How To Record Electric Guitar using Audio Interface For Guitar

welcome back to my newest video on how to make great recordings in your home recording studio this video is the complete beginners step by step guide to recording your electric guitar on your PC Mac or iPad it will focus on the actual guitar recording gear you need to make a good quality recording in any recording software so let's dive in and see how you do it so let's start with your electric guitar and the basic problem with recording it on your computer or tablets you cannot plug it straight in there is no guitar input on your computer whether you have a PC Mac iPad whatever you've got so you need something that goes between your guitar and your computer you need some kind of an audio interface for guitar so this is mine it's a focusrite scarlett 2i4 USB audio interface now focus right make a whole range of high quality audio interfaces as do Presonus and audio Bay ringer I came multimedia I covered in another video a blog post how to choose the best audio interface because there are literally hundreds to choose from so you can refer to that post in video I'll put a card up and then I'll put a link below before we get into the ins and outs of how you use the audio interface in detail let's just have a quick look at the three main ways you can go about recording your guitar firstly you can record it directly by plugging it into the instrument input of an audio interface now the actual sound you'll get doing that you may not like because it'll just be the very dry sound of the guitar but the great thing is that once you have recorded your guitar you can use all kinds of plugins to make it sound really great in software so you can use distortion delay chorus amp simulators all sorts of different ways of enhancing the guitar sound and the great thing about doing this as well is that you can adjust it you can pick to your heart's content the different ways that you process the sound so that's one way then if you have got a guitar and pedals and an amp that you really already like the sound of and that is the sound that you want to capture there's two ways you can go about that you can take the line output from your guitar amp and plug it into the line inputs of an audio interface and then you can record the sound of your amp that way or finally and this is probably the most popular Propst the old standby approach because you get the sound that you're actually used to hearing coming out of your amp is that you use a microphone and record the sound coming out of you around directly through a microphone the microphone again you connect it to your audio interface so you can begin to see why this is an ideal audio interface for guitar because you can record in all of those ways you've got your instrument in you've got line in and you can connect XLR leads so you can record using a microphone as well so let's go through these three different ways of recording your guitar step by step so whichever way you want to record the first thing you need to do is install your audio interface correctly the instructions you can see are not very long just make sure you follow them with a Mac you can simply connect the interface to USB port you go to your system preferences and sound and make sure you've selected the correct interface for input and output on Windows as an extra step because you need to install drivers first and then you need to just go to the control panel and make sure the interface is set up there in terms of recording software you could start off with any of the free recording software that comes with your interface or you could try GarageBand on Mac maybe mixcraft on Windows Reaper audacity is completely free as it's Pro Tools first so any recording software that'll get you going will do the job to record on an iPad you simply connect the USB lead to a camera connector kit like this make sure it's a powered one then you can connect the power supply for your iPad into the power socket and that will power the interface and enable you to record on your iPad now that you've got your audio interface set up you need to connect a pair of studio headphones to the headphone socket of the interface and or a set of powered studio monitors to the monitor outputs on the back the reason you need to do this is that you're not going to be listening to the sound through your computer speakers now you're going to be listening to it directly through the audio interface and another nice thing about this is you can choose whether you direct monitor so that you listen immediately to the signal that you want to record without any delay or you can choose to hear the process sound coming out of your computer or some kind of mix between so to record the direct signal from your guitar you connect the guitar lead and adjust the gain on your guitar and then on your interface you make sure it's switched to instrument you plug the other end of your guitar lead in and adjust the gain on the interface you adjusting the gain in two places you'll have to experiment to get the right level so let's just hop over to my recording software to have a look at how the principles of it's going to work you're going to be better at this than me because you're the guitarist but I'll just show you how it all fits together so in your recording software you need to just check that you are recording through your audio interface so make sure that's selected so that's okay now what we're going to do is double click here to create a track so whichever recording software you're using the basic principles are going to be very similar you create an audio track in this case in Reaper you can choose at this point whether it's audio or MIDI eight we're recording an audio track and the input is mono and it's on input one on my interface so that's all good okay so what I do is I'm going to arm this for recording I'm just going to make sure that the monitoring is on so I can hear myself let's have a quick play okay so I can hear my guitar so what I'm going to do is just record a very basic track just dry I'm just recording the dry signal from my guitar [Music] so save that take that off okay so let's go back to the beginning just have a quick listen I'll trim it first of all let's trim that to the beginning of the bar there and just move it along a bit let's play that back lot from being very bad it is obviously just very boring because there's no effect it's just the signal from the guitar but what you can do at this point is you can use any plug-in to apply effects apps emulators and so on so let's put an amp simulator on this let's go to well let's go for a black angus lead and see what that does to it okay so I've got my plug-in working if I now play back [Applause] [Music] so sounded completely different what if I don't like that and I fancy more of a funky bar you see I've got the same signal but now I can do what I like with it so let's go back to the beginning again let's play that okay sounds completely different now just to show you that why I'm recording is the dry signaling the effects of being put on afterwards what happens if when you want to play you actually want to hear those effects widely playing and you want to hear them in your headphones and more exciting to play isn't it so let's create a new track let's just meet this one what I'll do is I will route this one now through this isn't the most efficient way of doing this actually but anyway so let's do the same thing let's route this one for the funky where I thought that's only better so now when I start recording if I just armed it all for monitoring and so on okay let's hear it okay so I'm hearing that effect and so let's start recording okay so let's just stop that save that one let's take the monitoring off okay let's go back to the beginning now when I play this back again I'll trim it so we're just soloing this track now when I play it back it's playing back through the effects but I can turn them off so if I go back to the beginning again and turn it off and start playing I've recorded the dry signal but if I just press that on [Music] okay so hopefully that's given you a quick idea of what you can do with the software once you've got your guitar recording direct you can really fiddle around with the effects apply them change them apply them while you're playing or play a dry signal and then apply the effects afterwards however you want to do it very straightforward once you've got your interface set up and you guitar recording through it so what you do at this point is you keep recording adding effects mixing making sure you've got everything how you like and once you've got your finished product you can simply bounce it all out to an audio file that you can share with the world basically so that is how you record direct through your interface and into the software using the software plugins recording on an iPad in an app like a GarageBand is very similar you simply add extra tracks in the case of GarageBand you can choose a Katara and then you've got multiple amps and effects to choose from you can record multiple tracks switch and play with the amps to your heart's content and then export your finished song to record the sound of your amp you've got two choices one is connect cables from the line outputs of the amp to the line inputs of your audio interface make sure it's switched to line and make sure the volumes are down and then you adjust them gradually to get the right recording level then in the software you are going to record this time I'm recording in stereo and I simply aren't for recording and start recording what is coming out of the amp via the line output so the recording process is very similar to before once you've got your signal recorded you can add extra effects again in the software to do EQ compression or that sort of thing so the third way to record your electric guitar is to record the sound of the guitar amp using the microphone you'll get the best sound if you place your mic about 2 to 12 inches from the uncover note the mic pointing directly at the count of one of the amp speakers you can move the mic around try pointing it at different speakers if your amp has more than one move it in and out you just have to keep experimenting until you get a sound that you like so what kind of mic well a dynamic mic is the easiest to use and it's great for a sort of rock guitar sound if you want to warmer more full-bodied sound then choose a large diaphragm condenser just bear in mind it is more sensitive and may pick up more of the ambient sound of the room and if you use a large diaphragm condenser you might need to think about acoustic treatment depending on what your rooms like you can get a nice clean sound using a small diaphragm condenser mic and that might be a good in-between choice the kind of mic I've got is an AKG C 1000s which I've had forever and has served me really well for all kinds of recording purposes it's like the Swiss Army knife of microphones but there's plenty of similar mics on the market whichever light you go with you simply use an XLR lead and connect to the mic input on your interface and adjust the gain on the preamp till you get the right level if you're using a condenser light then you'll need to switch on the phantom power and again you catch the result by making a straight recording from your interface into an audio track in your recording software now just before I summarize what we've covered if you've enjoyed this video then please do me a favor and give me a like thanks right let's have a quick summary of what you're going to need to record your guitar so if you want to record your guitar direct you're going to need your guitar a guitar lead and audio interface with instrument input and some recording software with plugins then you'll be good to go now if you want to record the sound of your guitar amp via the line output of your guitar amp then you're going to need your guitar plugged into any effects pedals you've got and then into your guitar amp you'll need an audio interface that's got line input you'll need the appropriate audio cable to connect the two together and then your recording software and finally if you want to use a microphone to record the sound of your amplifier then you're going to need an electric guitar plugged into your pedals and damp you'll need an audio interface with microphone input and preamp you'll need a microphone of some kind and the Nexen our lead you will need a mic stand so that you can position it and finally some recording software so that covers the three main ways that you can go about recording your guitar and just a reminder that you can use any of these methods to record on your iPad if you use a powered camera connection kit I should point out that audio interfaces come in all sorts of shapes and sizes from iPad docks to USB mixers you can even get audio interfaces specifically designed for smartphone and it's possible to buy a bundle that includes your audio interface and a microphone headphones and XLR lead so you can quickly get up and running but whichever route you choose the basic principles of how you record remain the same finally here are two more possibilities you could consider firstly if you're on a tight budget you could consider the USB microphone a good quality USB mic connects directly to your PC or Mac or to your iPad with a pod camera connection kit it saves having to purchase a separate interface microphone mic leads and so on and would enable you to make a very reasonable recording of your guitar amp on your computer secondly you could also consider a portable digital recorder the best ones double-up is an audio interface anyway but also it allow you to make digital recordings of your guitar in all the ways we've covered without you needing your computer or iPad at the same time you could then transfer the recordings onto your PC Mac or iPad at your leisure ready for further editing and mixing so I hope you found this helpful if you have any comments or questions please do post them below and don't forget to subscribe my channel is all about home recording made easy so if you do subscribe you'll be the first to get all my hands tips and tricks and regular videos on how to record in a home recording setting so thanks for watching and I'll see you next time

Channel: Music Repo

Views: 277,314

Keywords: Music Repo, MusicRepoTV, how to record guitar, audio interface, recording guitar, guitar recording, music production, guitar interface, analog, digital, microphones, sound card, home studio, home recording, how to record guitar on computer, home recording studio, recording tutorial, reaper tutorial, electric guitar, record electric guitar, audio interface for guitar, guitar recording equipment, guitar recording gear, DAW, electric guitar (musical instrument), GarageBand

Id: yTN3fYqqySM

Length: 16min 17sec (977 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 23 2019