Hello everyone, I would like to know how everyone record their guitar whether acoustic or electric, plugged or unplugged with or without vocals.
It would be great for beginners like me to see and learn from others who are already into recording.
My Setup:
Right now I record acoustic guitar with vocals using my phone and earphone. Although my setup is questionable in itself , the main problem is the small length of my earphone wire and that the inbuilt mic is too close to my mouth which distorts vocals when too loud and it also dangles around and cause volume of recorded sound to vary.
I am no expert others know far more about it than I do but why use the âearphoneâ, is that not the source of your problem.
I only have an acoustic and classical guitar and will be singing. When I started out I just recorded on my iPad using the built in microphone, which was ok, plenty of others use their phones which Justin mentions often is fine. Since moved on to an audio interface (2i2) into my windows PC and record in OBS. Currently as it has two inputs use a condenser mic for guitar and dynamic mic for vocals. Before I got dynamic mic I just recoded both with condenser mic. Starting to look at plugging in my acoustic but I have another thread on this about getting the best sound⊠Sorry donât have an electric guitar so not able to comment on that.
There have been countless topics on set up over the years and there a multiplicity of answers. Worth doing a search on the Community posts to see what is out there.
@Richard_close2u@DavidP@LievenDV I am sure we have had a similar âshareâ requests, since we moved here but could not find one specifically in this category. Your search powers may be more refined to locate such a post and avoid reinventing the wheel. TIA.
I use Debut Video Capture Software from NCH. It works way better than just my video cam recorder. Price was affordable, and you have some editing options with it. Keep in mind, the quality is only as good as your camera. I have a logi-tech cam, not very expensive, but produces a good quality picture to go with the audio. I think thatâs important. I like to watch myself playing as well as hear myself, so I can adjust and correct any issues Iâm having physically. I play acoustic guitar and a few other instruments. I also have Audacity music software, for recording multiple tracks. Itâs fairly user-friendly. One tip on multi-tracking: make a copy and work from that each time so you donât lose a work in progress if you make a mistake and accidentally delete something. Have fun with it all!
How you prevent a mic intended to pick guitar sound from picking vocals and the one for vocals from picking guitar sound. I guess they are not omni-directional.
I assume you are talking about the âold schoolâ wired earbuds with the mic built into the cable.
Those werenât even good for phone calls, unless you had a free hand to hold the mic near your mouth. Itâs not going to work well for recording music. Like others, I suggest just using your phone mic.
You canât. Even if the mics are highly directional there will be some bleed.
In a professional recording studio, they will deal with this with careful mic selection and placement. They will still have bleed but itâs the end result they care about, which is going to be a blend of guitar and voice anyway.
In professional studios, they tend to set things up to try to get as close to the final result as they can in the initial recording.
The end result will be one (or more) tracks mainly with the guitar and a bit of vocal bleed, and another one (or more) with the vocals with a bit of guitar bleed. They can still mix this and adjust the relative EQ and levels of voice and guitar despite the bleed.
And, sometimes, the bleed can be beneficial to fill out the sound or to provide ambience.
Note I said âor moreâ as they may use multiple mics on both guitar and vocals.
Alternatively, they may use a single mic, or set of mics, to capture both guitar and vocals at the same time, although this is more tricky.
If they feel they need the flexibility to separate the tracks without bleed, they will record them separately.
You may be interested in a recent post I made:
If you are recording at home, the easiest way is to use a single mic and experiment with position to balance the sound between guitar and vocals. The mics on modern phones are pretty good for this.
If you are using an electric guitar, you can usually run a line out from an amp into a separate channel on an audio interface and, with some guitar amps, they have a built-in audio interface so you can record directly.
, the main problem is the small length of my earphone wire and that the inbuilt mic is too close to my mouth which distorts vocals when too loud and it also dangles around and cause volume of recorded sound to vary.