Ever struggled to get great sounding guitar recordings at home using budget gear? I think I can help!
We’re moving right along in this series, and after drums and bass it’s time for me to record my guitar parts. Specifically in this video we’ll tackle both electric and acoustic guitars.
Since many of you record at home, late at night – cranking up a guitar amp may not be the best idea so you might turn to a virtual amp. It’s becoming much more common to record electric guitars this way.
In fact for my song I’ll be doing just that – using a free guitar amp simulator plugin that came with my interface and recording direct. Plus I’ll show you a simple way to create more width in your mix when recording guitars.
For my acoustic guitar I’ll be using a $99 Behringer B1 microphone. This is the first mic I ever purchased and it sounds great – especially when you use some strategic mic placement that I’ll show you in this video. Alright, let’s dive in!
P.S. To get a list of the budget equipment I use in this video series and my recommendations to fit every budget, download my Studio Gear Guide completely free here.
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My name is Graham Cochrane and I'm the founder of The Recording Revolution, one of the world's most loved audio recording and mixing blogs with over 200,000 readers each month. 
I enjoyed your video Graham! But doesn’t your electric guitar sound a bit out of tune with the bass? It sounds a bit “wobbly” to my ears. I probably would not mind if that’s your intention.
I know you are trying to teach how to record a song for beginners and I appreciate that.
Yeah, that was kinda painfull haha. He’s great, though.
Hey..
1. question..
Why record the electric guitar a second time, why not just use the first recording? (what if the guitarist is not consistent)
Also, you might want to check out Ardour, as another option for a “free” DAW//(Well it’s a gold coin donation)
The big thing is it runs on Linux, which means you can use older or lower specced hardware and get great results.. And Linux is easy these days, just use AVLinux, KXstudio or another prebuilt audio Linux distro.
These usually come with heaps of additional plugins (free)
Of course it also works in Mac and Windows.
Good to see another Linux guy using Ardour which is what I use.
I’m also a Linux guy as well, although I’m using Harrison Mixbus. I actually render the MIDI instruments from MuSE-Sequencer (http://muse-sequencer.org/) to Ardour first, since Mixbus causes xruns during the recording due to all the built-in EQ, compressor, and tape saturators using 50% of my CPU in all four cores.
It is a crappy AMD Kaveri APU (AMD A6-7600) that does not seem to want to handle all the processing power from Mixbus, but I like to mix as though I’m using a real console.
So first, once recording is done in Ardour, it’s simply a matter of copying my project from ~/Documents/Ardour Project/ to ~/Documents/Mixbus Projects/ and I can do all the mixing from there.
My audio interface is Behringer FCA1616 and I’m running a Liquorix kernel (a real-time kernel for music creation as I work entirely with MIDI instruments) and my settings for JACK are:
Driver: ALSA
Device/Interface: hw:FCA1616
Sample Rate: 48000
Buffer Size: 1024
Periods/Buffer: 3
Latency: 21.3 ms
Username “grayson” is in an “audio” group and I do have rtirq enabled in my system.
My preferred desktop environment is GNOME 3 (3.22) in Arch Linux. GNOME 3 did not cause me problems for recording in Ardour once I set the latency high enough as I do have hardware monitoring in my audio interface.
To all Mac/windows users, I know this all sounds gibberish to you, but at least there are Linux out there who use JACK (JACK Audio Connection Kit) which is the basis for exposing all inputs and outputs from audio interface for low-latency recording. I suppose my Kaveri CPU cannot handle low latencies very well unless I switch to Openbox (a lightweight window manager, which feels out of place compared to GNOME Shell)…
Just started recording so gaining experience now. My normal distro is Linux Mint but for music I am on ubuntustudio. DI is PreSonus Audiobox USB. So far, Ardour all that I need and these lessons will aid in getting better.
Do you know if this unit will work with ubuntu studio and ardour via firewire?
I’m sorry. I got lost in the reading. I meant to ask if you know if the fca1616 will work with ubuntu and ardour via firewire.
Sure, but I’ve never tried Firewire with Linux. You might want to start a thread over at https://linuxmusicians.com/.
You could record just once, create two buss channels, insert virtual amps in each with different settings, and disconnect track’s output so you can hear what’s coming out of the busses. Or you can record your electric guitar twice, which gives it a more human feel than recording it once.
In your example, it would be like splitting the signal from electric guitar into two real guitar amps with two $99 microphones and then connect the two guitar amps into your audio interface, assuming that there are two line inputs and not just one preamp and one instrument/line input.
You’d have to separate the two guitar amps as far away as possible as not to bleed into each other’s microphones which in this case, it makes sense to use two virtual amps. It’s less costly that way as well and will take up no space at all.
@Allan: If you record it twice, you’ll reduce phasing issues to its best possible result. Even if you’d use the same plugins. If you’re using external amplifiers as Greyson Paddle already mentioned, you’d reduce them too, but only by a bit, depending on the “uniqueness” of the amplifier, your current, microphone distance, etc. I would suggest using two takes and either two different plugins or two different amplifiers (and if you have two different sounding mics, those as well). It’ll pay in the end. Speaking of, recording the DI signal anyway might be worth the effort.
I actually used two takes, one with my Firehawk FX and the other straight through Rakarrak.
The minor inconsistencies in the second track clash against the first and they actually blend together and you won’t really hear it. But you will hear your stereo field get wide as hell.
Think of when you double a vocal and offset the second by a few MS… it does the same thing but makes the stereo really pop out.
I use a black star club 40 and I will track a left guitar with the ISF knob at 9:00 and then track a second with ISF between 3:00 and 6:00 and it makes my punk rock or heavily distorted guitars sound amazing….
ISF on the black star changes from an American tone to a more British tone and it’s beautiful for quickly double tracking an electric guitar.
Obviously the goal is to play as consistently as possible. The tighter the better. But try it and see how well this works out.
Personally I use this on rhythem guitar tracks and I’ll record my leads separately.
The scarlett solo graham is using in this video doesn’t support linux, almost no scarlett does. Ardour seems to be a great daw though…
If you get the same perfomance twice and pan them one hard left and the other hard right you’ll get a very wide sound that one guitar couldn’t have.
I think this series is all about people recording their own music, so… in that scenario you are your own guitarrist!
This thread over at Linux Musicians says otherwise that Scarlett is USB-class-compliant.
https://linuxmusicians.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=15810&p=80096&hilit=scarlett+usb#p80096
Of course, Scarlett’s plugins would not work, but Linux users don’t buy the audio interface based in what plugins and software programs it came with.
Didn’t say you couldn’t make it work, just that the scarlet line doesn’t support it, wich is true. Sorry if I expressed muyself wrong, I don’t actually speak english… just trying to help, here.
I have to say though, since getting a scarlet to work in linux is a fairly complicated process, I wouldn’t recommend it to begginers, or people who want things simple. (which is the whole point of this blog).
Thanks for the link! Saludos…
FWIW, I am actually using the Scarlett 2i4 (two inputs, four outputs) on Linux as my every-day recording / playback interface on Linux. It required *zero* configuration to get it working.
It might be trickier to get the higher input count interfaces working, depending on kernel version and generation.
Wish I could +1 your comment.
Actually the point of that is to capture the minor inconsistencies. Just using the same recurring would just double the volume. The inconsistency are what makes the recording thicker.
What’s up Allen…. The reason to record 2 guitar tracks is to achieve a true stereo signal. Turning 2 mono tracks into a stereo track by panning hard left,and hard right. If you just copy and paste the mono track,you can tell the difference.
You cannot use the *exact* same recording, because of physics. Audio is transported through a medium (e.g. air), we think of it as waves travelling through water.
So if you imagine a pool of water and letting the same exact drop fall into the water at the same time, the waves created by those two drops will cancel out and there wont be any waves in the midddle.
That means if you were to use the same recording you would not hear anything!
And even if you’d adjusted volume, pitch or timing slightly you would still run into issues, due to the sound being distorted in wierd ways (becasuse Physics)(again! xD)
To conclude, get yourself a consistent guitarist and play it twice 😉
Oops, I might have confused something…
Cancellation only happens if the audio is exactly mirrored….
Same thing twice -> Same thing twice as loud
Good, really good instruction. My question is, is it not better to record the guitars dry and then apply the amp? In that manner you don’t have to re-record the guitar, just apply the changes to the amp on each of the tracks? Really appreciate the lessons.
(I’m not Graham but here to help.)
Absolutely. If you want to change the sound of the amp to suit your song, you can do that.
You could even do fancy stuff such automating amp’s settings to keep attracting a listener, but it could make it sound more like a virtual amp than a real amp where amp settings are not changed real-time during recording of electric guitar.
You could do that, and recording the guitar clean, as you say, does work better for me bc I can tweak it later. But if you only do one guitar take, duplicate it and then aply the amps you’ll have some serious phase cancelation issues (you can tell by listening to it in mono). Instead, if you do two different takes, like graham, phase cancellation is not that big of a problem at all, and two different performances will sound wider anyway, so…
Cheers!
As others have said, you need to record it twice otherwise you don’t get the benefit of the width. An exact copy of the first performance, even with a different amp setting won’t do that. Instead it’ll give you phase problems and might cancel some of the guitar out.
Recording the guitar twice sounds better because the little differences in performance gives you the perception of wider stereo image.
Thanks to all of you and your comments and support. G.C.,and you knowledgeable commentators, have made my producing journey, started a year ago, painless and fun.
Quick question…..
I have now read on multiple sites that using a DI box connection is essential when recording guitar directly into a AI….especially a Focusrite.
Thoughts from you experts on this issue, and if so inclined, a simple “geek” explaination on how this may positively affect the signal before going into the AI?
Thanks all!
Thanks Graham!
Has to do with your signal.
If mic’ing up a cab, you don’t need a DI box obviously because the mic is sending the signal at the proper levels.
The interface should balance out the signals when recording direct, boosting the signal as if it were coming from a mic. I’ve heard that some cheaper interfaces don’t do this very well and you can get a less consistent hot signal.
In my experience using a focusrite 2i2…. I didn’t see much issue. Back then I was using virtual amps and I got pretty good recordings from my sessions.
In my opinion it’s just another thing you don’t need. Maybe someone has a better POV on the subject. But I haven’t seen an issue when using a cheaper focusrite interface.
Nah. Just record right into your interface. It has a built in DI. Sounds fine.
Just curious. Obviously doing a 2nd elect gtr part makes total sense for tonal and dynamics.
But what about the acoustic guitar on the bridge? I’m asking because I almost always like to do two acoustic guitar tracks when recording, but I make full use of a capo when I do that. For example, if the song’s initial guitar key is in D, I might for the 2nd guitar capo on the second fret and play the same chords as if I’m playing in the key of C. This allows for me to be more flexible with the actual playing as the frequencies are going to accentuate a bit differently. Adds a bit of sparkle.
Same thing if playing in G. I can capo up on the fifth fret and play the chords as if in D and get an almost twelve string effect from it. Doing that also allows for a lot less readjustments of EQ. Better Balance later on when mixing.
Just a thought and question.
Great idea. There really is no “best” way to think about layering guitars. In this song, acoustic was just a small texture piece, not the vocal point so I only wanted one.
You forgot to mentiin for the acoustic recording, you have a nice Martin guitar and that is where most of your sweet acoustic sound is really coming from. Try the same thing with a middle of the road acoustic and it will be decent but not so nice is that Martin sound! Unfortunately, not much way around that part of the equation. Except borrow something nicer from a friend maybe!
I actually did most of my acoustic recording on a budget martin ($600) for the last 10+ years. No problems 🙂