I'm aware that I haven't been on in a while and with my current day job hopefully I'll be able to post more often.
However, I have a nice piece of information for you guys with regards to recording.
First off I've been exploring a lot of new (new to me) techniques when it comes to recording guitars. You see for the longest time I've been recording everything "in the box" including my guitars. I haven't had an actual amp in years since I've been using Guitar Rig from Native Instruments to do most of that.
Recently however I bought a half stack from Kustom and a few pedals, I did this because I wanted to try my hand at recording a cabinet with a cigar mic.
That's a photo of the stack itself and an old 7 String guitar I had from Douglas Guitars.
For any of you that have ever heard the tracks I've recorded in the past you know that they sound a bit grainy and unrealistic at times.
Here is a link to a song where I recorded the Chorus with that same generic 7 string and the verse guitars with a Mexican Made 1996 Fender Stratocaster.
New Song 3
As you can see the track came out quite well in comparison to previous attempts at recording.
The bass was recorded with the guitar cabinet as well. However I chose to keep the volume low during recording so I wouldn't blow the speakers.
The rest of the things you hear are midi including the drums.
Since my strong point was never mixing I was very surprised to find that a generic guitar like the Douglas would create such a great sound and would sit that well in my own mix.
Of course I did all the standard techniques of double tracking all my rhythm parts and hard panning them.
In fact once I got my gain staging correct I didn't have to do much to the mix at all, no drastic compression or EQ.
My regular job affords me a lot of free time so I like to write material while I'm at work too. For that I usually do my written scoring with a free product called MuseScore. It's a fantastic product an old friend of mine discovered while I was still working with Sibelius. The sounds included aren't good at all but let's face it, any serious songwriter isn't going to use Score Editor sounds anyway.
But for actually recording guitars while I'm at work I use a midi guitar and bass from Impact Soundworks called Shreddage 2.
As you will see from my lack of links I am not sponsored by them and I have no affiliate links so I'm not getting paid in anyway to promote these products. I do however sincerely believe in their quality and I use them very often to either produce blue prints for me to record full tracks later in my home studio or I use them for my music licensing work.
However bear in mind if you decide to go the midi route like I have, there's one thing you really need to know. If you are programming midi you need to work much harder on it than you would by playing the instrument.
Just clicking a note into the piano roll or trying to play a guitar with a keyboard isn't exactly intuitive, so you will need to spend some time getting the nuances of your performance just right to make it sound realistic. This can mean making sure the notes aren't perfectly on time (if you're piano rolling it) or making sure you make the right moves with your keyboard to emulate an actual stringed instrument (for the keyboardists out there)
However with enough patience and hard work you can create something amazing with much less money than going out and paying thousands for a high end guitar and tube amp.
That being said, if you have the actual gear, there's nothing like the feeling of a properly recorded guitar part done the old fashioned way.
I originally chose midi for convenience and portability, however I came to realize portability was very true, however convenience was a fantasy.
But it all depends on your budget and situation.
As my regular job allows me to record music, I still have to be quiet. So writing music for 8 hours a night gets a lot done but when you can't bring a giant amplifier and drums in to work, then it's much more logical to use midi and a pair of head phones for the recording.
On a side note, I've mentioned before that I am not that great at mixing yet, so I do send a lot of my stuff off to my mix engineer. He does a fantastic job and helps out a ton.
I do this so that I can still keep things moving while giving me a chance to practice mixing on my own.
I hope to have an update on my complete studio rig very soon! I also will be making a few more purchases in the near future.
I am buying an Alesis electronic drum kit so that I can track my midi notes more naturally, and a bass combo amp so that I can do some old school recording on my 6 string bass as well.
Like always I hope all is well with every one and I hope you get some inspiration from my trial and error!
