abelton and channel 2 to mono track 2.

Set up this way, your guitar on channel 1 will still be a mono (meaning single source) signal, but now you'll be able to use the Pan control on Ableton's Track 1 to pan the guitar anywhere you want in the Left/Right stereo field.

Additionally, with this setup you can now use your mic in channel 2 simultaneously and record your vocals to track 2 in Ableton, and also be able to independantly pan those wherever you want in the stereo playback.

I've not use the Ableton software myself so I can't tell you exactly where the controls are located for adjusting the recording type from stereo to mono, but that capability is in there somewhere, I'm sure. Maybe another Ableton user can chime in on that one.

HTH,

G.

[Elmo89m]

also, having a song in stereo and recording in stereo is different. Sorry if someone already said this i didnt thoroughly read everything but whatever. Anyways when you have a stereo song that implies that you take you tracks and then you pan them around the Spectrum. recording in stereo implies that you are micing one source with two mics placed in different places. if it was me i would XY that acoustic guitar. Unless your mics are bad.