[LAU] how record electric guitar?

[Arnold Krille]

Hi,

On Tuesday 07 April 2009 12:46:55 Grammostola Rosea wrote:
> I want to record electric guitar chord progression. I've an:
> - epiphone les paul
> - little amp, orange 30r
> - maudio dmp 3 preamp
> - shure 58a beta
> - mic stand

Unless you want the dry sound directly from the guitar (you should try that at 
least once!), I would record through the amp. Depending on the room there are 
basicly two positions for the mic:
1) Directly in front of the amp, perpendicular to the speaker, centered and 
then turned to aim at the border area of the calotte. Do your own experiements 
here to see how the sound changes (probably easier when someone else is 
playing, or record dry first, feed it into the amp and listen to the rerecorded 
signal to hear the effects). Here you will have almost no signal from the room 
(which is why this placement is also used on stage) but it will sound un-
natural at first because the virtual ear is at a different position the your 
natural ears when playing.
2) If the room is nice (and/or dry), you can also place the mic where your 
head would be standing in front of the amp. Or at least place the mic a meter 
away from the amp. This gives more of the over-all sound of the amp but 
requires an otherwise silent room.

Some people also use #2 in not-dry rooms like the bathroom for effect.

> How do you manage the gain and eq?
> - guitar
> - amp
> - preamp
> - ardour

Play the guitar/amp as loud as you want (and can with respect to the 
neighbors). Have the preamp volume as high as possible without clipping (if 
you have, add a limiter before the a-d-converter) and control the mix-level in 
ardour. But this is actually true for all sources..

> How do you  mix it?
> I've read that it is useful to use an low-pass filter, some compression
> and EQ.

The lowpass only removes noise.

Depending on the mix you should EQ the guitar, search for the characteristic 
frequencies (depends on the guitar and style, not on the key of the song:) and 
boost them to give your guitar presence without muddying everything else.
Mostly a bit of compression is a must. For rythm-guitar I would use rather 
heavy compression to give it a constant level (also for acoustic rythm), for 
lead more dynamics are allowed to distinguish between solo-while-singing and 
solo. But that can also be done in the mix thanks to automation.

> What are good plugins on GNU/Linux for this?

The swh-plugins for compression (anyone ever used something else then the 
SC4?) and EQ, fons also has a nice 4-band EQ.

> What goes pre- and what postfader?

Everything that modifies the signal should go pre-fader (like EQ, compression, 
chorus/phaser/etc, delay if used for the style (like a timed triplet delay) ), 
because you don't want the fader influence on the amount of EQing.

Post-fader should be the sends to the "global" effects, like using one or two 
global ambiences (delay, reverb) via busses. Because you want the signal in 
the reflections to be influenced by the main-volume of the channel.

One last important rule of thumb: If it sounds right, its right.
Another one: Do your own experiements.

Have fun,

Arnold
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