After learning and practicing how to record my guitar in my simple home recording setup or you can say bedroom studio. Finally learn some crucial things if you want to achieve good Direct Input (DI) sounding guitar track, even with minimal setup like mine. I only use cheap Audio Interface which is Behringer UTOPIA – UM 2, am old PC (Hackintosh PC) with pretty old motherboard model: ASUS H61 – ME – H 1155 with only 12 GB RAM and core i3 processor.
So that’s my minimal setup, yet it’s important to note that the quality of your gear doesn’t solely dictate your ability to achieve a great guitar sound within the context of a mix. Instead, what truly matters is your understanding of the entire input chain that enables that sound to be realized. This understanding encompasses various factors and processes that contribute to the final outcome.
I’d like to highlight some key aspects that I believe are essential in this regard. These elements will help you grasp how to work with your equipment effectively while ensuring that you can create and achieve the desired tonal qualities in your recordings.
1. It’s All Starting by You
Yeah that’s right it’s all starting by you as guitar player. Make sure you play as clean as it possible. Because, if you play bad even if you use any plugins to cover it it will not work and only waste of time. Trust me I’ve done that in the past in my early learning how to record in guitar track DAW software. Haha ha .. that’s ridiculous I must say.
Anyway,
The first input factor is you, yeah! You! so make sure play as clean as you can. Especially if you using a lot of gain and distortion for recording Rock or Metal and any heavy music kind of thing. Later on you will only need to polish your recorded track with compressor, EQ and add some effect if needed.
2. Make Sure Your Guitar Is Ready for Recording
Second important thing you need to consider is, your Guitar. Make sure there is no fret buzz and electronic problem. Adjust the pickup hight if necessary to get the right input gain that sounds good.
3. The String
Come on, if you record your guitar track with the string that more than 3 months old your track will sound dull. Use a fresh string gauge it will make your recorded track sound sharp, crisp and nice.
4. Cable Matters
Invest in the highest quality instrument cable that fits within your budget, as even the slightest poor signal caused by a low-quality cable can significantly ruin your guitar tone. A bad cable not only degrades the sound quality but also introduces unwanted noise into your recording track, which can be extremely difficult to fix later on.
Therefore, choosing a reliable and well-made instrument cable is essential for maintaining the integrity of your sound and ensuring that your music achieves the best possible quality.
5. Make Sure No Grounding Issue In The house
If there is any grounding issue in your home electricity system it will create hum and noise in your track. And that’s really really bad noise you ever face. I have write topic related grounding issue in recording guitar in home studio. Please read more about fixing the grounding issue here: How to Reduce Unwanted Noise When Recording DI Guitar On PC
6. Learn The Basic Escential of using EQ in Mixing
When you done with all the issue mentioned above, and done with tracking guitar process. Learn to use EQ is important to make your guitar track sit in the mix. Because don’t care if in solo guitar is good it will need to tweak the EQ to make it glued in the entire mix.
You can read about how to use EQ here: Understanding Frequencies in the EQ of a Mixer
Note
That’s all what I can share basic on my on experience struggling to record and produce music on my own using only gear that I have. Hope this short post give you some insight to work with tools you already have and still can produce good sounding mixing track. Especially for your guitar sound. Thanks for read if you have good suggestion input and feedback don’t forget to leave a comment in the comment section below yo!.
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