- So, if you want to record
and edit your own music be it guitar, be it singing,
be it any other instrument, then you need a piece of
software to be able to do that. Now I'm going to walk you
through a beginner's tutorial and how you can record guitar and vocals using a piece of software called Reaper. So don't go anywhere. (upbeat music) How's it going guys? It's John Holt here
with the Audio Journey, helping make music
production accessible to all. And here on this channel, what I do is a variety of
music production tutorials mainly focused towards
beginners and beyond. So if that's something that
you might be interested in then definitely consider subscribing. Now, Reaper is a great piece of software that allows you to record
and edit your own music. And it's called a digital
audio workstation, or DAW for short, same as Pro Tools, Cubase any
of those pieces of software. Now, the reason that I'm
doing this tutorial in Reaper is because it has a
free evaluation period. So it's perfect for beginners. You can download it and use
all of its features for free for as long as you click still evaluating. So at some point you really
should buy a license, but as long as you're testing it out you can use it for free,
which is fantastic. Now you can download Reaper
for Mac or PC from reaper.fm which I'll put a link for
in the description below and what you need to do is
come to download Reaper, and download the one that's suitable for your operating system
be it Windows or Mac. So once you've got that installed you want to go ahead and open it. And this is the first
screen that you want to see. So I'm going to walk you through
right from the beginning. The first thing that
you're going to need to do is tell Reaper where you're
going to be getting audio from, so where are you going
to be recording from, and where you're going to be
sending audio to, to listen to. And essentially what that means is we want to tell Reaper
where to be listening for my microphone, for my guitar, and we need to tell it where I want to be hearing that through. So for me personally, I'm
using a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 which is just on top of my monitor, and I've got that plugged
into my Mac via USB. And that's where all my audio is going to be running through, that's where I'm going to be
plugging in my headphones, and where I'm going to be
plugging in my instruments. So to set that up, come to option and this is the same
on PC, and preferences and under audio, you can see device here. Now it's automatically selected for me and my Scarlett 2i2 USB but if you're just using
your computer's sound card or you're using something
else, another interface then you want to select that in this menu. But I'm going to go ahead
and select Scarlett 2i2 USB, click apply. And then, okay. So today we're going to be
recording guitar and vocals. And while I'm not going to subject you to
my gorgeous singing voice, I am going to show you how to set this up and record some guitar and vocals into Reaper for you to work with. Firstly, we want to make two audio tracks and we do this by double-clicking in the space on this left-hand
side, that creates a track, so we want to do that two times. One of these tracks is
going to be for the vocals, and the other is going
to be for the guitar, We want to record them separately, so that we can edit them
separately and edit the volume and other things like that separately. Now my Scarlet 2i2 has two inputs. Now what I want to do is
select which of these tracks is going to be receiving which input. Now I went ahead and plugged
my microphone into input one, and then I turned the
Phantom power button on and turned up the volume until
it was a good enough volume to see the green halo light
around the gain knob flashing, means it's receiving a good
amount of signal of my voice. Now, as I said, that's an input one, So I want to do is come to
input one, and pick that here. That means that this channel is going to be receiving the
audio from the microphone that I've got plugged into input one. Then what I did is I took
the cable from my guitar that I would normally plug into my amp, and I plugged it straight
into the Focusrite, and switched the line
instrument switch to instrument, because of guitar outputs
and instrument level signal. Then on the second track, which is my guitar track in Reaper what I want to do is select input two, because that's where I
plugged my guitar into. Then in order to actually hear what's coming through those tracks, what I want to do is press
this record arm button, which is basically telling Reaper, I want to record audio onto this track as soon as I hit record down here. So if I press this, I can now see the audio
from my vocal microphone coming through into Reaper, just here. If I do the same for the guitar track, and then grab my guitar
and play it a little bit. (guitar strumming) I can also see that audio
coming through into Reaper too. What you want to do here
is adjust the volume so that those levels are hitting about three quarters of the way, you don't want them to
clip and hit the top, because that means they're
going to just stall, and it's going to sound really horrible. So make sure that it's
between sort of halfway and three quarters of the way
up that your volume is hitting on all of those recordings. So I'm actually going to
record the guitar first. So this is the guitar track I'm going to leave it record armed, I'm going to grab my
guitar and get ready to go. All I need to do in order to record is hit the record button just down here, and we'll see my audio starts to record along this track just here. (guitar strumming) Now I did mess that up a little bit, but we're roll with it. If I now play that back, I'm going to hear that recording through whatever I have
plugged into the Scarlett. (guitar strumming) Great, so I've got my guitars down. Let's pretend I did the whole song. You can do a couple of
different takes if you want and just make different
audio tracks for them, or just try and go until
you get one good take. Now, I'm going to record
some vocals over the top. Now I'm just going to
chat to you guys, but this is where you would sing over the top of your guitar track, if that's what you wanted to do. So we can see my vocals coming
in at a good level there it's coming in between halfway and three quarters of the way, which is exactly where we want it. So let's go ahead and record. And here we go guys, this is a demonstration
of a would-be performance and beautiful vocals over
the top of this guitar track. Now, as I said I'm not
going to subject it to that, this is a demonstration
of how that vocal audio will be recorded. So there we go. Now, what we can do is
listen to all of that back. And here we go guys, this is a demonstration
of a would-be performance and beautiful vocals over
the top of this guitar track. Now, as I said, I'm not
going to subject it to that, this is a demonstration
of how that vocal audio will be recorded. So what you would start
to do now is add effects like EQ, compression,
bit of reverb, delay, things like that. And on the guitar, you would probably add
some sort of amp simulator because we're recording the direct signal, it's not gone through an amp, so you want to make it sound
like there is an amp on it. Now I'll direct you to a place where you can get a free
trial of one of those. It's a place called waves.com, which you may have heard of. And I'm going to be using
something called GTR3. So I'll show you that. GTR Solo, sorry, is what I'm using. But basically what it does is you add it to your guitar track, and it makes it sound like
it's going through an amp. And it's really cool if you want to be recording
in your room and you don't have the sort of space to
crank amp up to full volume, you can record relatively
quietly and yeah, the guitars from the Pixies use, it's gotta be good. Now, the way that you add an effect onto any one of these tracks,
whether it's the vocal or the guitar is you
click effects just here. Now I'm going to go ahead
and grab my GTR Solo rack so I can show you what
that will sound like. Here we go. Now this effects button
has gone green to show us that we've got an audio
effect on this guitar track. And what I can do is just
pick a random preset, gonna turn the guitar down, 'cause it's going to be
much louder than that, it's going through an amp, and let's have a listen back to that. And here we go, guys, this
is a demonstration of. (indistinct vocals over guitar track) There we go. It might not be the nicest
guitar tone in the world, but you can fiddle with that and get some really good sounds out of it. Now with the vocal what we might want to
do is add some reverb. Reverb. Now I will point out that I will have probably a few more plugins than you, I've built these up over
quite a bit of time, but Reaper does come with some really powerful plugins itself. So JS stuff is all included, as is the cookoo stuff. So have a look through
here, you've got Eqs, and you've got compressors
and reverbs and things. So you're definitely spoiled
for choice in terms of free software for as long
as you're evaluating it. So, as I say, I'm going to grab a reverb, I'm going to do that from the VST section. I'm going to put this on my vocal. So now you can see that
this buttons gone green showing that I've got an effect on here, and let's see what that sounds like. And here we go, guys
this is a demonstration of why you would be recording. Oh, that's a lot of reverb Turn that balance down. And here we go, guys,
this is a demonstration of why you would be recording
some beautiful vocals over. There we go. And here we go guys, this
is a demonstration of why you would be recording
some beautiful vocals over the top of this guitar track. Now as I said I'm not
gonna subject it to that, but this is a demonstration of how that vocal audio will be recorded. And there we go, guys, I'm not going to go too much more in depth into how you would mix this, because this is just a
simple recording tutorial, just showing you how you get
your audio from your guitar from your microphone, from
your voice into Reaper, to be able to work with and that quality of recording is going to be something that you can get a really
professional sound from, especially for a home studio and the setup is so cheap and inexpensive. I'm going to drop some links
in the description below of all the equipment that I'm using, so that you can go ahead and grab that if this is something that
you want to get set up to do. So there we go, guys. I hope this tutorial has
been helpful for you. And I hope the guitar playing
wasn't as painful for you as it was for me. But if you've got some
value out of this video, then please do leave a like down below. It really does mean a lot to me. And if there's anything
else that you want to see, if you want to see some
more in-depth mixing, if you want to see some recording in a different piece of software, or with some different instruments, then just let me know in
the comments down below, or by my contact links in the description, and I'll see if I can
get that done for you. Now, I've been John Holt
with the Audio Journey and I really hope to
see you guys again soon. Take care.
