Suggestions for recording solo guitar/voice

[drdaco]

So I want to record some solo guitar stuff and voice. I bought a firewire maudio 410, a regular mic, a condenser mic, and was going to use GB on my PMG5.

 

anything I should know, remember, suggestions? Has anyone done this b4?

[solaar]

GB on my PMG5.

Excuse my ignorance, mate, but what's that?

 

Otherwise good choice for the FW410. We've got one for mobile recording on a Macbook and it works like a champ with Cubase 4 and Logic Express 7.

Depending on your genre(s), guitar is almost always best tracked from the cabinet with a decent dynamic mic (a SM57 or 58 comes to mind). A condenser is almost too sensitive for noisy cabinets but can also do the job as a backing from a certain distance (1 metre +) if you want to capture some natural room.

You can also go straight into the 410 but keep in mind that tracking guitar completely dry will never guarantee the result you were after in a first place, even with top notch plugins at the mixing stage.

 

Tracking vocals can be a {censored} sometimes, depending on the vocalist and again the genre. As a general rule, I first try a dynamic mic on more loud and agressive styles (heavy Rock and Rap) and a condenser on more intricate stuff and voices, like R&B or Jazz. But there's no rule of thumb here. It takes experimentation and experience.- First of all the room should be suitable, ideally acoustically treated and optimised for recording with a mic.

[Tiranofice]

i am searching for a good and cheap audio card too,

 

i can't help you, but @solaar:

 

GB is garageband and PMG5 is PowerMAc G5 i think

[solaar]

i am searching for a good and cheap audio card too,

 

i can't help you, but @solaar:

 

GB is garageband and PMG5 is PowerMAc G5 i think

All right, cheers mate.

 

As for sound cards, cheap is really relative and depends on how much you want to spend but 'good' all depends on your purposes and quality requirements.

Let me put it this way - very simplified:

You can get up to about 90-95% of a fully professional result with an audio interface ranging somewhere from $300-1000. (Anything less than that will most likely always stay in the amateur range). BTW the last 5-10% though could cost a fortune (like a Pyramix, Sadie or Protools system with all the bells and whistles).

 

I reckon M-Audio products have an excellent quality/price ratio. RME and Motu make outstanding products but they're quite a bit pricier.

 

Anyway, the most important parametres to keep in mind are quality of the preamp and the A/D converters, the microphones, the recording room, of course the performance.

To be brutally honest, I wouldn't spend thousands or not even hundreds for recording a mediocre amateur band just having some fun playing together.

[UZi706]

You should also check out a line 6 POD, they're cheap and you can go directly out of it and get a straight up virtual amp sound that's just soo amazing