Why do my guitar recordings sound bad?
PRE ANSWERWelcome to the wonderland of recording where everything that you don't expect to happen happens :)Would you mind updating your question with these details:What kind of guitar are you trying to record?Are you using a mic or an audio interfaceHow do you listen to your sound while recording it?Can you upload it somewhere so that I can listen?ANSWER - After reading your commentYour phone’s microphone is not sensitive enough to capture all the harmonics of the sound that you are producing from the guitar. How does a guitar produce sound? You pluck a string and it vibrates. The vibrations get passed along air and hit your ear drums (an overly simplified explanation). These vibrations don’t occur with just one frequency. For example, when you pluck the A string, it vibrates at 440Hz. But thats not the only frequency that it produces. If that was the case, you would hear something like a sine wave kind of a sound doing wuuueeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. Instead, it produces a lot of other frequencies called harmonics which is why the guitar sounds so rich or full of sound when you close your eyes and hear it. Their amplitude is not very high, so they can be subtle. But heard together, they make a lot of difference. Also, there must be lots of reverb if you are recording in a small room (sound reflection). It creates a very nice effect and make you feel that you are rocking the whole world. Your phone’s mic blocks out those low amplitude harmonics and reflections and so you end up recording what I call is a dead recording. Get a good digital recorder or a good condenser microphone.Its about feel, really. If your ears tell you that you are getting a great sound, then that means that you are creating the sound that you wanted. There is just no way in the world where you create a tune and it sounds great even if its bull shit to its creator. How is it even possible, right? So your sound is great. Its just that your recording is not able to reproduce the exact same sound that you ears experience. There are a lot of things that you can do in order to make things better. Use a very simple DAW like FL studio or GarageBand to put all your recordings in computer. Add some reverb, treat the audio with EQ and you will be able to get closer to what your ears experience when you play live. The motive is to recreate the auditory characteristics of your surrounding in the digital world.
Which is a better mic for recording electric guitar? MXL 990 or 991?
I'm using a line-6 Spider IV 75 amp. I've recently started a band and I've been working on recording with only my laptop, then I got the bundle of tascam interface and mxl mics. Though, I have not much experience with recording with microphones and software. Oh, and the software I use is Audacity. Which would be a better mic to use for recording electric guitar with distorted sound and drop B tuning?
What is the best way to record a guitar, direct input or mic the guitar? Which sounds better?
After many, many hundreds of hours of recording guitar this is what I do every time before adding anything else.The foolproof safe method -Get an SM57 (the vanilla kind, not the Beta)Place it 4-6 inches from the grilleLine it up with the center of the speaker coneTurn the mic so that the head points toward the edge of the speaker but the tip is still in the middle of the cone.Record the amp clean and check the amount of bass and highs in the playback. Adjust the amplifier tone controls as necessary.After that you can add as many other mics as you want but 90% of the time I promise you’ll end up using that 57 at some stage and it gives you a ‘safe’ mic to monitor and reference.If you add distortion or pedals then you know that the base-sound is good and the pedals are the ‘problem’ if the sound isn’t right. In theory you can never touch the amp again for the whole session.As a bonus, I’ve actually started using the Slate ML-2 in the mirror position and that seems to work really, really well. It’s never going to be a perfect recreation but it saves a lot of time (and thus client budget).There’s a multitude of other ways to do it if course, all of them with their own pros and cons. Even straight into the desk with no amp (almost all the Motown records were done this way) but in the end it’s icing on the cake.Example:This cabinet has two speakers, I’ve mic-ed one with the 57 and one with ML-2. Also I used a ribbon at some considerable remove and a condenser in the middle distance. There’s also an H&K Redbox inbetween the amp head and the cabinet and a DI before the pedal board just in case.Didn’t end up using anything but the 57 so… yeah. Icing on the cake.
How do you record video and audio for a guitar?
Instead of saying sorry you should of told us whether it was electric or acoustic. Theres no need to apologise but don't expect many answers either. I suspect Acousic, What you need is a Good Condenser mic and a stand to pick up the sound and maybe a mic preamp. These people and ive looked they are going to have the track recorded and mixed down on a portastudio or something like that, for good sound You can Dub the Audio back onto video later thats no problem. But if you get what i said, and used a program me like audacity to mix the final recording, You are adding Vocal? it will sound pretty good if its just guitar, use a High pass filter out So there is no subsonic bass rumble sounds, and vocal you can use overdub that is Doubling up on the Vocal, It is hard to get Vocal to sound nice on a system just using a computer. I wish I had a portastudio.
How is the best way to record with my electroacoustic guitar so it sounds acoustic and not electric?
What type of guitar do you have exactly?My acoustic sounds very much like an acoustic guitar when plugged straight into my Focusrite. Not like a particularly good acoustic mind you, it's not a great guitar to start with.How do you plug the guitar into the computer? If it's in the microphone input then that is the problem right there.Otherwise you can opt for getting a piezo microphone for acoustic guitar.
How to disable built in laptop mic while recording using a line in device?
If you're using a PC... Open Control Panel. Select Sounds and Audio Devices. Select the Volume tab. Click the Advanced button. In the window that opens select Options. Now select the Recording radio button and mute the mic. Click OK on everything and you're ready to cook.