Using Garageband and Scarlett 2i2 to record Guitars/Bass

[warntheduke]

Hi Everyone,

This may have been covered before in other threads, but I wanted to get the most direct answer I could.

My band is recording an album that we plan to shop to labels, and have sounding like it was done professionally. We did drums in the studio and we're having someone put amp simulators on guitars and bass, mix the drums, and mix the whole thing.

The bass player and I are simply recording dry DI tracks from our homes and sending them to the mixer to dress up with simulators.

Does using garageband for this purpose (rather than a more "professional" DAW weaken the signal, or the sound at all? Or is this just as good as using Logic/Protools, etc? Is the signal and the sound just as good?

Also, is using the standard Scarlett 2i2 going to create a quality-enough signal/sound?

Thanks.

 

[JamEZmusic]

GarageBand doesn't sound any worse than ProTools/Logic etc. It just doesn't have the best workflow for more complex mixes, or as many plugin choices.

You can get a very good bass recording straight into the 2i2, A ton of people I know mix great songs doing just that. But you can get better by running into an external Pre and then into a DI box and then into interface but the result will not be noticeable unless you do a straight A/B comparison, you can mix the Bass DI to sound close anyway but you would kind of have to know what you're doing, and this takes time/experience/practise

Recording a DI'd Bass is pretty much the go-to. Most will use the clean DI signal for the low end. Everything below 150-170hz or so, everything above that is free to do with whatever you want.

My typical bass guitar is 3 tracks
Low end bass (Below 170hz, smashed with compression)
High end bass (Above 170hz, moderate compression and an impulse response bass cab sound)
Distorted bass, either re-amped or a plugin to drive it, blended in for the all important mids.
And then a little Rbass over the whole lot on a buss

Be cautious of phase issues, you can line up the waveforms exactly but you still might have issues if your plugins add some kind of time shift and the time delay compensation in garageband might not be as good as in Logic. Check by flipping phase and seeing what sounds best, it should sound weak and thin if the phase is wrong, or full/thick and meaty if phase is correct.

If all of this is confusing you, stick with just the bass DI, 1 track and use a preset on one of your guitar sims, it will do a lot of this for you but you lose a little control. no big deal

 

[bouldersoundguy]

I'm not sure this is still the case, but when I used GB at a friend's home studio a couple of years ago there were very limited options for setting the audio recording format. I think it was preset to 44.1 kHz sample frequency and 16 bits. Ideally, you want to set those two parameters to match the original drum tracks. I wouldn't call it a deal breaker, but it would be best to keep all the tracks up to a higher standard than CD quality and avoid sample rate conversions during the production process.

 

[TalismanRich]

That's a good point BSG. If higher bit or sample rates are needed, it would be easy enough to just download Reaper to do the recordings.

 

[JamEZmusic]

I didn't realise you was capped at 44.1, I just googled it! You can record at 24bit though.

I record at 48k pretty much always. you're never going to be able to tell the difference between my 48k in logic, to your 44.1 in garage band, and if I was to record at 44.1 in Logic, the recordings will be near as damnit identical.

I overlooked the fact that garageband has limited sample rate options, that's pretty poor actually....

 

[warntheduke]

Follow up question: does anyone happen to know if using garageband on a phone or tablet is going to reduce the signal/quality or a bass track?

 

[bouldersoundguy]

Follow up question: does anyone happen to know if using garageband on a phone or tablet is going to reduce the signal/quality or a bass track?

It's probably fine as long as it's not dropping data.

 

[Deleted member 196982]

When using GarageBand, if you have a track you like that is supposed to be sent elsewhere to mix, then I would simply open the project, which appears to be a single file, but really is a directory. Select the project file, right-click and click Show Package Contents. Then, expand the folders to display the Media/Audio content, and the WAV file will be there. You can edit that with Audacity before sending it if you want to trim it up.

p.s. You can do the same thing with Logic Pro "project" files, too.

 

[Pinky]

My band is recording an album that we plan to shop to labels...

What labels? I assumed the "here's a hot band on CD" handing to promoter thing stopped a long while ago.

Second the vote for using Reaper, which is a bit more complicated to learn but much more robust in functionality. Knowing how to produce your own music, even after getting the million dollar contract, can save you big money if you do some or all of the engineering for your next platinum recording yourself. And you get the satisfaction of knowing you did it all, and had control over the final product. Heck, buy a DAW license if you're this serious and have an "in". It's worth the small investment.

 

[rob aylestone]

The quality issue is a smokescreen, everything is well up in the quality stakes. The vital factor really is simply features and benefits. What do they do, and what benefit will you get?

The killer is when you discover something it cannot do. All the popular DAWs have very few mainstream things they cannot do, and most allow you to install 3rd party plugins to to audio generation or audio manipulation. You will start to get emails with all sorts of synths, samples and processing - and when you see one you know will fit you to a tee, you will be frustrated when your chosen DAW cannot use it. It means that me, with my Cubase systems can be using exactly the same sounds as a friend who runs a different DAW. Garage Band is a sort of starter DAW, but many outgrow it really quickly and have to start again. Other people love it and never tax it. Only you know how expandable you need to be.