Simple set-up for electric guitar & vocals - for open mic and video?

[Prof_Thunder]

Hi, I’m not sure if this is the best place to post this.

I practice and play on my own in my bedroom. I never uploaded any videos of me playing yet. The main reason for this is the sound quality. I play electric guitar direct through an analog amp and sing over the top. This means I have to keep the guitar volume quite low. It’s not easy to balance the two. I’ve done some some recordings with my phone (iPhone) but the sound wasn’t great. I’d like to get set up in a better way so that I can get the volume of the guitar and the singing more balanced and this is also with a view to doing some open mics in the future.

I have a MacBook Pro and I regularly use Zoom for work so I am familiar with that.

I have read the instructions about set ups for open mic’s but I’m still not clear what’s the best way to go. Do I need to have 2 mics; one for my voice and one for the guitar or what? I know that the microphone in the computer is weird as it picks up and amplifies external sounds quite a lot, if you are not speaking/singing. What else do I need - an audio interface? I’m a bit confused about the whole thing.

[Majik]

What gear do you currently have?

Which mic, which amp,.etc.?

Are you using the built in mic on the MacBook?

Cheers,

Keith

[brianlarsen]

Hi Ian,

Most microphones, whether in-built in laptop, mobile phone, webcam or dedicated stand-alones will be fine for the purposes of making a recording for AVOYP or an open mic. My experience is that it’s how comfortable and good the performer is, rather than the technology, and keeping things simple is the best way to get started.
One mic works well in most cases, especially if you are playing with an electric through an amp, as you can adjust the volume to get a good balance with your vocals. I’m surprised you are not happy with the quality from your iphone.
A good starting point is to set up a Zoom call with yourself, (making sure to switch the ‘original sound for musicians ON’), record yourself and then watch the recording when you finish the song and leave the meeting. Review your performance, make adjustments, rinse and repeat.
Give me a shout if you’d like to have a live-audience-of-one for objective feedback.
Cheers, and good on you for taking the first steps

[Majik]

Expanding a bit now I’m at a keyboard…

You can just get away with a simple webcam setup or, at a push, use a phone or tablet. You won’t get the best sound but it’s mostly good enough for an online OM.

@brianlarsen does this and gets good results.

You may need to experiment a bit to get the amp volume and your singing volume reasonably balanced (e.g. by moving closer or further away from the mic, setting the level of the amp, etc.). Do some test recordings for this.

Note that, especially on a laptop, you are going to be quite limited with the camera as it’s attached to the laptop lid.

If you want to go further then you can invest in an Audio Interface (AI). You should get at least a 2 input device with monitoring capability. You may also want to invest in some headphones or IEMs, if you don’t already have them.

The starter AI I recommend is the Behringer UMC204HD. It’s cheap and good, and you aren’t paying a premium for the name.

You will also need a microphone and a mic stand of some sort, and mic cables.

For live vocals I would generally recommend a dynamic mic, as these tend to be directional (cardiod pattern) and don’t pick up as much background noise (like the acoustic noise of the guitar strings) as other types of mic, like condenser mics. The Shure SM58 is the classic professional mic for this application, but you can get similar mics from other brands for less money.

The vocal mic will plug into one input on the AI.

For the guitar, it depends on the amp you have and how you want to do things. The classic professional approach is to mic the amp. This is because a lot of the sound of classic amps comes from the output transformer, speaker, and speaker cabinet. If you took a line output from these amps you wouldn’t get the proper sound of the amp.

But that’s partly a historical artefact as, today, we have modelling amps and multifx units. If you have something like a Boss Katana, Fender Mustang, Spark, etc. then these amps will fully create the sound of the amp through their line output. If you have one of those then you can plug the output of the amp directly into the second input on the AI.

Otherwise, if you want to mic the amp then you’ll need a second mic (SM57 is the classic, but others exist) and mic stand. You’ll also have to carefully control your environment to make sure you don’t get too much bleed from the amp into the vocal mic. You may want to consider putting the amp and mic in a separate room.

And, yes, it’s a faff, and I don’t recommend this approach.

Or, if you have a multi fx unit, you can plug the line out from that into the AI.

Another option, instead of capturing amp and vocal separately, is to get something like a condenser mic and capture both with one mic. This is similar to using the macbook microphones, but is a step up in quality and versatility (as you can place the mic anywhere you want).

Regardless of which approach, I would also recommend getting a separate webcam, as the webcam built into your laptop will be awkward to use.

You can get USB mics which have an inbuilt audio interface. I would recommend against these unless it’s something like the Audio Technica ATR2100x-USB which has both USB and XLR to connect to an AI.

Regardless of the approach, you should use headphones. These can be connected to the AI.

Cheers,

Keith

[Prof_Thunder]

Hi Keith @Majik ,

I’m just playing my tele directly into my Orange crush 35RT.

So far, I only tried recording with my phone - which wasn’t great - by using the phone mic to capture both my voice as well as the sound of my guitar through my amp. I didn’t even bother to try yet with the built in mic in my MacBook as I think those mics are a bit weird as they are quite sensitive to external noise I think.

Ian

[Prof_Thunder]

@brianlarsen

A good starting point is to set up a Zoom call with yourself, (making sure to switch the ‘original sound for musicians ON’), record yourself and then watch the recording when you finish the song and leave the meeting.

I didn’t know about the “original sound for muscicians” option in Zoom. I can try that.

Perhaps it’s more about where I am sitting and singling in relation to the amps speaker? I guess that will affect it quite a lot?

[Prof_Thunder]

@Majik

You may need to experiment a bit to get the amp volume and your singing volume reasonable balanced (e.g. by moving closer or further away from the mic, setting the level of the amp, etc.). Do some test recordings for this.

I think that this might be my main mistake.

[Majik]

The Orange Crush 35RT is a decent amp, but it doesn’t have a line output.

You can use the headphone output into an AI instead. This is supposed to have cabinet emulation on it, but I’ve heard it’s not brilliant. It may be good enough though.

Cheers,

Keith

[Prof_Thunder]

Keith,

This is super helpful. Thanks.

Best, Ian

[Majik]

I will also add that, if you are considering recording yourself for AVOYP or other self-publishing (e.g. on YouTube) then investing in a mic and AI setup is more worthwhile, as you can use them for self-recording too.

Cheers,

Keith

[Richard_close2u]

iPhone or average webcam with a mic built in will be easily adequate … and could even allow you to get to the next OM 32!

Try adjusting the phone so you are not necessarily singing right at it up-close and causing overload (clipping). Equally, don’t stand it in front of your amp.

Zoom

Audio & Video settings bottom left

Audio settings pop out menu

Scroll down

select Original sound for musicians then close the pop out

Upper part of Zoom … it still says Original sound off

Click that one time only to turn it on

You will also see a brief notification

Ta-dah

[Prof_Thunder]

Richard, This is really helpful. I will try all that over the weekend and see what the results are like.

I think my main problems have been the position of my phone coupled with not knowing the right settings in zoom.

I’ll try those things first.

Best, Ian

[TheMadman_tobyjenner]

Ian

There are quite a few guides in the OM Tech Talk Section. We carried a basic one over from the old forum covering Zoom set up HERE but @jkahn did an updated guide a couple of years ago HERE .

Maybe worth having a look at both. Richard’s post above is also very helpful.

What you do have in Zoom is the ability to set up a meeting with . . . . well just you !!
Once you have the audio settings are covered, you can open a meeting, hit the record button and experiment. By which I mean proximity to mic, vox guitar balance etc. So you can play back and get an idea of what the sound will be like.

Shout up here if you need any help in doing that.

And for context, when we first started out on this OM journey, we were all where you are now and tripping ourselves up on the tech side. Plenty of experience and peeps around to get you sorted !

[Prof_Thunder]

Thanks a lot Toby. I’m going to try and sort it out this weekend. I use Zoom a lot for work so I’m quite used to the platform but not for music - my use of zoom is mostly giving lessons to biology bachelors and masters students.