Welcome back to the channel, fellow shredder - BERNTH here! As you can see I finally have a new setup a little home studio all for myself - I still
have to improve the REVERB with some additional audio treatment - so since we are already
talking about home studio mistakes with this let's go through six of the worst of them
when it comes to recording guitar at home! I'm sure you were really frustrated at some
point with the quality of your own recordings... or maybe you don't even know where to start
since you don't have any equipment yet... So one of my personal biggest mistakes was not
getting a proper USB interface right away - this is pretty much the most essential thing you will
need when you're starting out because you probably want to connect your guitar to your computer or
laptop somehow and this sadly doesn't really work out that well... when I started out I had a really
cheap interface and don't even remember the brand name anymore so when it was time to record
my very first guitar track for a professional studio job at home, the producer told me that
the DI tracks that I sent had a weird buzz on them... and that unwanted noise was of course greatly
amplified when he was reamping all of my signals in the end he basically told me to record
everything again from scratch... and I still have nightmares about that production! So
guys and girls, please be smarter than me like pretty much everybody else I'm working with
the focusrite scarlett 2i2 - I even recorded most of my new album ELEVATION with it and went into the
studio with the di tracks for reamping and mixing pro tip number one - if you want something
fancier my producer recently recommended the universal audio apollo twin MKII - this one
also comes with tons of awesome plugins as far as I know - but if you're just starting out I don't
really think that you can go wrong with this one! The second huge mistake that might result
in some extensive re-recordings is a badly intonated guitar and this one is a really sneaky
problem factor... because what I don't mean with this is recording with a guitar that's simply
out of tune... (beautiful) - what this is all about is recording with a guitar that's not intonated
properly - so while your open strings might be perfectly in tune, the notes you are playing and
fretting are slightly sharp or flat because the guitar isn't set up correctly - the devilish
detail right here is that you might not even hear this when you're just working with this
one guitar but as soon as you start adding other instruments like bass or samples you
will notice that something is terribly wrong... and trust me, this results in a lot of drama
and extra work! So my suggestion is bringing the guitar to a shop or to a professional before
very important recording appointments and also telling them the tuning you will record in - I have
to admit, I personally always was about playing and practicing with my instruments and not so much
about setting them up and taking care of them so I always prefer bringing them into a shop before
tours or before very important studio appointments just to make sure that everything is set up
correctly - pro tip number two concerning that: please also make sure to change your strings
for the best possible results - we also change them multiple times in the studio when
we're working for a couple of days Yes it's tedious to constantly change strings when you're in the studio but trust me
it will pay off with your sound! Another huge and quite serious mistake on your
guitar journey concerns around 70 percent of you awesome people that are watching this video right
now... yes I know I'm repeating myself but nothing has changed - still around 70 percent of your fellow
shredders are not a real part of our amazing youtube guitar community yet! So make sure to join
the cool kids right now by subscribing (at least we like to think we're the cool kids...) you will really
benefit from being part of our shred community here on youtube! So what I can't recommend
enough personally is always recording a DI track - so the naked unedited untouched rough
signal that comes straight out of your guitar because another one of my personal early mistakes was recording with a sound that I
thought was perfect as a teenager... and then the producer of my first band told
me that it's absolutely terrible - and he made a couple of good points... way too much gain... why
did you scoop the mids that much... there is zero clarity with this tone... all i can hear is... why did
you record four lead guitar tracks that all do the exact same thing - oh somebody told you about
quad tracking, right.... yeah thanks a lot for that constructive input! So when you always capture that
raw DI signal, you can give your producer a lot of freedom to reamp it and to change the sound after
the recordings - this is so awesome because you can leave open all creative options - an aggressive high
gain part might become a crunch channel section or a beautifully arranged and planned clean
part might turn into a fuzzy distorted mess So if you are working with a Kemper or any other
modern or classic amplifier you can still record your signature sound that you really like - and you
also simultaneously record a DI track track of what you're playing - that way you can still send over
your preferred tone for the part and in case it doesn't work out in the mix you still have the
possibility to change it afterwards - I show you exactly how to do this in the home recording
course that I published on Patreon that I will talk about in just one second - but first, pro tip
number three - when you're dialing in your input levels make sure to check them with your heaviest
picking strokes or accents to avoid any clipping so that would be too much... better
safe than sorry, you really need a good and clean signal for any kind
of further processing in the studio Now if you still don't know where to start with
recording your guitar at home, with mixing and mastering your own songs, with EQing your
takes, with effects and all of that stuff I recorded a full 30 minute home recording online
course just for you with Austrian multi-platinum producer Daniel Fellner - this one is available for
all members on Patreon and you will learn how to easily dial in your perfect guitar tone, how to EQ
and process your takes, how to mix your own songs, and much much more - as always the link is in the
description below and pinned as the first comment! Yes, this one might sound a bit boring but it's
incredibly important as well - so when I started out I really didn't care about that tedious last
step, exporting my files, my songs, and my demos... mp3 is what I knew by name - back when I was younger
I still had an mp3 player, most of you won't even know what that is - I even had a disc man, yes I
know I'm getting old... so I really didn't know about the differences with all those formats and if it
really matters that much... turns out your producer won't be happy when you send him or her a heavily
compressed mp3 file - of course I also learned that the hard way! So before you start exporting
hundreds of files make sure to ask what's preferred - most of the time it's an uncompressed
wav file 24 bit 48 kilohertz or 44.1 kilohertz so don't mix up all kinds of different settings
when you're exporting your files for your studio production, it will drive your producer or engineer
crazy and of course it costs a lot of extra time and work - pro tip number four concerning this:
always make sure to bounce your tracks with the exact same pre-count to make things really easy
for the studio, if you just place your locators randomly with each track, it will be very tedious
to arrange all the different tracks correctly if you always leave two or four measures for
example, the workflow of putting the projects together will be really really easy and your
producer will love you for small details like that! Attention - one detail that can really ruin your
high gain tracks is if you constantly have open strings ringing through - especially when
you're shredding - we looked at a lot of really helpful exercises to fix technique mistakes
like that with your playing but it does take quite a long time to adjust your technique and
to correct bad playing habits like that... so if you are not quite there yet and you still have
to deliver clean and perfectly executed tracks I can really recommend using a fretwrap for
your recordings - if you don't have one you can also just use a cloth or a sock (please just make
sure to wash them first...) in my personal opinion and experience it's not that good to always practice
with a string dampener, especially if you want to learn how to play without one at one point - but
for recording purposes it's perfectly fine, you will get a much cleaner signal and the clarity
of your sound intakes will really benefit from that of course - pro tip number five: I always
really liked the GruvGear fretwraps and used them quite a lot over the last couple
of years - nowadays I mostly use them if I have to record tricky tapping parts that don't allow me
to mute the other strings with my palm for example Your daw, or DAAAW, or digital audio workstation is
where you record mix master produce and so on when I started out I made the mistake of saving
money at the wrong places and I worked with a free program that had tons of limitations,
from export settings to recording quality to effects and so on... I'm quite sure that things have
changed by now and that there's a lot of awesome free recording software out there, make sure to
comment which daw you are using at the moment! So anyways, what made a huge difference for me is
upgrading to Cubase at some point - I currently work with Cubase 11 and once you figure out your
personal workflow, you will have a great time recording every day without any limitations and in
professional quality of course - pro tip number six: spend just a bit of extra time on research
and try to find the program that's best for you and your personal needs - most people i
know work with Cubase, Logic or Pro Tools and finally something a bit more creative: how do
you actually set up your projects once you have all your gear and how do you start recording
your guitar takes? What obviously made a huge difference right away is double-tracking my rhythm
guitars and panning them left and right - this makes them really big and awesome sounding and you
will be completely blown away when you do this for the very first time - but since this sounded so
awesome, I started doing this for everything that I recorded - from bass to lead guitar tracks to
solos and so on - and as you can probably imagine this didn't have the same effect at all... I thought
that more is more when it comes to songwriting and recording but in this case less is truly more!
Your song and project probably doesn't need 10 lead guitar tracks, 6 rhythm guitar tracks, 12
keyboard sample layers, 4 different drum kits and so on - just keep it simple. especially when you're
starting out, record 2 rhythm guitar tracks and pan them left and right, add some guitar solos or
lead guitar tracks if you have some great ideas and if you feel like certain parts sound too
empty, you can still figure it out later in the studio with your producer after looking at
the frequency spectrum - pro tip number seven: please try to avoid working in the same section
of your fretboard for different rhythm and lead guitar tracks - use your knowledge and fretboard
visualization skills to your advantage and spread out your ideas across multiple octaves! That way
you make everything much more transparent and your tracks won't clash and battle each
other in the exact same spot in the mix I really hope that I could help you out today
by showing you some of my personal worst guitar home recording mistakes - make sure to get the
full home recording course on Patreon to learn much more about dialing in your perfect tone,
mixing, mastering, EQ, and all that good stuff and here's your random german word for today;
QUINTENZIRKEL! Rhis one is extremely scary - it is our german overly complicated word for
the circle of fifths - make sure the comment this below, I'm really looking forward to seeing
your spelling for that - let's confuse everybody together that didn't watch this video until the
end - leave a like in case you enjoyed and don't forget to subscribe to join our awesome
youtube community - see you soon, bye bye!
