How many times have you clicked on a link, usually to YouTube, for someone demoing their new guitar, pedal or amp. But then it starts to play and you find they recorded it with their crappy cellphone, or with their laptops webcam. Or they may actually have a decent mic, but it sounds like it’s on the other side of the room, and it’s all boxy sounding and echoing….I mean, come on, your trying to show how a piece of gear SOUNDS!
Sorry for the rant, but I watch a lot of gear demos and way too many fall into the category I just described.
So here’s my attempt to spare the world from at least a few of these types of demos.
I’m guessing if you are reading this blog, you more then likely own a guitar and a computer(or ipad, smartphone, etc). You already own the most expensive elements necessary to making great sounding recordings of that guitar. And it’s not that complicated! The only things you still need are a way to get the signal from your guitar into your computer, and then some type of recording software.
Let’s first talk about connecting your guitar to your computer. Sure you can just buy a cheap 1/4″ to 1/8″ adapter. This will physically allow you to plug your guitar into your microphone jack. But you don’t want to do this. It will sound terrible. This has to do with the impedance of your mic jack not being correct for the signal a guitar generates. Some modern guitar amps have headphone jacks that you can use to connect to your computer. Try both your line-in and your mic inputs and see which sounds better. But this only works if you have such an amp and it’s convenient to locate it near your computer.
Really, a simpler, better solution is to get a dedicated guitar audio interface. These usually plug into your USB or Firewire ports and have a normal female 1/4″ jack to plug your standard guitar cable into. Even the simplest, cheapest option is going to sound pretty good. As I write this, that honor goes to the Behringer “White guitar to USB Interface”, catchy name. And currently only $11.99 plus shipping.
If your not totally dirt poor and want better quality recordings with some fun extras to play with, there’s something like the “Line 6 POD Studio GX”. Besides having a better analog to digital converter, it comes with amp modeling software, as well as a lite version of Ableton Live which you can use as the software component to recording and mixing. Most interfaces in this price range and higher will come with a similar software bundle so that you can get evrything you need to record your guitar in one box.
But if your going to be spending a hundred dollars or more, I’d suggest getting an interface that will also take a microphone. This opens up a ton more recording options, including mic’ing your guitar amp, or an acoustic guitar, not to mention adding some vocal tracks. If possible, get one with a built in mic preamp for more flexibility.
There’s also the option to get one of many interfaces that will allow you to plug into a mobile device like an iPhone, iPad or android tablet or phone. Be aware that there is a big quality difference here based on how the devices connect. Higher quality, and more expensive interfaces will connect to the dock port and give you very clean recordings. The interfaces that plug in to the headphone jack will be much cheaper, but suffer from noisey recordings. The nice thing about using a mobile device for recording, is the software is very cheap. It’s rare for an app to cost more then $20 and there has been an explosion of innovative music making programs for these devices lately.
In part two of this article, I’ll cover recording and mixing software. PART 2
