I would like some feedback on the recording quality, not my lack of skill at playing lol. This my first attemp at recording my accoustic guitar straigt to my PC. DAW
To me it sound a little tinny (bright) to my ears, let me know what you think please. !
I guess it depends what you are going for and who is the audience for this recording.
Yes, it’s a little tiny bright, but that may be because of the volume in the mix compared to the rest of the song or it also has to do with the fact that your guitar recording is raw vs the background song, which is mixed.
If you are looking for more blending in, you could research into adding some mixing plugins on the guitar channel into the DAW. Also the volume, I noticed it makes a huge difference sometimes when I mix something with headphones vs speakers etc. So listen to it both ways if you can after doing a mix to see what you like.
Zero audiance right now, this is purely a learnign curve.
IE:
This didn’t even cross my mind, now I know lol…
Volume, what a pain that is.
I tried with the Ipad through my Katana then to the scarlet but volume is almost off. Then i tried the front jack instead and this is fantastic. With the ipad volume and scarlet control panel you can get a decent volume without maxing out the otherway.
I ran the recording through my studio monitors and its sounded quite rounded and mellow. Its high in the mix so overwhelms the backing tracks, so either the BT level’s needs raising or the guitar needs dropping a tad. BTW nowt wrong with the playing. Its sounded brighter through my PC speakers but not overly so. There is a delicate balance in mixing for a variety of output types, so always worth checking your recording via different speakers including phone speakers that are generally tinny in my opinion. So if your target is for folks listen via phone you need to adjust the mix accordingly. One quick win would be to add an EQ to the DAW track and “mess” around with the settings until you find something that sounds good to you and I say that as we are all different. Maybe boost the mids a little and lower the Highs, Have fun !
Okay cool, so then what you could do is to record the guitar and the backing on two different channels in the DAW, even if you have to do it one at a time. That way you have full control over the volume and mix and all that good stuff in your final mix.
Rachel, Similar to Toby @TheMadman_tobyjenner, I listened through studio headphones, and the guitar sounds fine, rounded and mellow is an excellent description of the tone. Played back through PC speakers it was a bit brighter, but I wouldn’t say it was jarringly so. I did think that the BT was a bit bass heavy. Your playing was good, in time and with a confident, relaxed feel to it.
Technical advice wise, I’ve nothing to add to Toby’s and Raz’s @razshaw contributions, having only recently graduated to recording guitar and vocal as separate tracks, and about to add BTs now I’ve spent last month’s discretionary budget (and this months tbh) on upgrading my PC to cope with more than 2 tracks at a time
It’s actually hard to tell how the acoustic guitar itself sounds when it’s mixed in like this - perhaps upload an isolated recording of just your guitar playing?
So I made the track solo and rendered again so this is the raw guitar with nothing added or taken away lol. Solo Guitar
Fingers X’d the access will work
Thanks for doing the solo recording Rachel, much easier to hear.
As far as recording sound goes - it sounds fine. Beyond “fine” is entirely subjective, and you’ll get opposite pieces of advice from two different people. Some would prefer warm, some would prefer bright. And there would be different opinions on if a certain sound is warm or bright… Personally I prefer a slightly warm sound, and as much of an acoustic-in-the-room sound as possible.
My suggestion for easy recording is to try to get the recorded sound as close as possible to what you want and limit the manual post processing.
Your Faith has a pickup with EQ on it - bass, mid, treble. Start there. Put them all in centre to start with and tweak from there (rather than DAW EQ tweaks).
Technique - how you play (pick you use, strumming technique - light/heavy, fingerpicking) has a large impact on the sound.
Reverb setting. This is DAW, amp, or amp plugin (e.g. Amplitube) dependent. This can very importantly have an effect on the warmth/brightness of your guitar, and also how natural it sounds. I run my acoustic through my amp, with some reverb set there, and then further reverb adjustments in the DAW. This should be mostly set-and-forget (it is for me) rather than tweak each time.
In terms of your actual sound there - to my ears, I would add a bit of bass (for warmth), add some treble (for clarity) and a small amount of reverb. That’s just my opinion though…
Well spotted, the main volume for the guitar was just a few Db higher than the BT. I liked the idea of listening through the phone, I hadn’t thought that people may open links from there first.
Hi Rachel, @jkahn has it spot on imo with the first point, mess around with the EQ on the guitar a bit. FWIW on mine I have bass at 11 o’clock, mids at 1 o’clock and treble at 12 o’clock. Your balance sounds pretty good so it would only need some minor tweaking. I find the electric output on mine can be quite bass heavy which I’m not a Fan of (on any guitar tbf, that could just be me!!). Personally I actually prefer to record the natural room sound using a condenser mic, the electric output can sound quite lacking in depth and warmth which is what made me love my Faith in the first place.
As you get more into this you’ll no doubt find yourself tweaking as you change songs and genres so as was mentioned above, welcome to the rabbit hole!!
Hi Mark, yes, agreed. I’ve been strumming for a couple hours now trying both hand/pick just trying different setting. I’ve stopped for a bit as fingers getting sore and so far I’ve set mine a little different. B2 M10 T10 and through the Amp its ok but I do drop the bass volume. Ditto with the mello sound but I also like a touch of bass too.
I have a condencer Mic now too but I’ve not tried it yet. I’m hoping that if I get a nice sound from the amp i’ll be trying that way first.
Very interesting but a little confusing with wiring lol, pesky wabbits