Focusrite + katana home studio

[MrDinemajor]

So I bought the Focusrite home studio pack with the mic and headphones and I have a boss katana.

I have no idea where to even start. I have been dabbling in reaper for the past month but didn't get far. My metal tone sounds to dirty but when I try to fix it it just ends up losing the feel I want and becomes muddy.
I have many riffs that I would love to turn into songs but I'm just overwhelmed with the amount of information that I'm seeing online. I have a feeling that I should just start making stuff no matter the quality just to get the hang of things. I don't even know what program to use for typing in drums or how to go about tracking base (I was thinking just a bass octave on my guitar). I'm not even sure how I sloud be tracking guitar. Amp sims? Mic setup on katana? Line out from katana to interface?

Help!

 

[lukas123h]

Hey there,

I would most definately put the mic in front of the amp.
If you look inside of your Katana (with the flashlight of you phone for example), you will see the cone of your speaker. If you just put your mic in front of the cone somewhere, it will not always sound the same. The sound you record with you mic is influenced by its position in front of the cone and the proximity to the speaker (If you put it closer, it will sound more warm and bass-heavy and very direct, if you put it a few Centimeters away, it will sound lighter and roomier, same kind of changes apply for moving the mic left and right).

In order to find the sound you need, you need to find out where to put the microphone. I recommend choosing one riff and recording it with the microphone sitting at different positions, so you can later choose which one you like best. It is then of course important to document the positions you put the mic in.

You should propably also not record too quiet, as that reduces the chance of background noise bleeding into the mic. I don't know if that particular transistor amp sounds better at higher volumes, but for many amps that is the case, too!

Tracking bass without actually having one is a problem that I also had for quite a while. Most of the time, tracking the guitar an octave below will not give you a good result. That's why I was using the bass of a friend of mine for over a year, until I bought one. But don't be afraid, basses must not be too costly, I got a very good Squier Jazzbass for only 200€ on ebay. But if you want an inexpensive bass, you should definately try it out before buying, they are not all equally good.

I'm not a big advocate of reason, but there should be a instrument to type in drums included, try to google it! If you want to spend some money on that, I recommend EZDrummer to begin with, before you can record real drums.

Hope I could help you.

Greetings,
Lukas