Favorite ways to record guitar

[sevenSHARPnine]

SM-57 on EVERYTHING. Bass drum mics for the loze.

Yep...

Truth.

[MannequinRaces]

SM-57 angled just off the front grille going into a DI that is then split for re-amping purposes. Still trying to figure out how to record two amps at once for nice delay and ping pong effects. This is a great thread! I love reading about other people's recording techniques.

[Ghost Hip]

All of my recordings recently have been DI guitar/bass. My last laptop was terrible at taking DI, but I tried it with my new one and it worked surprisingly well. Now I only mic if I want feedback.

Really, you should get a half decent audio interface for recording anything at all. You should never really plug a mic into a laptop sound card either.

I didn't ask for advice. My recordings sound the way I want them to. So I'll kindly disagree.

[theavondon]

All of my recordings recently have been DI guitar/bass. My last laptop was terrible at taking DI, but I tried it with my new one and it worked surprisingly well. Now I only mic if I want feedback.

Really, you should get a half decent audio interface for recording anything at all. You should never really plug a mic into a laptop sound card either.

I didn't ask for advice. My recordings sound the way I want them to. So I'll kindly disagree.

OH SHIT!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzfY-aXGcBY[/youtube]

[floating opera]

All of my recordings recently have been DI guitar/bass. My last laptop was terrible at taking DI, but I tried it with my new one and it worked surprisingly well. Now I only mic if I want feedback.

Really, you should get a half decent audio interface for recording anything at all. You should never really plug a mic into a laptop sound card either.

I didn't ask for advice. My recordings sound the way I want them to. So I'll kindly disagree.

[ohsojayadeva]

I'm a big fan of the SM57 slightly off center, super up close. That said, it's not always practical in home recording. My entire solo record was done with pedals & Native Instruments Guitar Rig. I am totally stoked with the guitar sounds that I was able to make. Currently I'm making a very guitar-intensive album with a mixture of guitar rig and a few Tech 21 Sansamps.

[steevdeadman]

I didn't ask for advice. My recordings sound the way I want them to. So I'll kindly disagree.

Ohhhh shizzle... PP gettin' stank on dat ass!

...and Sockgazer, PP mentioned using a DI to go into the laptop, which is perfectly acceptable. It's just avoiding the whole USB fiasco... LOL.

[Sockgazer]

All of my recordings recently have been DI guitar/bass. My last laptop was terrible at taking DI, but I tried it with my new one and it worked surprisingly well. Now I only mic if I want feedback.

Really, you should get a half decent audio interface for recording anything at all. You should never really plug a mic into a laptop sound card either.

I didn't ask for advice. My recordings sound the way I want them to. So I'll kindly disagree.

Man, that's harsh. I thought you were a nice guy too.

There's a number of complications with using integrated sound cards. One is that if you can't use Condensers as they're obviously not going to have Phantom power, though that's not a concern for most. I was dumb enough to make this mistake once.

The other is that a lot of sound cards have the most amazingly noisy preamps. Even if you're looking to mix lo-fi garage punk stuff like you do, you might not want an obnoxious HSSSSSSSSSSS over everything you do. And of course, that'll be on each track you record. This is nearly impossible to filter out too. You can even end up with ground loop like buzzing noises. My EEEPC is one of the worse; even though it's mostly a well made machine it skips and pops and stutters and all sorts trying to record audio.

A lot of the time, the high end becomes somewhat muffled(maybe in an attempt to cut off some of the noise), which, if you want to make trebley, trashy music with a lot of high end, could be an issue too. Using a mic with my old laptop, I always wondered why it sounded so muffled even though I was using a decent mic.

Integrated sound cards also are quite slow to respond and glitchy; and don't support AISO. For example if you wanted to run a DI box in and listen back, there would be notable lag between you playing and the sound coming out on the speakers(of course you can always just monitor it, but some setups can be finicky with this and end up being quite low volume or noisy). When using DAWs, a lot of the time they seem to want to force you to go through the audio interface and software, so you get a doubled signal monitoring. I'm trying to work around this problem in Fruity Loops at the moment; even with my audio interface there's still a slight lag using ASIO.

Maybe the sound card on your latest machine is pretty good, like you said. But what i said still holds through in the majority of cases. It's not an audiophile thing at all, it's just that so many problems people have are from not using an audio interface.

While you're being a bit grumpy about it, it's food for thought for the others in this thread anyway. I'm not trying to push inappropriate advice on people like they do on the TGP, all kinds of people can benefit from it for a number of reasons. Even a fairly cheap audio interface is much better than integrated. It can be easy to not even realise the problems you're having.

Also; another thing EVERYONE should do, even if you're using a decent setup. If you're using Windows Vista, 7 and a wireless connection, and are experiencing any audio stutter at all. Download Vista Anti-lag and activate it when recording. This eliminated most of the stutter I was experiencing. Basically, Vista and 7 have some retarded autodiscovery thing where it browses for networks that you can't turn off like in XP. It's meant to be every 60 seconds, but I was getting lag spikes much more regular than that, which went away with the Anti-lag on.

To see if you're experiencing latency issues; look up DPC Latency Checker and download it. It's usually shitty wireless drivers causing it.

http://vista-anti-lag.software.informer.com/
http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

[ohsojayadeva]

On the real: you can get the job done with the integrated card, but an interface is much better suited for the job, and gets it done faster, cleaner, and with fewer complications. I don't think Sockgazer meant anything personal in his initial comment, which was worded somewhat abruptly, but let's keep it cool shall we guys? PP is happy with his recordings, so there's no reason for him to change what he's doing unless he decides to.

[Sockgazer]

Yeah, I think he was being a little sensitive. I imagine because of the nature of his music, he gets a lot of comments telling him to change it in ways to make it "better" and more t00b like that wouldn't be better to him. That's happened to me before, sometimes I was right, sometimes I was wrong, mostly I was right of course. I can't stand people for example who say I "Hide behind effects" and that I should learn to play Bluzak on a Tweed Champ before I go near effects. I wasn't intending to push advice on anyone; he said himself the sound interface in his newer machine was better than his older one. So he must agree with me on some level, he's just being tetchy about it.

[ohsojayadeva]

I think about it like this: I can hammer a nail in with the wrong end of a screwdriver, and it works. That doesn't mean a hammer wouldn't be a better tool. If you're cool using the screwdriver, by all means! Take the money you save on buying a hammer and go buy some ice cream.

[Sockgazer]

Yeah, similarly though, people can get a attached to a screwdriver with an awkward handle, when they're convinced it's the best one ever and don't realise there's one out there that's just as good that also doesn't give them blisters.

There was a hilarious thread once on Ultimate Guitar about a guy talking about how his new Marshall MG was a great amp, but he was having some problem with it, he couldn't get the kind of Chugga Chugga palm-mute tone he wanted. Obviously, the MG wasn't quite right for him but he had that fixation young guitarists often have(thank you marketing) and thought his amp must be great; since it was better than what he had before. Of course, Ultimate Guitar is filled with jerks so he was outright mocked and told to bring it back. It was a gift from his mother, so it was awkward. Some people were a little more friendly about it, and were probably right.

"But I've never had an amp this good..."

Another thread more recently there; had this guy who kept posting about how good his Spider was. He posted about it a while back, all Fuck the Haters. He was either a troll or quite young indeed. More recently; he came on apologising to everyone, saying he couldn't get a decent crunch tone out of his Spider. So he'd have to get an MG. He actually worded it like that; it was a necessary purchase to fulfill what he wanted. The fall-out was of course, hilarious. People kept recommending him better amps in his price range. Some jerks kept recommending proper bl00zy t00b amps that were out of his range, or ones that were in his range but too basic for anything but bluzak(again, Tweed Champs etc.).

It wasn't that the MG was the best amp for him. It was too much of a coincidence(assuming he's not a troll) that the amp most marketed to guys in his demographic after the Spider that's pretty naff value for money compared to what you can get nowadays just so happened to be the amp he needed. The MGs aren't BAD amps, not the new ones anyway, but when you can get really great amps like the Peavey Bandit for less, they're not very good value; you're paying for the "Marshall" name which won't fool anyone but other teeny boppers.

It's just those like of "conveniences" that annoy me. Like when someone "grows out" of being goth, and conveniently ends up dressing and acting normally instead of developing their own style. The common theme here is that once people get out of one comfort zone(a familiar amp, way of dress); they often jump straight into another, often worse one as there's a lot of information out there that's very hard to manage and take in, and know if it's relevant to you(the TGP crowd are an example). It's like how some people always seem to go from one relationship to the next with no time off in between, and sometimes the person they jump ship to is less than ideal, but at least it's someone different, and often someone relatively mild and acceptable.

When you stop with one thing, it's easy to take the "Normal" option; it's presented to you in a neat package. It also helps that nobody in that kid's immediate social circle would mock him for owning an MG, and nobody mocks someone for dressing normal(unless they're blatantly not normal looking and they end up looking like a twat in a suit). MGs are a "safe" option; a well known brand name. The irony is they're not very good for Marshall amps at all, especially the older ones which are a bit shit(Pre MG4), but neither are most "Normal" clothes. They're still popular and look shinier than the really crappy looking 10 watt practice amps; if they sell so well, how can you go wrong?

I don't think it's the case with PumpkinPieces, but "trashy garage sound" can be a comfort zone too. Once you have a label for something like that; it's like having a religion where you can get out of things because "that's just my beliefs man". Someone can have a certain affinity for that sound, but in reality they'd rather something different ideally; and have settled for this concept to save them from being criticised. This is why some people are sceptical when people say things like "my recordings sound exactly the way I want". Especially since that's pretty unlikely in general - nobody has complete control over their sound, so there's always something that can be changed if you think hard enough. This is why he came off as grumpy to me.

That said, there's the other side to this too - many people can be "I understand you want to do this, but you should still do it the right way A BIT". For example I saw an argument regarding cover bands recently; and one guy was saying he didn't understand why there wasn't more respect given to people who recreate songs almost exactly. It was pointed out that the best covers are generally ones that add a new twist to it. To which his reply was "You should learn it exactly right first, THEN you can add your own bits". I love the way it sounded like he was a strict parent allowing us our pudding after dinner. Someone pointed out that it would be completely redundant for Tori Amos to have learned the song she was covering exactly since they weren't even on the same instrument or often even in the same genre as the originals, he was kind of quiet and didn't respond to that point.

I'm guessing these are the kind of people that caused Pumpkinpieces some upset. But, I'm certainly much cooler than those guys.

Whether you're trying to find a new amp, a new soundcard or a new way to dress, it's always important not to fall into the pitfalls of thinking you're making your own choice when you might not be.

I'm not saying anyone here is guilty of it, I just wanted to share these stories and my perception of them, and that sometimes there are REASONS why people give this kind of advice - not everyone is a conservative lawyer trying to make you into a Stevie Ray Vaughan knockoff.

[floating opera]

WTF 'sup wit all deez longassparagraphs motherfuckers i cant read !!!

[steevdeadman]

WTF 'sup wit all deez longassparagraphs motherfuckers i cant read !!!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ansBui-_w80[/youtube]

[Bellyheart]

Big room, mic on speaker, mic on opposite side of room.