Recording Electric Guitar...

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AcidJizz

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Alright, lets say i have a soundcard with at least two inputs... How would you get the best recording for the mic? Would you just hook it straight into the input, would you hook it through a PA system and then the input, or would you have yet another mic to pick everything up while you sing and play and stuff? Which brings me to my next question, how would you get the best recording from an electric guitar? My amp has an output, but if you hook the output straight into the input its really really loud, and seems quite uncontrollable, so it just blares. Would you put another microphone in the front of the amp to pick it up, or would you (like above) get one mic to pick up all the sounds from the guitar amp and speakers (for the singer)?

And one other thing... hehe =) I'm using Sound Forge to edit my audio, if I were to put everything in seperate inputs, how would you go about recording all at the same time, but having them as seperate channels... Like so you can edit your voice, then edit the guitar, instead of it all being one. ahhh once again sorry for my ignorance hehe =)
 
Very confusing post...
From what I understand, you want to record yourself playing the guitar and singing, right? Well, try recording one track (i.e first the guitar then your voice) at a time, using multitrack recording software such as protools free for example (can be downloaded for free on http://www.digidesign.com). Soundforge is basicely more for editing individual tracks, not for recording/mixing stuff.

The sound quality you get from a mic depends a lot on your setup: what soundcard and mic are you using? Since you don't mention mic preamps, I'm guessing you're not familiar with phantom powered condenser mics. These are the better/more expensive mics for recording, but a good dynamic mic (such as the shure 58 or the irreplacable 57) is definitely a good place to start.

For the soundcard I think the soundblaster live card is the minimum for half-decent recordings. As I explained before, you don't need a soundcard with more than one input to record more than one track IF you record just one track at a time. The most common way of recording a guitar is with a mic in front of the amp.

Now go play :)
 
Hey man, when you're wanting to put a guitar track on your computer what i do is I mic my amp with one of my shure condensors, run it through a mixer, and then into my computer. thats a pretty decent way to do it. if you run it direct and you use distortion it will sound nasty and you wont really have much good tone at all.
 
HEy,

If you have a mixer of some kind, and want to conserve tracks, you can plug one mic into (1) on the mixer, this mic should be your close mic(up close to a dedicated speaker). One mic into (2) for the vocals and a third mic place on a boom stand in the middle of the room to gain a natural reverb plugged into (3) on the mixer.
Using a good cable, send it from your monitor out jack into one track on your recording unit, PC, MDM, Harddisc, etc...
This is one method I have used to gain the most possible instruments being recorded at once. Be careful though, the mix should be listened to carefully before the final take is recorded...You don't want to nail that perfect vibe before making sure your levels are correct.

As far as recording the best possible guitar sound, try playing with the mic placement first. I find that if I place the mic to the left of my bottom 12" speaker, I get a much deeper low-end crunch. If I place the mic directly in front of the cone, I get a real hot, bright sound, which helps if you can't turn your amp up too loud due to the neighbors. You want to record the guitar "dry" (no effects).
Make sure that the overall sound is obtained that you invision, minus all the chorus and reverbs. Add the effects on the mix. I have found this to be a great way to add that special umph to the final piece. If you really like a particular sound that you are getting while recording, use it. Both ways will work, I just feel that if you can nail the track with no effects, it will sound that much better when an effect is added. You don't want your chops hidden by a reverb or chorus effect unit.



Hope this helps..

[Edited by SLP on 01-10-2001 at 13:32]
 
If I used a guitar FX box like a BOSS or POD, could I forget micing the amp and output straight from the FX box into my soundcard?
 
You could run direct out of your FX box if ur using clean tones. but distortion you want to mic, because it will be overwhelming.
 
You *could* run it direct from your effects, but it will sound MUCH better if you mic the amp.

I run my mic's into a Mackie CR 1604, then from there into my Soundblaster card.
If you can't or don't want to record each track seperate, one of my tricks is panning each of the 2 mics over, and, in a sense, you'll have 2 seperate tracks. This, of course, will make natural stereo unachievable though.
 
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