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We don’t need to look too far back in the distant past to discover a time when aspiring musicians had to book expensive studio time in order to capture and share their creations with the world. Whilst four-track cassette recorders were relatively cheap and more accessible in comparison, they were also fairly limited. Good luck trying to time correct your drummer’s dodgy beats after the fact with one of those!
With the advancements of the digital era, it is now possible for anybody to produce and release a full album from the relative comfort of their bedroom, with minimal financial outlay. However, rather ironically, the sheer number of options out there for doing such a thing can be overwhelming, and perhaps enough to put off the next Hendrix from giving things a bash.
Whilst I may not be the world’s greatest guitarist, I have definitely spent a significant amount of time battering away on the ol’ six string, and explored many different methods to document my incredibly mediocre song-writing… and so in this article, I’ll aim to give you something of a brief guide to the types of things you may wish to consider, should you be interested in recording electric guitar for yourself.
Audio Interfaces
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One of the key bits of hardware required by bedroom strummers and aspiring rock Gods alike is the humble audio interface. These devices come in various different shapes, sizes, and prices, but ultimately their role is to act as special boxes which connect up and allow you to record sounds directly into a computer.
If you are primarily interested in recording single instruments such as bass or guitar one at a time, and don’t have any plans to try and capture full band rehearsals any time soon, then an interface such as the Focusrite Scarlett Solo would be an ideal choice. It has a single quarter-inch jack input on the front, and an XLR input with optional phantom power to support condenser mics on the rear. You can connect up powered speakers, or monitor using headphones—and the layout is uncluttered and straightforward enough to understand, even if you have never used anything like this before. If you want to have the flexibility offered by additional inputs, Focusrite have also got a number of different models available in their range, such as the 2i2… or the monstrous, rack-mount 18i20. But if you are reading this article, then you can probably safely forget about that one for now. There are, of course, other brands out there as well, though Focusrite is always a safe bet, typically offering an excellent confluence of sound quality and affordability.
Whilst desktop audio interfaces like the Scarletts are great, you may find yourself yearning for a more traditional mixer style setup—like you might be used to from a rehearsal studio or…church hall perhaps!? These have the benefit of control strips per channel, including EQ such as bass and treble knobs to shape your sound. If this is more the kind of experience that you are after, and you are prepared to invest a bit more money, then the Tascam 16 could be more up your alley.
Audio Interfaces to Check Out
Getting the Sound
Once you have an audio interface of some kind, you then need to think about how to get your guitar to sound on the recordings the way that you would want it to. Volume level and noise isolation is obviously a significant consideration for most bedroom producers, and you may well have to make do with recording directly into your interface. That is perfectly fine and something that plenty of artists do, but it will only provide you with a clean base sound—and one of the biggest challenges when recording electric guitar in particular is capturing the raw energy and natural harmonics that you get when playing through an amp. Adding a distortion pedal into your signal chain just doesn’t quite work the same with recording.
One approach to get the particular type of sonic characteristic that you would expect is to find a plugin or VST for your digital workstation that will emulate a guitar amp—and there are a variety of options out there with wildly different complexities. However, it can often feel like a bit of a minefield to get one that not only works, and which is both intuitive and fun to use. If you are like me and don’t love having to click about with a mouse to turn knobs, then you might want to explore the wonderful world of both pre-amp, amp modelling, and cab simulator pedals. JHS for example have got the fantastic Colour Box, which acts as a powerful tone shaper, pre-amp and EQ, based on a classic Neve mixing console. This can turn rather weak, lifeless dry guitar signals into full, crunchy beauties very easily.
At the top end of the spectrum, many professional musicians swear by the all-digital Kemper Profiler, which is meant to be able to accurately replicate the sound of everything from a stadium-sized Marshall stack, to a tiny practice amp. Personally, I swear by the HX Stomp from Line 6, which acts as a portable all-in-one amp and cab simulator, audio interface, and effects unit. I was initially very sceptical of the quality of such a thing, but it actually sounds pretty great. And hey, don’t take my word for it. Billy Corgan himself has said the same thing not too long ago…though I guess that could potentially be a deterrent, depending on your particular view of the man. I digress. With all of that said, you don’t necessarily need to spend a vast amount of cash to explore the possibilities of amp sims, with brands such as Boss offering up models such as the IR-2 for about $200—so it’s worth exploring the possibilities that are out there.
One of the additional benefits of using a pedal-based solution which is worth pointing out, is that it makes it much easier to replicate your recorded sound when playing live, and a lot of bands deliberately use digital options such as the Line 6 range primarily for that certainty. Plus, it means you don’t throw your back out trying to lug a stupidly heavy tube amp up a narrow set of stairs. If you know, you know.
Some of Our Favorite Amp Modelers
Recording with a Microphone
If you are fortunate enough to live somewhere that you can crank your amp to eleven without your neighbors complaining (or if you just simply don’t care about the consequences), then the best way to capture your tone might well be the old fashioned way: with a microphone pointed at the speaker cabinet.
Asking which particular mic one should use for such a thing will inevitably elicit a variety of different responses, depending on who you ask. However, the industry standard is arguably the seemingly indestructible, endlessly versatile Shure SM57. Not only can these things take a hell of a beating, but they are also good quality, and due to their dynamic nature, don’t require anything special such as phantom power to operate. You can simply plug them straight into your audio interface. On top of this, they are also relatively very affordable, coming in at about $100.
A kind of hybrid approach is to use an amplifier load box or attenuator. These clever things provide the necessary load required to push the tubes to the point where they break up and give their beautiful saturated tone, whilst reducing the output volume significantly, or even entirely. This way, you can record at home with your amp and achieve a great sound, without having to blast it at concert levels. Some of these offer DI or headphone outputs, whereas others just act as fancy volume dials—depending on what you are after.
If you do go down the "live" route, you need to remember that you will be "stuck" with the guitar sound you capture with the microphone—and by that I mean that if you decide at a later date that you want a radically different tone, that isn’t necessarily going to be possible without re-recording. One way to future-proof your productions and retain a lot of latitude for later corrections in this respect is to ensure that you always record a backup dry version of your signal, which can then be re-amped, or processed to taste with whatever plugins you desire. The best way to do this is using a buffered signal splitter pedal from a company like JHS—which provides high-quality duplication with no signal loss. Simply plug in your guitar into the pedal, run one of the outputs into your amp, the other directly into your interface, and record them simultaneously on separate tracks. Dead easy, and a production tip I would highly recommend considering. If your amp has a DI output, of course, you can use that to similar effect.
Alternatives
Now, a lot of guitarists I know don’t have the time, energy, or patience to sit down and start learning a whole bunch of new software. I can already imagine their eyes glazing over if I tried to attempt to explain how GarageBand operates—and that’s fair enough. Sometimes, all you really need is a straightforward and easy way to capture riffs while you are sitting on the couch to remember later, or to send to the one person in your band who does the production, or the songwriting, or…the one that tells you when to turn up for practice. You know what I mean. We’ve all been there.
In that kind of scenario, an alternative to the common desktop audio interface would be a portable recorder. There are a number of these available on the market now with a variety of different features and respective price points. However, Zoom have an excellent selection of possibilities, including the H5 recorder—which has a built in, swappable condenser mic—and also dual XLR/1/4” jack inputs which are perfect for recording guitar—with or without a microphone. If you want something a bit more fully featured, there is also the Zoom H8. Despite looking like something out of Star Trek, this magical box packs in a host of different inputs, as well as simple multi-track recording with its built-in apps. For something a bit larger and more traditional in nature, there’s also the R20 Multi Track Recorder, which looks and operates like an old tape machine in some ways. The beauty of all of these is that they can also act as audio interfaces in their own right…so if you do decide that you want to record directly into Garage Band, Ableton or Cubase at some point, that is possible without having to buy yet another bit of gear.
On the other end of the scale, if you happen to already have something of a studio setup with a Eurorack modular system, you may wish to consider a module such as the Injectr from BoredBrain music. This allows you to plug in and feed the output of your electric guitar directly into a Eurorack system—in a manner where it can then be modulated and manipulated in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways. There are a few direct injection modules available, but this one from BoredBrain is specifically designed for guitar, and includes features like a switchable amp simulator, overdrive circuit, and envelope follower.
Recorders to Consider
Conclusion
It might seem like something of a trite statement, but there really hasn’t ever been a better time to be a bedroom guitarist. Well, at least not when it comes to the sheer number of affordable options there are for recording your music. There are so many possibilities that now there really is no excuse for not giving it a bash. But—don’t forget to practice first.
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